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The Million-Dollar Penny
The ulta-rich are splurging again as the rest of us muddle through the Great Recession.
Every summer, several financial firms competing to get the banking business of the world’s mega millionaires release what amounts to scorecards on global wealth. These data-packed reports tally the current number of our international rich and super-rich, by nation and region.
World Wealth Report 2010 is the most comprehensive of these scorecards. It's got some fascinating details about the planet's wealthiest of the wealthy, those households worth at least $30 million--that's not counting their primary residence and "collectibles."
These "ultra-high-net worth" households make up less than 1 percent of the global millionaire total, yet in 2009 and 2008 they held more than a third of combined global millionaire wealth. In other words, the global financial crash that mega-millionaire speculation triggered has ended up concentrating even more wealth in mega millionaire pockets.
The Merrill Lynch and Capgemini researchers who prepared this report also offer some lusciously revealing information about what they call "passion investing," the vast sums the rich plow into everything from country club memberships and yachts to jewelry and fine art.
Global millionaires, they say, "returned to passion investments in 2009," but the overall volume of these passion investments still hasn't rebounded all the way back to pre-financial crash levels.
That complete rebound, the report adds, may come shortly, since "auction houses, luxury goods makers, and high-end service providers all reported signs of renewed demand toward the end of 2009."
One sign of that increased demand: Late last year, an antique penny--a 1795 one-cent piece--went at auction for $1.3 million. That marked the first time a penny had ever gone for over $1 million.
This resurgence in "passion investment" illustrates the latest World Wealth Report's overall theme: The global millionaire "segment regained ground despite weakness in the world economy."
We have that weakness because average consumers still don't have the buying capacity to get national economies going again. And those average consumers don't have that buying capacity because income and wealth are getting even more concentrated at the top. An antique penny, thanks to that concentration, can now fetch more than a million dollars.
But imagine if our wealth were more equally shared. Imagine that the $1.3 million that went for a 1795 penny had been sitting instead in the pockets of average consumers. Over 1,500 of those consumers could have bought brand-new energy-efficient refrigerators with that $1.3 million.
And what do you suppose would do our economy--and our world--more good, one deep pocket spending $1.3 million on a penny or 1,500 households buying new energy-efficient refrigerators?
The good folks at Merrill Lynch and Capgemini will most likely never ask that question. We should.
- Posted in
40 Comments so far
Show AllOf course the commentator is correct. But beware the Energy Star Label. It is essentially meaningless. It is a producer originated label and is not verified by anyone.
As a test the GAO was able to get 15 of 20 non existent items labeled Energy Star including a deisel powered alarm clock!
It is not inflationary to tax the rich and provide tax cuts to working people. After all, the money of the rich is supposed to be trickling down, but isn't. Instead it is hoarded or spent on art and other collectibles, and that only helps other rich people. If the rich do not keep their end of the bargain, why should they be allowed to keep their money? Even though working people win this argument, we still lose because absent violent actions, we are mostly powerless.
As we live each day with difficulty, time seems to linger and the difficulties seem permanent. We live this way by choice. If we choose to opt out and adopt sustainable lifeways and values, our lives would slowly improve. It's important to begin now because learning and implementing sustainable lifeways takes time. It's important to do so now because the economic hammer has yet to be slammed down. Lessen it's impact on your family by changing now. It's a win-win solution because not only will your life improve but those of the rich will decline. Live well through defiant creativity.
I have already started down this path and am activley recruiting people for a community based self sustaining gardening "club" if you will. I started this out last year with zero interest and this year I have 3 people in my food co-op. I already have others that want in next year. I want to eventaully be as free of oil and it's toxic influences as I can be.
Define Freedom:
I am curious..Is all of this gardening done by hand? and if so, under average to ideal soil conditions and climate {and I realize this will vary greatly region to region} just how many people can be sustained or fed by say ten people tilling, hoeing, planting weeding and harvesting....I am talking A variety of crops ands not just potatoes and grain, although I do believe potatoes and grain with some greens would sustain human diet...
