{"id":15242,"date":"2015-12-14T07:02:47","date_gmt":"2015-12-14T12:02:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=15242"},"modified":"2015-12-14T07:02:47","modified_gmt":"2015-12-14T12:02:47","slug":"have-we-hit-peak-inequality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=15242","title":{"rendered":"Have We Hit Peak Inequality?"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"entry-header\">\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/otherwords.org\/have-we-hit-peak-inequality\/\" target=\"_blank\">Have We Hit Peak Inequality?<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"lede\">These 400 billionaires are wealthier than 190 million of their fellow Americans.<\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-meta pf-author\">When should we be alarmed about so much wealth in so few hands?<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>The Great Recession and its anemic recovery only deepened the economic inequality that\u2019s drawn so much attention in its wake. Nearly all wealth and income gains since then have flowed to the top one-tenth of America\u2019s richest 1 percent.<\/p>\n<p>The very wealthiest 400 Americans command dizzying fortunes. Their combined net worth, as catalogued in the 2015\u00a0<em>Forbes<\/em>\u00a0400 list, is $2.34 trillion. You can\u2019t make this list unless you\u2019re worth a cool $1.7 billion.<\/p>\n<p>These 400 rich people \u2014 including Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey, and heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune \u2014 have roughly as much wealth as the bottom 60 percent of the population, or over 190 million people added together, according to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ips-dc.org\/billionaire-bonanza\/\" target=\"_blank\">a new report<\/a>\u00a0I co-authored.<\/p>\n<p>That equals the wealth of the nation\u2019s entire African-American population, plus a third of the Latino population combined.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_29738\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-29738 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/otherwords.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/forbes-cover-467x600.jpg\" alt=\"forbes-magazine-cover-donald-trump\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Forbes Magazine Cover<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>A few of those 400 individuals are generous philanthropists. But extreme inequality of this sort undermines social mobility, democracy, and economic stability. Even if you celebrate successful entrepreneurship, isn\u2019t there a point things go too far?<\/p>\n<p>To me, 400 people having more money than 190 million of their compatriots is just that point.<\/p>\n<p>Concentrating wealth to this extent gives rich donors far too much political power, including the wherewithal to shape the rules that govern our economy. Half of all political contributions in the 2016 presidential campaign have come from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2015\/10\/11\/us\/politics\/2016-presidential-election-super-pac-donors.html\" target=\"_blank\">just 158 families<\/a>, according to research by\u00a0<em>The New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The wealth concentration doesn\u2019t stop there. The richest 20 individuals alone own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the U.S. population.<\/p>\n<p>This group \u2014 which includes Gates, Warren Buffet, the Koch brothers, Mark Zuckerberg, and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, among others \u2014 is small enough to fit on a private jet. But together they\u2019ve hoarded as much wealth as 152 million of their fellow Americans.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have We Hit Peak Inequality? These 400 billionaires are wealthier than 190 million of their fellow Americans. When should we be alarmed about so much wealth in so few hands? The Great Recession and its anemic recovery only deepened the economic inequality that\u2019s drawn so much attention in its wake. Nearly all wealth and income [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4350,384,11027,425,868],"class_list":["post-15242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-equality","tag-great-recession","tag-in-other-words","tag-inequality","tag-wealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15242"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15243,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15242\/revisions\/15243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}