Wealth

Black Americans’ Median Wealth Could Disappear In One Generation

July 14, 2018 By Adam Hudson, Truthout.org Educate! Black Nationalism, Income, United States, Wealth

There is a large wealth gap between white families and nonwhite families — a gap that impacts the economic stability of entire communities. According to 2016 Federal Reserve data, median wealth for white families is $171,000. Black and Latino families, meanwhile, have far less wealth: Black families have a median wealth of $17,600, while Latino families have $20,700. It would take decades to centuries for Black families to achieve the same amount of wealth that white families have. According to a 2016 report from the Institute for Policy Studies, it would take Black families 228 years to reach the same amount of wealth that white families have today. The racial wealth gap matters because wealth is an important economic resource and a form of power. Wealth builds and sustains communities. It helps communities weather economic hardships and supports future generations.

Coming Fiscal Derailment – Why FY 2019 Will Sink The Casino

December 23, 2017 David Stockman, informationclearinghouse.info Educate! New Economy, Profit, Wealth

December 21, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - Since last November 8th the Russell 2000 has risen by 30% and the net Federal debt has expanded by an astounding $1.0 trillion dollars. In a rational world operating with honest financial markets those two results would not be found in even remotely the same zip code; and especially not in month #102 of a tired economic expansion and at the inception of an epochal pivot by the Fed to QT (quantitative tightening) on a scale never before imagined. And we do mean exactly those words. By next April the Fed will be shrinking its balance sheet at $360 billion annual rate and by $600 billion per year as of next October. Altogether, the Fed’s balance is scheduled to contract by upwards $2 trillion by the end of 2020.

Our Opportunity To Build Wealth, Economy, And Culture

December 16, 2017 Melissa Hoover, institute.coop Create! Economics, Small Business, Wealth

Entrepreneurship can be a powerful force for prosperity. Business ownership gives entrepreneurs the opportunity to earn more money and create jobs. But this pathway to self-made success is mostly an option for the wealthy and for white households with access to capital and connections. Latino or African American households are historically less likely to start a business than white households, contributing to a persistent racial wealth gap. The business asset gap has notable impacts for women—in fact, women of all ethnic backgrounds and races: women business owners have household incomes 56 percent higher than other women working full-time. Making it easier for all people to become business owners will increase the wealth opportunities in our neighborhoods, cities, and the national economy.

Trouble In The Offshore Paradise

November 7, 2017 Chuck Collins, inequality.org Educate! Capitalism, Ruling Class, Tax Evasion, Tax havens, Wealth

By Chuck Collins for Inequality - Just as Congress begins debate on the Republicans’ “Tax Cut and Jobs Act,” new revelations have emerged about how wealthy elites around the world hide their wealth. The “Paradise Papers” — the result of a leak from the Bermuda-based law firm Appleby — shines additional light onto the shadowy world of hidden wealth and tax dodging. Efforts to reform the U.S. tax system are fundamentally undermined by a global tax-avoidance system that allows individuals and corporations to shift trillions to offshore havens to escape taxation, accountability, and publicity. The Paradise Papers, alongside the “Panama Papers” released in April 2016, provide another set of disclosures into a system full of titillating details about how high-ranking global officials have created their own system of rules. The Bermuda leaks disclose the role of high-ranking Trump administration members, including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and White House economic advisor Gary Cohn, in using offshore tax havens. National groups and political leaders, including Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi, are calling for a slowdown of Republican efforts to push through their tax bill to address these abuses. Oxfam America and the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition have called on Congress to hold hearings on the findings and a debate over how to best remedy them. Tax Justice Network international has called on the United Nations to convene a global summit to address tax haven abuse.