I have A friend that swears that A man or family can not possibly survive this way with taxes to the Govt. being part of his argument...He swears that Internal combustion machines are absolutly vital and necessary...Is he correct?
After all, the money of the rich is supposed to be trickling down, but isn't. Instead it is hoarded or spent on art and other collectibles, and that only helps other rich people.
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It's just a modern example of "the vile maxim" at work that Dr Smith excoriated 230+ years ago:
"[T]he silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and manufactures ... gradually furnished the great proprietors with something for which they could exchange the whole surplus produce of their lands, and which they could consume themselves without sharing it either with tenants or retainers.
All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.
As soon, therefore, as they could find a method of consuming the whole value of their rents themselves, they had no disposition to share them with any other persons.
For a pair of diamond buckles, perhaps, or for something as frivolous and useless, they exchanged the maintenance, or what is the same thing, the price of the maintenance of a thousand men for a year.... The buckles, however, were to be all their own, and no other human creature was to have any share of them; whereas in the more ancient method of expence they must have shared with at least a thousand people."
While I agree with the premise that wealth is not a good thing when concentrated in the hands of the few, I don't see where stoking the fires of capitalism with 1500 newly manufactured gadgets will help in the long run either. The profits will just be filtered upwards into the same greedy, filthy, hands. We need to step away from this bogus greed based economy. Money is but the means of extracting labor from the poor to transfer it's real value to the ruling class so they can sit on their worthless asses. Unless money can be eaten, breathed, or drank, it is pretty much uselss as far as life needs. Time to start a barter ecomony that excludes the wealthy. If they want to eat, they can graze on wads of cash or can garden their own food.
As another poster has pointed out many time.
I will not serve....
Let them eat gold.
"Time to start a barter ecomony that excludes the wealthy. If they want to eat, they can graze on wads of cash or can garden their own food."
Admirable sentiments but an unrealistic suggestion. A barter system works only when those interested in trading what they have for what they want both want what the other has. Money, like any other tool, is neutral. It can be used for positive things and negative things. It is not inherently evil. It is a symbol, like words are symbols, for something else.
Greed, like all other things carried to an extreme, is inevitably destructive. Blaming currency for the faults of those who pursue it, is as irrational as blaming free speech for those who shout 'fire' in a crowded theater.
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Blaming currency for the faults of those who pursue it, is as irrational as blaming free speech for those who shout 'fire' in a crowded theater.
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Money greases the skids of greed. Maybe it is a necessary evil, but nevertheless, it greases the skids of greed.
I agree with your genral sentiment but it has become clear that money IS a problem. Money should be able to buy you a better car, larger house, or a bigger steak but we have perverted it to mean money is of greater value than human life and prosperity. At that point, I submit there is no longer a neutral purpose as far as currency is concerned. It has evolved to it's logical conclusion namely, the haves and have nots. Currency markets are manipulated to benefit the rich and I am tired of playing. As far as having enough barter trade partners to make it work, not a problem, if I can't barter for it, I guess I didn't need it that badly. If I need it that badly, I will have to find a way to make it myself. Has been working well enough for me so far.
I don't dispute your criticism of what people do with money. But I do dispute your analysis. While it is true that money can be spent for destructive things, it is equally true that money can be spent for constructive things. Since it can just as easily be spent for both, I submit that it is neutral and that what it is spent on determines its social (as oppossed to monetary) value.
Try bartering for health care and see if you can do without.
If it works for you so far, congratulations.
Tirebiter:
There is one great fault with your appraisal of Money...Money will soon not be worth the paper it was printed on...In Germany, during the depression burning wheelbarrels full of paper money generated more heat energy than the firewood the money would fetch...This will be the same case with the dollar, as they have been printing these fiat/promisary notes in such abundance for so long out of thin air with absolutly "nothing" backing them...
