One Percenters

“Thanks to a combination of government assistance and pure luck, a handful of companies are raking it in and making already rich shareholders even richer.” By Rupert Neate The Guardian (7/21/20) He was already by far the world’s richest person, but Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has set a fresh record increasing his fortune by an additional $13bn (£10bn) in a single day to take his personal wealth to an unprecedented $189bn. The huge increase in Bezos’s wealth on Monday alone is equivalent of adding nearly 30 times the Queen’s £350m fortune. His total wealth now makes him worth more than Britain’s biggest…

“coming poverty epoch, rather than an episode” By Paul Buchheit Common Dreams (7/13/20) There is something perverse about an economic system in which the stock market keeps climbing while people are dying. And in which 20 individuals can own as much wealth as the entire bottom half of the population. For the great majority of Americans without a share of the stock market, and for those who can’t work from home, the pandemic is adding the prospect of a financial collapse to all their other concerns. Half of America was In or Near Poverty BEFORE the Pandemic Anywhere from half to three-quarters of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck. The American Psychological Association recently estimated that 62% of…

The courthouse door was just slammed shut on workers and retirees whose pension plans get bilked. By David Sirota TMI (6/24/20)   In the 1987 classic film Wall Street, pension funds make a brief but important appearance, as Gordon Gekko hatches a plan to steal 6,000 airline workers’ retirement savings. An angry Bud Fox asks Gekko: “How much is enough?” — a question warning the audience about unbridled greed and the financial vipers in our midst. Thirty-three years after the release of Wall Street, it seems the U.S. Supreme Court saw the film as a guidebook rather than a cautionary tale: In a landmark…

While a few have pledged small percentages of their fortunes to fight the virus, most have held fast to their wealth. By J.C. Pan New Republic (5/7/20) Earlier this week, public health researchers projected that one in four Americans would experience hunger and food insecurity in the coming months as a result of the economic crash and mass unemployment set off by the pandemic. Even now, up to 71 percent of people who applied for unemployment benefits haven’t yet received them, and food bank lines are overextended, with car lines stretching for miles in some cases. In the new economic downturn, which so far shows every sign of approaching or…

Well-publicized philanthropy shows how afraid the super-rich are of a larger social safety net – and higher taxes. By Robert Reich The Guardian (4/12/20) As millions of jobless Americans line up for food or risk their lives delivering essential services, the nation’s billionaires are making conspicuous donations – $100m from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos for food banks, billions from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for a coronavirus vaccine, thousands of ventilators and N95 masks from Elon Musk, $25m from the Walton family and its Walmart foundation. The list goes on. On Wednesday, Forbes released its annual billionaires list, happily noting that “the planet’s wealthiest are…

A ‘Nation’ investigation illustrates the moral hazards surrounding the Gates Foundation’s $50 billion charitable enterprise. By Tim Schwab The Nation (3/30/20) Last fall, Netflix premiered a three-part documentary that promises viewers a rare look at the inner life of one of history’s most controversial businessmen. Over three hours, Inside Bill’s Brain shows us a rare emotional side to Bill Gates as he processes the loss of his mother and the death of his estranged best friend and Microsoft cofounder, Paul Allen. Mostly, though, the film reinforces the image many of us already had of the ambitious technologist, insatiable brainiac, and heroic philanthropist. Inside Bill’s Brain falls into a…