Twenty years ago there were just 140 in the world, according to Forbes in their first ranking of wealth. Now there are 793. Billionaires.
Silly me. I did not know there were more than a few. God must be happy.
But now I find out that between 2000 and 2004 the number of millionaires in the US increased 500,000. Half a mil more mils. That would explain the proliferation of new castles. [Funny thing though, during that period poverty here increased a few percent.]
Now in Europe, the number of millionaires went up only 100,000 in those four years. Wow. I'm sure glad I live in the US. We have more millionaires!! Heh, heh, heh. And in Europe they are not allowed to get poor homeless people off the streets. Really. They have to leave them sleeping out there, under the bridges, on the bridges, wherever. They just have to put up looking at them. But some nice people are now giving them pup tents for those cold winter nights.
Gorette's diary:
"For Migrants and the Poor, Tents Must Count as Homes"....
http://www.nytimes.com/... and you must go and see the two pup tent photos. Yes it's real. In Paris. Craig S. Smith writes today, May 4, "...now, pup tents for the poor. There is new architecture springing up along the streets of this stately city, a counterpoint to the stone monuments and Beaux-Arts apartment buildings for which the French capital is known."
A French charity, Doctors of the World, has supplied 300 tents to the homeless of Paris, who include a number of recent immigrants from new members of the European Union.
According to Moisés Naím editor of Foreign Affairs in Our Inequality Anxiety, global inequality is decreasing a bit. Oh, good. Now that is excellent news.
Still, Asia saw an increase of 700,000 new millionaires between the years 2000 and 2004. But then we had a feeling China was doing well. I don't know the breakdown for billionaires by country so can't say how many they have.
American "Middle-Class and Family Financial Risk"
Do we still have a middle-class? The American middle-class is going the way of cheap fuel, out of sight. Economists say that the distribution of wealth in the US is in fact less of a bell-curve and more of a barbell.
We have a huge number of people living in poverty, about forty million people. This too has increased during the Bush presidency, a few million. That is in the U.S. in the twenty-first century.
Here in Florida where I live they have passed a law that panhandlers will have to pay a $100 license fee. Yes. It seems that they were bothersome to people who had to deal with them along the off ramps. You know, people coming off the highway in their Lexus's don't want to be assaulted by the poor asking for money. Maybe it's a good idea, I don't know. I just know that when a man on a bike asked me for a handout for a hamburger saying he was hungry, I gave him some money. He might have really been hungry.
Someone said recently: "It may be a good thing for America to 'decline' if it helps us get priorities straight and become a peace-mongering nation." Oh, yes, that was me.
TRUTHOUT had a recent article by Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, "The Middle Class on the Precipice: Rising financial risks for American families." Basically families today, she argues, have a much riskier situation than their parents faced. "The modern American family is walking a high wire without a net." Does that help explain some of your stress?
Rocked by rising prices for essentials as men’s wages remained flat, both Dad and Mom have entered the workforce—a strategy that has left them working harder just to try to break even. Even with two paychecks, family finances are stretched so tightly that a very small misstep can leave them in crisis.
....With both adults in the workforce full-time, the family’s combined income is $73,770—a whopping 75 percent higher than the median household income in the early 1970s. But the gain in income has an overlooked side effect: family risk has risen as well. Today’s families have budgeted to the limits of their new two-paycheck status. As a result, they have lost the parachute they once had in times of financial setback—a back-up earner (usually Mom) who could go into the workforce if the primary earner got laid off or fell sick. <snip> But today, a disruption to family fortunes can no longer be made up with extra income from an otherwise-stay-at-home partner.
Income risk has shifted in other ways as well. Incomes are less dependable today. Layoffs, outsourcing, and other workplace changes have trebled the odds of a significant interruption in a single generation. The shift from one income to two doubled the risks again, as both Mom and Dad face the possibility of unemployment. Of course, with two people in the workforce, the odds of income dropping to zero are lessened. But for families where every penny of both paychecks is already fully committed to mortgage, health insurance, and other payments, the loss of either paycheck can unleash a financial tailspin. Nor are such risks solely related to unemployment. Consider health-related exposures. Two wage-earners means either Mom or Dad could be out of work from illness or injury, losing a substantial chunk of the family income. Finally, the new everyone-in-the-workforce family faces higher risks for caregiving. When there was one stay-at-home parent, a child’s serious illness or Grandma’s fall down the stairs was certainly bad news, but the main economic ramification was the medical bills. Today, someone has to take off work—or hire help—in order to provide family care. At a time when hospitals are sending people home “quicker and sicker,” more nursing care falls directly on the family—and someone has to be home to administer it.
Being acquainted with unexpected health problems and their consequences, I've experienced the plunge from a cozy, nice home and income with my own business to the loss of both to poverty. It isn't something I'd wish on anyone. Well, almost no one. There have been lots of adjustments, changes and difficulties, though as a single person, getting used to having no money to buy "stuff" isn't the hard part in the long run. It is not knowing what new expense will arise and cause a panic which happens from time to time. But I have it better than many who are poor and have all my basic needs met.
What bothers me is the fact that so many children live in poverty here in the US. And the many, many thousands who are homeless.
This is what astounds me. A nation in which the "ruling" party, and it's king, are Christian by self-proclamation and who want to make this a "Christian nation," allows this to continue. Christ, by all acounts, spoke all the time about treating others as we would treat ourselves and taking care of others. So, I don't get it. Why are they so stuck on having it come from charities instead of government? Is the source somehow more important than doing it? Is it less Christian to allow the government to use money to help the poor, and give people health insurance for instance, than it is to use our ressources so that we are armed to the teeth so that we could blow up this earth many times over? Is it more Christian to spend money on wars? Is it Christian to give tax cuts to the wealthy? I guess they think God likes that.
The economic forces in the world today seem to be leading to changes that will be coming on us rather quickly in the grand scheme of things, with asian countries out-performing us due to their growth momentum, priority on good education especially in sciences and our own country's failure to get on the "right track." We have let corportism outfox people-ism, and corporate profits' ruling the day means our priorities are all wrong.
Excessive war-mongering and corporate interests could bankrupt us. In more ways than one.