The FED has truly out done itself here and will precipitate it's own undoing and demise...Rothschild's Beware!!!!
Paper money has no intrinsic value. But we all 'trust' it to have its denominational value. Without that trust the currency has no other value. This holds for all currency whether weak or strong.
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Money is but the means of extracting labor from the poor to transfer it's real value to the ruling class so they can sit on their worthless asses.
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Exactly. And the ruling class, that is, the capitalists, need to realize there is no capital without labor. Labor has the power, but does not realize it. And, the power elite has successfully propagandized labor to the point that those who would benefit most are stoutly anti-union.
dkshaw sez: "Labor has the power, but does not realize it. "
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Only as a monolithic entity does "labor" have power.
Forty million individual and disconnected laborers, each one pink slip from potential hunger and a box on the street, not so much.
As you point out, that's why eradication of unions and the fracturing of the electorate through fear-based propaganda have been part and parcel, if not the most visible facet, of the Raygun revulsion and its refinements in the decades since.
Define Freedom:
I really like this concept and it is not so way out to not come true....
This article triggers my memory of a TV commercial (played a few years ago) wherein a wealthy person was seen lounging by a swimming pool. A breeze picked up the paper he was reading (or working on), and immediately a Cirque de Soleil performer did a back handspring into the pool to retrieve the paper mid-air.
The ad made it very clear that our economy was moving into a serf-like service sector designed to go to great lengths to please the very rich.
Due to Florida's geography, it has probably 1000 miles of ocean front (or Gulf front) real estate. Driving these scenic roadways one sees mansion after mansion and at least 35% up for sale. Here, too, is a market niche designed only for the very wealthy.
The inverted pyramid that has seen so much wealth aggregate at the top cannot hold its fragile balance. Imagine if instead of CNN or Fox "news" blasting at every airport, Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" played instead? Imagine if instead of the Calvinist conceit that God applauds the well-to-do, the more compassionate version of helping the poor came to replace it?
The twisted reason that passes for consensual reality in this wounded land is a lethal poison that's infected much of the world. Sure, greed was always the dark sin to be guarded against in human nature... but never before did a means to brainwash people so efficiently (media) exist. Woe unto any society that lays its treasure before the Mars (MIC make-war) Mammon ($ is god) state. The results are in plain view all around us... seen in statistics of pain and suffering as the empire collapses upon its own proud sword.
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In other words, the global financial crash that mega-millionaire speculation triggered has ended up concentrating even more wealth in mega millionaire pockets.
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As planned by those mega billionaires and high government officials.
We are in a class war. So far we, the underclass, have allowed much violence done to us by the mega billionaires. Literal violence. Millions of dead all over the world over the past several decades.
Are we going to continue to turn the other cheek? It seems to have worked so well so far... let the elite continue to rape us, because our reward will be found in the afterlife?
In short, what you are saying is that all of the idiots that were in charge back in 2007, all the CEO's of Wall St., the Banks, all of the TV and radio political talking heads, and their counterparts, the economic know it alls that told us our economy was strong and robust, all of these idiots that got everything so totally wrong are still on TV and radio, and are telling us that we have to give up our social security and Medicare and Medicaid to prop up Wall St., the Banks and the uber wealthy of this country. Thats what you are telling us, Right? You are telling us that America is full of grasping and ungracious people. Well shit, we would have never have known! Thanks for letting us know!
The process of capital accumulation at the top of the distribution pyramid is proceeding at a brisk clip. One day the pyramid will become so top-heavy it will implode on itself. Society cannot sustain a small number of parasites who take a larger share while contribute nothing.
Every day the bucket goes to the well, one day the bottom will fall out.
The bottom has already fallen out. Now, like Weekend at Bernie's, we are propping up the corpse of Capitalism as if it is alive and well. It isn't, it's dead. No one will admit that the party is over. Even though rot and stench permeate the air, the denial continues. We are experiencing a fraud of immense proportions. Can I get an Amen!
