Snapshot of a Plutocracy
Howl by Nicholas von Hoffman
The Nation
We can thank moronic editors, who know the hotsie-totsiest places to eat but not the important things of life that ought to go into their publications, for list journalism. To call this genre low-grade filler is to overpraise it. But there are exceptions, and the most valuable is the Forbes 400 list of the richest people in the United States.
The Forbes 400, present and past, constitutes the largest and most reliable trove of data on who owns how much of America. The government does not collect information on wealth, only on income, so the annual Forbes effort is unique. I have been told by IRS people off the record that they have found the 400 a useful tool.
The list is also a useful tool for anyone interested in power, the most important of the blessings great wealth confers. How much money, how much power? These 400 possess an aggregate $1.25 trillion. Imagine how many Congressmen that will buy.
If the first 400 have that kind of money, it looks to me as if the first 4,000 rich people, which includes all those at $900 million and $800 million levels, could presumably own and control most of the wealth in America. This is a disturbing snapshot of plutocracy. It could well be that a nation of 300 million people is run by about 1 percent of its population.
A quick look at this list and there goes the Republican eyewash about the death tax. Four of the ten richest human beings in America inherited their money. Scores of these billionaires got that way thanks to the exertion of their ancestors.
By the same token the income tax, which purportedly has been such a dead weight on entrepreneurial initiative, seems to have no effect on these billionaires. How, pray tell, did Bill Gates amass a fortune of more than $53 billion and Warren Buffett do nearly as well on a confiscatory tax system?
If the income tax is so painfully high, why is it that only twelve of the people on the list live abroad? And of these twelve, how many are tax refugees? How many prefer being someplace else, where it is not so easy to serve a summons?
(The rest is here.)
The Nation
We can thank moronic editors, who know the hotsie-totsiest places to eat but not the important things of life that ought to go into their publications, for list journalism. To call this genre low-grade filler is to overpraise it. But there are exceptions, and the most valuable is the Forbes 400 list of the richest people in the United States.
The Forbes 400, present and past, constitutes the largest and most reliable trove of data on who owns how much of America. The government does not collect information on wealth, only on income, so the annual Forbes effort is unique. I have been told by IRS people off the record that they have found the 400 a useful tool.
The list is also a useful tool for anyone interested in power, the most important of the blessings great wealth confers. How much money, how much power? These 400 possess an aggregate $1.25 trillion. Imagine how many Congressmen that will buy.
If the first 400 have that kind of money, it looks to me as if the first 4,000 rich people, which includes all those at $900 million and $800 million levels, could presumably own and control most of the wealth in America. This is a disturbing snapshot of plutocracy. It could well be that a nation of 300 million people is run by about 1 percent of its population.
A quick look at this list and there goes the Republican eyewash about the death tax. Four of the ten richest human beings in America inherited their money. Scores of these billionaires got that way thanks to the exertion of their ancestors.
By the same token the income tax, which purportedly has been such a dead weight on entrepreneurial initiative, seems to have no effect on these billionaires. How, pray tell, did Bill Gates amass a fortune of more than $53 billion and Warren Buffett do nearly as well on a confiscatory tax system?
If the income tax is so painfully high, why is it that only twelve of the people on the list live abroad? And of these twelve, how many are tax refugees? How many prefer being someplace else, where it is not so easy to serve a summons?
(The rest is here.)
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