sharing wealth

["bill london" <bill_london@hotmail.com>]

Our discussions of schools (cuts in Moscow, violence seemingly everywhere) 
also are discussions of resources.  Counselors, new classes in anger 
management, fewer students per teacher, increasing teacher salaries, 
etc.--many of the suggestions about "fixing" school problems cost money.

And that discussion is stymied by the wave of cut-taxes mentality that has 
dominated our government lately.

I want to discuss raising taxes.  The huge accummulation of wealth that has 
occurred in the last few decades in the US has increased the disparity of 
rich and poor.  Our democracy is fragile, and that increased disparity and 
lack of concern for social responsibility seems to me to be a recipe for 
disaster.

This column by the authors of "Corporate Predators" (their names are at the 
end of the text) summarizes the issue of recent wealth accummulation.  I 
think it's time that the wealthy paid their fair share.
BL

-----
As the Dow Jones industrial average shoots past 11,000 on its way to the
stratosphere, could we pause for a moment of silence to recognize the
wealth disparity that has resulted and the threat it poses to our fragile
democracy?

If you read and listen to the corporate press -- the Wall Street
cheerleaders at Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, Investor's Business
Daily, or the other major corporate news services -- you might think that
the market boom has resulted in wealth all around.

For the most part, the corporate press, caught up in their euphoria over
this bubble economy, has ignored the reality on the ground.

They generally ignored, for example, the bit of reality recently presented
in succinct detail by the Boston- based United for a Fair Economy.

Last month, the group issued "Shifting Fortunes: The Perils of the Growing
Wealth Gap in America," a report that features the latest findings of
economist Edward Wolff of New York University, a leading authority on
wealth distribution.

This is what the report found:

* Most households have lower net worth, adjusting for inflation, than they
did in 1983, when the Dow was still at 1,000.

* From 1983 to 1998, the S&P 500 grew a cumulative 1,336 percent. But the
wealthiest households reaped most of the gains.

* Since the mid-1970s, the top 1 percent of households have doubled their
share of the national wealth. The top 1 percent of U.S. households now
have more wealth than the entire bottom 95 percent.

* The top 1 percent of households control 40 percent of the wealth.
Financial wealth is even more concentrated. The top one percent control
nearly half of all financial wealth (net worth minus equity in
owner-occupied housing).

* Microsoft CEO Bill Gates owns more wealth than the bottom 45 percent of
American households combined. In the fall of 1997, Gates was worth more
than the combined Gross National Product of Central America -- for you
geography buffs, that's Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama,
Honduras, Nicaragua and Belize. By the fall of 1998, Gates' $60 billion
was worth more than the GNPs of Central America plus Jamaica and Bolivia.

* The boom has been a bust for millions of Americans. The
inflation-adjusted net worth of the median household fell from $54,600 in
1989 to $49,900 in 1997. Nearly one out of five households have zero or
negative net worth (greater debts than assets), an increase from the
1980s.

* Workers are earning less, adjusting for inflation, than they did when
Richard Nixon was president. Average weekly wages for workers in 1998 were
12 percent below 1973, adjusting for inflation. Productivity grew nearly
33 percent in the same period.

* Families have sunk deeper into debt. Household debt as a percentage of
personal income rose from 58 percent in 1973 to an estimated 85 percent in
1997. Total credit card debt soared from $243 billion in 1990 to $560
billion in 1997. Credit card limits have risen to the point that the
average person can charge more than eight times what they already owe. As
of 1997, almost 60 percent of American households carried credit card
balances -- balances that average more than $7,000, costing these
households more than $1,000 per year in interest and fees.

There is little question that wealth concentration presented in this
report is being fueled by corporate greed. And the resulting wealth
inequality poses serious threats to our democracy and civic life.

"The wealth gap reinforces -- and is reinforced by -- widening disparities
in education, economic opportunity, and quality of life,"  says Chuck
Collins, co-director of United for a Fair Economy, and a co-author of the
report. "Even the affluent lose from inequality as it hurts life
expectancy for rich and poor, fuels violence, and denies all of us the
contributions of people whose opportunities are denied."

Another co-author of the report, Juliet Schor, argues that "health,
well-being and satisfaction appear to be heavily influenced by the ways in
which economic resources, prestige and social position are distributed."

"In more unequal societies, human well-being and quality of life appear to
be lower," Schor says. Wolff makes the point that "wealth, more than
income, directly translates into political power." To counter the wealth
threat to democracy, Wolff proposes a wealth tax on the richest Americans.

As an act of capitalist self-preservation, we think Gates and his buddies
should agree.

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational Monitor. Together, they are authors of Corporate Predators:
The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Common Courage
Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org).

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman



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