Stone:
Amen stone-I can't possibly see things remaining the way they are..I know they can get much worse but I'm A firm believer in what comes around goes around and this will not bode well for those who turned their backs on humanity...They fear the masses...Arm the homeless!!!!
No, u may not. Your wrong it's very much alive and well, it's just mutated into a more virulent and cannibalistic manifestation called "Crony Capitalism" AKA 21st century Corporatism. The 1% has wisely bought the political system in most major countries and is now assiduously looting what's left of the treasury in most of them. Where it can't do that it's variously looting these countries natural and human resources in other ways with the huge amounts of capital it now has, having wrecked the world's economies in one way or another. They are getting away with all of this because, whose going to stop them? Certainly not the laughable powerless and pathetic non-movement called Progressivism in this country that's for sure. The wealthy have waged a 40 yr. "Class War" against us here and that war is now entering it's final stages as the latest Corporatist President Barry Obama gets ready to loot SS and Medicare for his pals on Wall st.
Society has indeed sustained this small, yet increasing number, of parasites. The super-rich are completely insulated from their own consequences. The bottom will drop out, and it will land on the rest of us.
Not completely. One day they will have to guard their own gated communities because the wage slave would be just as likely to kill them as guard them. That my friends is when the worm will have turned.
I felt the same way when Rafa Nadal flaunted a $525,000 wristwatch during the French Open.
That sort of obscene luxury is indicative of a new Robber Baron era.
"The good folks at Merrill Lynch and Capgemini will most likely never ask that question."
They aren't good.
I don't mean to sound cliche, but "play it again, Sam!" "Too much" indeed! "Kill 'em, Sam!
AD
I can not imagine having that kind of wealth and not sharing it by helping others..This to me is borderline evil..
I made good money in my day but could never hang onto it.
I didn't believe in the stuffy business of class and hanging out with the alleged people of ones class. if I had A friend with bad teeth and he was without I would pay his dental bills.
When I travelled to foreign countrys I always felt guilty for having so much with all the poverty I saw..I always shared whatever I had with people in need...
I am not trying to blow my own horn here. I lost my ass by standing up to BP and trusted they would listen to me as I blew the whistle on A fraudulent pipe Inspection company and for them {BP} to spend A few million to inspect A BOMB of A High Pressure Gas system at Prudhoe Bay Alaska. I lost my 35 year career over this and have been Blacklisted for work there for trying to help them be A safer company.
Everything that I blew the whistle on was verified, the management team was run out of there in shame and the gas line was proven to be an imminent danger to the environment and the workers there...Sections that were not inspected went to failure and were launched A quarter mile from their service by pressure alone..Some pipe sections were never found...Ignition would have been A different matter..A fraudulent pencil whipper I finally exposed, with the help of others, remains employed there..
People that are as wealthy as stated in above article can not have any love or empathy for those around them..I can not imagine having that kind of wealth and not spending it all on people in need...That would be so rewarding...
I guess the difference is that no one could acquire that much wealth without being so self serving and apathetic to the world around them..
They say A fool and his money are soon parted, and I guess you could say A fool and his job are soon parted, but I would much sooner be A poor fool than A cold, ruthless greedy miser of A rich man...I would sooner be called A fool than A spineless whore who would turn his back on fraud and the safety of the people around him...
I know that the Gulf Gusher was A direct result of greed and that Doug Suttles and Tony Hayward were A large part of this greed. They call it "cost-risk-loss" business practice, I call it just plain unbridled greed. Doug Suttles of BP is the same person that refused to Inspect that gas line for well over A year. He was removed as BP president Alaska for refusing to tell the BP USA CEO Robert Malone about the imminent danger and need for this BOMB to be inspected. Tony Hayward moved him to the Gulf as BP-COO, after Suttles made sure I was "thanked" in Alaska and Hayward removed Robert Malone, the CEO who sent Sutttles packing......
