Wealth of richest 400 Americans surges to $2.29 trillion! Yowsa! Yowsa! Yowsa! [View all]

[Octafish]

Let the good times roll!



Wealth of richest 400 Americans surges to $2.29 trillion

By Andre Damon
World Socialist Web Site, 6 October 2014

The wealthiest 400 people in the United States had their combined net worth grow thirteen percent to $2.29 trillion this year, amidst a surging stock market and record corporate profits. The figures come from the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans, compiled every year since 1982 by the American business magazine of the same name.

As Forbes noted last week, the net worth of these 400 individuals is “about the same as the gross domestic product of Brazil, a country of 200 million people.” The average net worth of the Forbes 400 hit $5.7 billion, up by $700 million over the past year.

The new figures of wealth in America were generally buried in the media. Neither the New York Times nor the Wall Street Journal published an article. Nor has it been a topic in political campaigns, one month before the midterm elections. Neither big-business party has an interest in calling attention to the extraordinary levels of social inequality in the US, with endless claims that there is no money for basic social services.

Last week marked the sixth anniversary of the signing of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which established the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, better known as the bank bailout. Since then, the wealth of the richest sections of society has soared while the annual income of the typical household has fallen by five percent.

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[font color="green"]* Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and the richest man in the US for 21 years in a row, had his wealth increase $9 billion in one year, to $81 billion. Gates’ wealth has increased by a staggering $31 billion in the past five years. To put this figure in perspective, since 2009 Gates’ wealth has increased by nearly 30 times the annual budget of the city of Detroit, currently in bankruptcy.[/font color]

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http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/06/forb-o06.html

So, while on paper these are the greatest boom times in history, most of the boom in terms of hard cash has landed in the pockets of Haves and the Have-Mores.