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World's Top 26 Billionaires Now Own as Much as the Poorest 3.8 Billion

posted by takyon on Tuesday January 22 2019, @10:32AM   
from the self-made-trillionaire dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Global wealth inequality widened last year as billionaires increased their fortunes by $2.5 billion per day, anti-poverty campaigner Oxfam said in a new report.

While the poorest half of humanity saw their wealth dwindle by 11%, billionaires' riches increased by 12%. The mega-wealthy have also become a more concentrated bunch. Last year, the top 26 wealthiest people owned $1.4 trillion, or as much as the 3.8 billion poorest people. The year before, it was the top 43 people.

[...] To address many of these ills, Oxfam advocated raising taxes. It estimated that a 1% wealth tax would be enough to educate 262 million out of school children and to save 3.3 million lives. As of 2015 returns, Oxfam says that only four cents in every tax dollar collected globally came from tariffs on wealth, such as inheritance or property. The report also claims that the rich are hiding $7.6 trillion in offshore accounts

Previously: Only 1% of World's Population Grabbed 82% of all 2017 Wealth

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Original Submission

• Re:Instead of tax: hard ceiling (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 23 2019, @03:42PM

  by khallow (3766) on Wednesday January 23 2019, @03:42PM (#790634) Journal

  A banker however would demand a 5% "handling fee" for passing on a money transaction that was actually done by his computer.

  Unless you're money laundering that 50 million USD (where I understand, the fees tend to be higher), the fees don't get that high merely for money transactions.

  Where does this stop? Should the programmer of that computer get 5% or even 0.05% of every transaction his software ever handles? Should a bus driver be awarded $1 million every time he applies the brakes because he is saving his company the $10 million in damages that would arise from the collision if he did not? Of course not. Some jobs should be paid more than others, but some incomes are insanely high. No one person is worth tens of millions of $ per year.

  I already explained why that viewpoint was wrong. The CEO of a major company has far greater responsibilities than that exercised every day. I'll note as additional support, that back in the 1980s, there was this interesting hysteria in the US concerning Japan. We had just come off of the worst decade since the Great Depression, the 1970s, with two major energy crises, and the start of the long decline in the US industry with competition from Japan devastating large portions of US industry and the US Midwest. A fair number of books were written on how the US was going to be taken over by Japan.
  
  What might have looked a sure thing in 1985, looked very different ten years later in 1995. Suddenly, Japan reeling from a bad recession (which incidentally the US suffered from as well) was no longer a threat, and the US was holding its own against the other newcomers, like China, in the global market. This was even more obvious by the next decade, despite the dotcom recession. By having de facto huge incentives to create and grow valuable businesses, the US retained its huge economy and standard of living despite losing large amounts of industry to other countries. Sorry, but this supposed outsized pay to CEOs is part of a thing that has worked well for the US.
  
  And I can't help but notice the anti-pay camp always falls down to the same single argument. This theoretical argument that a good CEO could be had for less pay. That somehow the board of directors and the investors would make better choices, if they were forced to offer less money for the position? I just don't see that. Incompetent boards stay incompetent, no matter how little they pay their CEO.

  Parent