The Gulf disaster is A perfect example of reckless greed and Apathy for human life and the Environment...
The Super Rich and greedy are not human beings for being this way..I truly believe that Kharma will shadow these people for the rest of their lives, to the grave...
Applauding !!!
stubones49, I'm familiar with this safety issue at BP's Prudhoe Bay installation. Perhaps not the one you were involved in, but maybe another pipeline with leaks. Just wanted to give a shout out - like "Stone" below, I applaud you for taking a stand. I hope you can somehow pass on the message to younger people to have the courage to do what is right and live with the consequences.
Alcyon:
Thankyou for your kind words...I do plan on passing this on but would also like to petition this Government for "Legal Assistance" included in their reprehensible window dressing falshood of "Whistleblower Protection".. No person blows the whistle on A Corporation for self gain, it is certain career suicide. And once you are without work and "Blacklisted" the only alternative is defending yourself..Our legal system is like A private country club and the Justice you recieve is what the high dollar Corporate attorneys and The Department of Labor decide for you in their private members only world.
Osha and the Department of Labor are just as crooked as the MMS and most other Federal Agencys that should have been outraged at the laws that were breached by BP and Acuren/Canspec...Perjury is most appropriate and acceptable in front of A Federal judge if you are the one with the money...
I am still awaiting an appeal but I am still on my own.I don't have A warm fuzzy feeling at all about any appeal, even though all I ever, ever had to do and did was to tell the truth...
I would also like to teach younger people if they are going to blow the whistle to keep A daily diary and account of what was said by who, when, where and to find someone they can trust , if that is possible, with the FBI, and wear A wire. At least tape all conversations with the enemy, for they will lie and fabricate A totally different story for the crooked Judge to look good when he screws you...
Most all of your friends and work associates will be forced into silence and betrayal by the company through job threats or job enhancements. That is the toughest part... Out of over 200 people there were only two that wrote letters for me, but at the time of my exposing them everyone was in agreement with me and cheering me on. Their wages went up 25 to 30 percent because of me and I may well have saved A life or two or maybe many. My one good friend that stuck with me has lost all promotions and been constantly harrassed, ridiculed, loss of job threats and has an after the fact negative safety file created by people that were once friends...You would not believe the extent of smoke and mirrors deception these power brokers will go to step all over you...They probably spent ten times the money I would have settled for just to win..
In the end it is not about "Justice", not in the least, it is all about "winning"...
Wow, man...
You are one of my heros sir,
and if the 49 represents the year you were born
we are also the same age.
BABOON:
I am honored by your kind words of recognition and the other uplifting posts by Alcyon and Stone...The last few hours on this site have truly become my "Million-Dollar Penny"!!!
And yes BABOON, 1949 was A Great year for the two of us.
I was born on Oct. 18th, 1949 in the territorial Capital of Alaska, Juneau...October 18th is also "Alaska Day"...
"and may the coffin you some day rest in come from A 100 year old tree that was just planted yesterday"..Old Irish proverb...
Stuart R. Sneed
god is always on the side of the rich people.
dryfruit:
"Then I'd rather reign in "Hell" than "Serve" in Heaven"...Jack London: Captain Wolf Larsen in "THE SEA WOLF"
“Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.” John Milton, "Paradise Lost" about 300 years or so before Jack London.
Storm the f**king gates.
Here's a little tidbit for you all:
This morning I enquired about some tax-subsidised housing being offered to the 'elderly', a group to which I technically belong by reason of being 70.
I was told that this is a benefit they only offer to those who need it less! They didn't use those words, of course. They said the tax-paid subsidies are for "a certain income segment". My social security income puts me *below* that segment, as most people's would, and therefore I don't qualify, despite my now paying *more* for poorer housing and having the receipts to prove it. And it's no doubt legal.
Them that has, gets.