JFK to 9/11 - Everything Is A Rich Man's Trick | Full Documentary

Revealed: How Coalition Has Helped Rich by Hitting Poor

George Osborne's claim that 'we are all in this together' in
economic terms is damaged by the findings of a new report.

THE OBSERVER: Study shows gains for wealthier half of population, delivering a blow to George Osborne’s claims on fairness

A landmark study of the coalition’s tax and welfare policies six months before the general election reveals how money has been transferred from the poorest to the better off, apparently refuting the chancellor of the exchequer’s claims that the country has been “all in it together”.

According to independent research to be published on Monday and seen by the Observer, George Osborne has been engaged in a significant transfer of income from the least well-off half of the population to the more affluent in the past four years. Those with the lowest incomes have been hit hardest.

In an intervention that will come as a major blow to the government’s claim to have shared out the burden of austerity equally, the report by economists at the London School of Economics and the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex finds that: » | Daniel Boffey, policy editor | Saturday, November 15, 2014

Sunday Times Rich List: Wealthiest Britons Own a Third of the Nation’s Wealth

THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY: The richest people in Britain are better off than ever before with the top 1,000 individuals owning a third of the nation’s wealth.

The 1,000 wealthiest Britons now own £518.975 billion - the equivalent of a third of Britain’s gross domestic product (GDP) - with their combined worth rising 15.4 per cent on last year's total of £449.654 billion, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.

The top 64 names have a combined fortune of £255 billion, which is equivalent to the combined wealth of the poorest 30 per cent.

Chris Leslie, Labour's Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said: “No wonder the super-rich have got much richer over the last year when David Cameron has given millionaires a huge tax cut.

“Yet at the same time working people have continued to face a cost-of-living crisis and are £1,600 a year worse off since 2010.” A minimum of £85 million is needed to even be considered for the list this year - compared to £80 million in 2008 at the height of the pre-crash boom and £75 million last year. » | William McClennan | Sunday, May 18, 2014

Rich Should Get More Votes, Says Billionaire Tom Perkins

Tom Perkins calls for the rich to be given more votes

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Outspoken magnate Tom Perkins who likened attacks on the very rich to anti-Semitism, courts further controversy as he calls for the right to vote to be linked to how much tax people pay

Tom Perkins, the Silicon Valley billionaire, has risked further controversy by saying the rich should be given more votes than the less well off.

An unrepentant Mr Perkins also said those who paid no taxes whatsoever should be disfranchised.

The venture capitalist, enlisted both Thomas Jefferson and Baroness Thatcher in his call for a radical change to the voting system.

Speaking at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, he appeared to revel in the notoriety his previous remarks as he spoke to a sell-out audience.

“Thomas Jefferson, at the beginning of this country thought to vote you had to be a landowner,” he said. » | David Millward, US Correspondent | Saturday, February 15, 2014

The 0.01 Per Cent: The Rising Influence of Vested Interests in Australia
THE MONTHLY: The rising influence of vested interests is threatening Australia’s egalitarian social contract.

A decade ago, as I waited for my order outside a Maroochydore fish and chip shop, a tall, barefoot young man strolled past wearing a T-shirt that read: ‘Greed is good. Trample the weak. Hurdle the dead.’ Those brutal lines seemed to encapsulate what was then a growing sense of unease in Australia. The world of my Queensland childhood, governed by its implicit assumptions of equality and mutual care, was being driven from sight by a combination of ruthless individualism and unquestioning materialism. Looking out for number one was not only tolerated but encouraged by a government whose agenda, particularly in industrial relations, seemed very far from the social contract, based on a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work with a decent social safety net for the vulnerable, that had served our nation so well for so long.

Today, when a would-be US president, Mitt Romney, is wealthier than 99.9975% of his fellow Americans, and wealthier than the last eight presidents combined, there’s a global conversation raging about the rich, the poor, the gap between them, and the role of vested interests in the significant widening of that gap in advanced economies over the past three decades.

This is a debate Australia too must be part of. We’ve always prided ourselves on being a nation that’s more equal than most – a place where, if you work hard, you can create a better life for yourself and your family. Our egalitarian spirit is the product of our history and our national character, as well as the institutions and safeguards built up over more than a century. This spirit informed our stimulus response to the global financial crisis, and meant we avoided the kinds of immense social dislocation that occurred elsewhere in the developed world.

But Australia’s fair go is today under threat from a new source. To be blunt, the rising power of vested interests is undermining our equality and threatening our democracy. We see this most obviously in the ferocious and highly misleading campaigns waged in recent years against resource taxation reforms and the pricing of carbon pollution. The infamous billionaires’ protest against the mining tax would have been laughed out of town in the Australia I grew up in, and yet it received a wide and favourable reception two years ago. A handful of vested interests that have pocketed a disproportionate share of the nation’s economic success now feel they have a right to shape Australia’s future to satisfy their own self-interest.