The Re-Emergence Of Common Wealth

October 11, 2017 Rivera Sun, www.kosmosjournal.org Create! Propaganda, Wealth

By Rivera Sun for Kosmos Online - Historically, the rise of massive individual wealth has been accompanied by the destruction of many forms of common wealth through conquest, colonization, cultural destruction, enclosures of the commons and subsequent impoverishment and displacement, wars, invasions, genocides, slavery, indentured servitude, wage-slavery and overworking, oppression, and massive waves of emigrations due to economic upheavals. This has happened not just throughout Europe and European colonization cycles, but also in the Middle East and throughout Africa and Asia. It is a trend that continues to this day, as we witness the rise of unprecedented oligarchs in control of transnational corporations at a time when poverty is growing and the ecological wealth of our planet has been so assaulted and diminished that we hang on the edge of collapse. There is no substitute for common wealth. True wealth, we are finding, lies not in vast personal fortunes, nor even solely in the personal inner wealth of inner peace, connection, love, community, spiritual awareness, etc., but rather it lies in balance with vibrant systems of common wealth that support the needs of all people and the planet. At this critical juncture of human history, it is necessary for those of us with personal monetary or material wealth, or personal spiritual and inner wealth, to put our resources in service of restoring our common wealth.

Stunning Truths About The Bloated Safety Net For The Wealthy

July 14, 2017 Paul Buchheit, www.truth-out.org Educate! Corporate Welfare, Ruling Class, Wealth

By Paul Buchheit for Buzz Flash - Housing: Start with the homes, the expensive homes, the estates. For the mortgage interest deduction alone, households earning over $100,000 in 2012 claimed 77.3 percent of the total tax savings. For many of these well-positioned Americans, there are second homes with another mortgage deduction. Then, piling on, those with expensive homes can take a tax break of UP TO A HALF-MILLION DOLLARS when they sell their homes. Relatively few tax breaks go to low-income Americans. The total of mortgage and property tax subsidies is nearly DOUBLE the amount spent on public housing programs. Social Security: As noted, wealthy people are cashing in because of their longer lives. But there are more reasons for their late-life benefits. Lower-income earners are subsidizing the 10% of Americans who stop paying for Social Security when they reach the $127,200 income limit. Also subsidizing the rich are the unauthorized immigrants who pay for Social Security but are ineligible for benefits. Savings: A wealthy household can make millions in capital gains and pay NO TAX as long as investments are held, and then bequeath the estate to heirs with LITTLE OR NO TAX. Less fortunate Americans who have to rely on bank accounts get virtually no interest -- and the majority of overdraft fees.

Secret Guilt, Secret Wealth

May 26, 2016 Dariel Garner, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Ruling Class, Wealth

By Dariel Garner for Popular Resistance - Offshore companies and secret bank accounts not only conceal tax evasion, fraud and other illegal activities; they are also, where the wealthy hide their guilt. The great fortunes of the wealthy do not come from brilliance and hard work. Great fortunes come from taking market control, from overcharging customers, short changing suppliers or treating employees as slaves. Remember, Salk and Sabin never made a nickel off their polio vaccines. Buckminster Fuller and Einstein did not die as rich people.

Wealth Belongs To All Of Us, Not Just The Rich

May 8, 2016 Dariel Garner, www.PopularResistance.org Educate! Civil Resistance, Economic inequality, Poverty, Revolution, Wealth

By Dariel Garner for Popular Resistance. Imagine eating at a sumptuous private banquet every night that the whole society has paid for, while most people are too stressed from overwork and worry to do more than grab some fast food on the way home and others can only hope to find some moldy food in a dumpster. There is no fairness in that. No equality. No justice. Indeed, it is shameful. Recognizing that the wealth was created by the society, not by me, meant that I held riches that were not mine but belonged to the people and to the Earth. My first reaction was guilt, but all that did was make the thousand dollar bottles of wine go down faster. My second reaction was sorrow and eventually that made me change my life. I couldn’t go on as I had. I turned my back on wealth. I lost it, I spent it like water and finally I gave it all away. I have never been happier.

We Are So Poor Because They Are So Rich

April 22, 2016 Dariel Garner, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Income, Inequality, Nonviolence, Poverty, Revolution, Wealth

By Dariel Garner for Popular Resistance, For decades, the rich have made all the laws and regulations, chosen the judges and the regulators, and written the 76,000 page IRS Tax Code. Occasionally, we agree with the rich, but even when we agree with them, it is because their radio, television, books, movies and newspapers have shaped our thinking to their liking. As bleak as the situation is, there is great reason to have courage that change can happen. The ruling elite are learning that they must reform and the people are realizing their power. There are many ways that we can organize and refuse to cooperate with a system that is producing dizzying inequalities.' The people are learning that deep systemic change is not made by voting for a single candidate or by waving flags in the streets, but by educating and building mass support, by creating new alternatives to the existing structures and by taking strategic coercive action such as boycotts, strikes, blockades, and literally hundreds of other kinds of nonviolent actions that withdraw the support of the people from the hurtful and unfair system.

