The bottom 56 percent of the population owns just 1.8 percent of the world’s wealth.
On December 8, 2019, Jake Johnson writes on Common Dreams:
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin stands with others before President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump host French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron for a state dinner at the White House on Tuesday, April 24, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The millionaires of the world, who account for just 0.9 percent of the global population, now own nearly half of the planet’s $361 trillion in wealth while the bottom 56 percent of the population owns just 1.8 percent.
That’s according to the annual Global Wealth Report released Monday by Credit Suisse, which found that the number of millionaires in the world grew to 47 million between mid-2018 and mid-2019, with the United States leading the world in both new and total millionaires.
According to Credit Suisse, the U.S. added 675,000 new millionaires over the past year, bringing the country’s total to 18.6 million.
Japan and China both added over 150,000 millionaires, while the U.K., France, Australia, and Italy were among the nations that saw a decline in millionaires.
Overall, the report shows the world’s millionaires now own a combined $158.3 trillion, or 43.9 percent of all global wealth:
The new figures detailing vast inequities in wealth distribution globally and within individual nations come as two of the leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination in the U.S., Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have released proposals designed to combat wealth inequality through taxation.
Warren’s “Ultra-Millionaire Tax” plan, unveiled in January, would impose a two percent tax on assets over $50 million and a three percent tax on assets over $1 billion.
Last month, Sanders released his “Tax on Extreme Wealth” proposal, which would would create a one percent tax on wealth between $32 and $50 million. The tax would progressively increase for richer Americans—those with over $10 billion in wealth would face an eight percent tax.
“At a time when millions of people are working two or three jobs to feed their families, the three wealthiest people in this country own more wealth than the bottom half of the American people,” Sanders said. “Enough is enough.”
Gary Reber Comments:
This article focuses on OWNERSHIP, as in owning wealth-creating, income-producing productive capital assets –– the source that creates millionaires and billionaires.
Yes, there are people who are paid high wages or salaries who have been able to become wealthy not through owning productive capital assets but through their labor, and instead may be able to afford various consumption assets such as owning a high-value residence, but the real wealthy –– the multi-millionaires and billionaires –– are those people who become owners of productive capital assets, through investments, speculative security trading gains and inheritance.
The system must be reformed if we are to create a society in which EVERY child, woman and man can become an owner of productive capital assets using financial mechanisms that actually grow the economy so that we can build a future economy than can support environmentally-responsible general affluence for EVERY citizen.
Americans who believe in equality of opportunity and recognize the value of a society that invests in all of its people, will be the people needed to reform the system in ways that government becomes a logistical ally in empowering EVERY citizen to become an owner of capital assets simultaneously with the development and environmentally responsible growth of the economy, without taking from those who already are owners and further creating dependency on redistribution policies and programs to sustain purchasing power on the part of the 99 percent of the population who are solely dependent on their labor worker earnings or welfare to sustain their livelihood.
By stimulating economic growth tied to broadened productive capital ownership the benefits are two-fold: one is that over time the 99 percent will be enabled to acquire productive capital assets that are paid for out of the future earnings of the investments and gain greater access to job opportunities that a growth economy generates.
When all citizens have an ownership stake in the economy and high-quality public institutions, we can look forward to an amazing future for our children and grandchildren and their children.
The solution is to create universal access to future capital ownership opportunities for EVERY child, woman, and man, without redistribution. That is, reform the tax and monetary system to enable every child, woman, and man to purchase capital using “pure” interest-free, capital credit collateralized with insurance, and pay for it solely out of the future earnings of the capital itself, without any requirement of past savings. This is the smart means to acquire capital, which wealthy people fully understand.
The role of physical productive capital is to do ever more of the economy’s work efficiently, which produces wealth and thus income to those who own productive capital assets. As such, “capital” can be defined as productive assets, including job-displacing physical and informational technologies, structures, land and other natural resources, patents and copyrights — or non-human “things” contributing to the production of marketable goods, products, and services.
Productive capital is increasingly the source of the world’s economic growth and, therefore, should become the source of added property ownership incomes for all, and not allowed to become further concentrated by those who already are extremely wealthy capital asset owners. If we postulate that both labor and capital are independent factors of production, and if capital’s proportionate contributions are increasing relative to that of labor, then equality of opportunity and economic justice demands that the right to property (and access to the means of acquiring and possessing property) must in justice be extended to all.
Yet, sadly, the American people and its leaders maintain a focus on job creation, completely ignoring the necessity for ownership creation, while envying the wealthy capital asset ownership class. They still pretend to believe that labor is becoming more productive and, as such, couch all policy directions in the name of job creation. Americans ignore the necessity to broaden personal ownership of wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets simultaneously with the growth of the economy.
Significantly though, no matter how much labor is necessary or unnecessary in the economy, it is imperative that the issue of concentrated capital ownership is addressed, and policies are enacted to simultaneously create new capital owners of the corporations growing the economy, both established and viable start-ups, as the economy grows.
While the national focus is always on job creation instead of ownership creation, our scientists, engineers, and executive managers who are not owners themselves, except for those in the highest employed positions, are encouraged to work to destroy employment by making the capital “worker” owner more productive. How much employment can be destroyed by substituting machines for people is a measure of their success –– always focused on producing at the lowest cost. Only the people who already own productive capital are the beneficiaries of their work, as they systematically concentrate more and more capital ownership in their stationary 1 percent ranks. Yet the 1 percent is not the people who do the overwhelming consuming. The result is the consumer populous is not able to get the money to buy the goods, products, and services produced as a result of substituting “machines” for people. And yet you can’t have mass production without mass human consumption made possible by “customers with money.”
Abraham Lincoln said that the purpose of government is to do for people what they cannot do for themselves. Government also should serve to keep people from hurting themselves and to restrain man’s greed, which otherwise cannot be self-controlled. Anyone who seeks to own productive power that they cannot or won’t use for consumption are beggaring their neighbor — the equivalency of mass murder — the impact of concentrated capital ownership.
When capitalists perceive government as a logistical ally rather than an ideological foe and when all citizens have a stake in both the corporations growing the economy and high-quality public institutions, it will be amazing how well government can get things done and how well we will be able to create an environmentally responsible and affluent future economy and a society of universal productive citizen owners.
For an in-depth overview of solutions to economic inequality, see my article “Economic Democracy And Binary Economics: Solutions For A Troubled Nation and Economy” at http://www.foreconomicjustice.org/?p=11 and follow me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/editorgary and at http://www.facebook.com/pages/For-Economic-Justice/347893098576250. Also see my blog site at www.foreconomicjustice.org.