So I write this essay to make a simple point: if we don’t grow together economically, our community will grow apart. Read on and comment » | Wayne Swan | The Monthly | The Monthly Essays | March 2012

Archbishop of Canterbury Says Rich Should Help Poor
THE GUARDIAN: Rowan Williams sends Maundy Thursday plea to bankers, politicians and editors to assist communities in need

Bankers, politicians and newspaper editors should be legally required to spend a couple of hours every year working with the poor and needy to remind them of the purpose of their power and wealth, the archbishop of Canterbury has suggested.

He made the comments on Maundy Thursday, the day of the Last Supper when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and when the British monarch honours deserving subjects.

In his contribution to BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day slot, Dr Rowan Williams asked: "What about having a new law that made all cabinet members and leaders of political parties, editors of national papers and the hundred most successful financiers in the UK spend a couple of hours every year serving dinners in a primary school on a council estate? » | Riazat Butt, religious affairs correspondent | Thursday, April 21, 2011

Obama's Bid to Beat the Deficit: Tax the Rich
THE AUSTRALIAN: BARACK Obama has set the scene for an ideological battle in next year's presidential election, announcing tax increases for the wealthy.

The proposed hike is part of his plan to reduce the federal budget deficit by $US4 trillion ($3.8 trillion) over 12 years.

In a break from his conciliatory style, Mr Obama has ripped into his Republican opponents for trying to put the burden of deficit reduction on the poor and elderly while continuing to cushion the wealthy.

The President announced a broad plan for reducing the US budget deficit yesterday, including cuts to government health programs and defence spending.

But he raised Republican hackles by refusing point blank to extend tax cuts introduced by the Bush administration for people earning more than $US250,000 a year.

Mr Obama said he had agreed to renew the tax cuts for high-income earners once, as part of a deal with Republicans to guarantee cuts for the middle class. "I refuse to renew them again," he said. » | Brad Norington, Washington Correspondent | The Australian | Friday, April 15, 2011

Yu Pengnian, China’s biggest philanthropist, sits in the restaurant atop the hotel he built, where he lives and eats most of his meals. Photograph: The Globe and Mail
Chinese Philanthropist Donates It All
THE GLOBE AND MAIL: Eccentric developer from humble roots shocks nation by leaving offspring nothing

Yu Pengnian’s journey from poor street hawker to Hong Kong real-estate magnate was already a remarkable one. Then the 88-year-old did something even rarer that shocked many in increasingly materialistic China: He gave it all away.

Saying he hoped to set an example for other wealthy Chinese, Mr. Yu called a press conference in April to announce he was donating his last 3.2 billion yuan (about $500-million) to a foundation he established five years earlier to aid his pet causes – student scholarships, reconstruction after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, and paying for operations for those like him who suffer from cataracts.

“This will be my last donation,” he announced. “I have nothing more to give away.” >>> Mark MacKinnon, Shenzhen, China | Friday, July 23, 2010

THE GLOBE AND MAIL: China’s richest and most generous >>> | Saturday, July 24, 2010

The Cost of Living Extremely Well
"…the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves." – Adam Smith

TOWNHALL.COM: WASHINGTON -- Enough, already, with compassion for society's middle and lower orders. There currently is a sympathy deficit regarding the very rich. Or so the rich might argue because they bear the heavy burden of spending enough to keep today's plutonomy humming.

Furthermore, they are getting diminishing psychological returns on their spending now that luxury brands are becoming democratized. When there are 379 Louis Vuitton and 227 Gucci stores, who cares?

Citigroup's Ajay Kapur applies the term "plutonomy" to, primarily, the United States, although Britain, Canada and Australia also qualify. He notes that America's richest 1 percent of households own more than half the nation's stocks and control more wealth ($16 trillion) than the bottom 90 percent. When the richest 20 percent account for almost 60 percent of consumption, you see why rising oil prices have had so little effect on consumption.

Kapur's theory is that "wealth waves" develop in epochs characterized by, among other things, disruptive technology-driven productivity gains and creative financial innovations that "involve great complexity exploited best by the rich and educated of the time." For the canny, daring and inventive, these are the best of times -- and vast rewards to such people might serve the rapid propulsion of society to greater wealth.

But it is increasingly expensive to be rich. The Forbes CLEW index (the Cost of Living Extremely Well) -- yes, there is such a thing -- has been rising much faster than the banal CPI (consumer price index). At the end of 2006, there were 9.5 million millionaires worldwide, which helps to explain the boom in the "bling indexes" -- stocks such as Christian Dior and Richemont (Cartier and Chloe, among other brands), which are up 247 percent and 337 percent respectively since 2002, according to Fortune magazine. Citicorp's "plutonomy basket" of stocks (Sotheby's, Bulgari, Hermes, etc.) has generated an annualized return of 17.8 percent since 1985.

This is the outer symptom of a fascinating psychological phenomenon: Envy increases while -- and perhaps even faster than -- wealth does. When affluence in the material economy guarantees that a large majority can take for granted things that a few generations ago were luxuries for a small minority (a nice home, nice vacations, a second home, college education, comfortable retirement), the "positional economy" becomes more important. The Cost of Living Extremely Well (more) By George Will

Mark Alexander