Dark Money Review: Nazi Oil, Koch Brothers And Rightwing Revolution

January 19, 2016 Charles Kaiser, www.theguardian.com Educate! Capitalism, Power, Ruling Class, Wealth

By Charles Kaiser for The Guardian - Lots of American industrialists have skeletons in the family closet. Charles and David Koch, however, are in a league of their own. The father of these famous rightwing billionaires was Fred Koch, who started his fortune with $500,000 received from Stalin for his assistance constructing 15 oil refineries in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. A couple of years later, his company, Winkler-Koch, helped the Nazis complete their third-largest oil refinery.

Davos And Its Threat To Democracy

January 18, 2016 Nick Buxton, www.commondreams.org Educate! Capitalism, Ruling Class, Wealth, WEF

By Nick Buxton for Common Dreams - It’s an all-too-easy event to mock. It’s hard to keep a straight face when the world’s rich arrive annually in their private jets to the luxury ski-resort of Davos to express their deep concern about growing poverty, inequality and climate change. US comedian Jon Stewart has labelled the World Economic Forum (WEF) the ‘money oscars’ and lampooned the media’s giddy sycophantic coverage of the event; Bono, himself a regular at the summit, jokes that it is a summit of ‘fat cats in the snow’.

Why The USA’s Inequality Problem Is About A Lot More Than Money

August 11, 2015 David Cay Johnston, www.truth-out.org Educate! Class, Inequality, Wealth

By David Cay Johnston in Truth Out - Inequality is about much more than the growing chasm of income and wealth between those at the very top and everyone else in America. It's also about education, environmental hazards, health and health care, incarceration, law enforcement, wage theft and policies that interfere with family life over multiple generations. In its full dimensions, inequality shapes, distorts and destroys lives in ways that get little attention from politicians and major news organizations. How many of us know that every day 47 American babies die, who would live if only our nation had the much better infant mortality rates of Sweden? "Poverty is not natural," Nelson Mandela once said. "It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings." The man-made disparities between the rich and the poor are a threat to the liberties of the people. Plutarch, the Greco-Roman historian, observed more than 2000 years ago that, "an imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."

Amazing Wealth Surge For Top 0.1 Percent

April 2, 2014 Sahil Kapur, www.talkingpointsmemo.com Educate! Inequality, Wealth

New research finds that richest 0.1 percent of Americans have dramatically expanded their share of the country's overall wealth in the last three decades. The study is unique in that it measures inequality in terms of wealth, rather than income. It builds upon a slew of research that details stark and growing inequalities in the United States. "Wealth is as important as income for thinking about overall well-being," write Princeton's Atif Mian and University of Chicago's Amir Sufi. "For example, wealth may be more important than income in predicting who can send their kids to an expensive college. And wealth also represents control. Corporations are controlled by shareholders. So a higher concentration of wealth naturally implies that fewer individuals control the decisions made by firms in the economy."

Half The World’s Population Made Secure By Cooperatives

March 24, 2014 Patricia Bradshaw www.universityaffairs.ca Educate! Cooperatives, Wealth, Worker Rights and Jobs

The United Nations designated 2012 as “International Year of Co-operatives” to highlight that co-operatives are major players in the world economy. The International Co-operative Alliance claims that the livelihood of half the world’s population is made secure by co-operatives; they have a billion members, and they employ over 100 million people – 20 percent more than multinational enterprises. The “Global 300” (the largest co-ops) have revenues equalling the tenth largest economy in the world. According to the Canadian Co-operative Association, 17 million Canadians are co-op members, 150,000 Canadians work for co-ops, and 100,000 volunteer on their boards and committees. Canadian co-ops have $275 billion in assets, and recent studies show the survival rate of co-operative enterprises is 25 percent higher than that of investor-owned businesses. The Global 300 not only defied the financial crisis but actually grew during the recession. Yet co-operatives are virtually unknown in the halls of academe, and certainly in business schools.

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