The World's Billionaires: A New Count, A New Record

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



The World's Billionaires:
A New Count, a New Record
All the deep pockets on the latest Forbes global billionaire list could comfortably fit into a single medium-sized opera house. These fortunates, incredibly, now hold more wealth than half the world's adult population.
March 17, 2008

By Sam Pizzigati

Eight years ago, just a day before retiring as one of the world’s most important economic officials, International Monetary Fund managing director Michel Camdessus surprised — and maybe even shocked — a global conference audience in Bangkok. A world that lets wealth concentrate in precious few hands, Camdessus declared, is asking for colossal trouble.

“The widening gaps between rich and poor within nations,” the departing IMF executive advised, “are morally outrageous, economically wasteful, and potentially socially explosive. It is not enough to increase the size of the cake. The way it is shared is deeply relevant.”

Ignore the obligation to share, Camdessus warned, and the world will surely witness “confrontation, violence, and civil disorder.”

That warning, we can now safely say, hasn’t exactly scared the world’s greediest straight. The latest Forbes international billionaire list, released earlier this month, reveals a global concentration of wealth that has reached truly staggering proportions.

Forbes now counts 1,125 billionaires worldwide, up 179 from last year. Their total combined net worth: $4.4 trillion, up 26 percent from the total wealth of last year’s billionaires.

Trillions, of course, really don’t mean much in isolation. To truly understand the enormity of contemporary billionaire fortune, we need context. We need to know, for instance, how the wealth of the world’s 1,125 billionaires stacks up against the wealth of the rest of the world.

Our best current estimate of world wealth comes from a December 2006 report published by the United Nations University’s World Institute for Development Economics Research.

That report estimated that the world’s 3.7 billion adults, as of 2000, held some $125.3 trillion worth of wealth. At that time, in 2000, the world’s billionaires — all 492 of them — held a combined $2.16 trillion in wealth, a sum that surpassed the collective wealth of the world’s poorest 1.5 billion adults. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.cipa-apex.org/toomuch/articlenew2008/mar17a.html

[NotGivingUp]

1. the madness will not stop until WE make it stop. n/t

[NotGivingUp]

2. That's a VERY interesting website BTW....thanks!

It's not letting me digest my breakfast very well, though!!!