the morality and ethics deficit deepens
DO WE REALLY NEED BILLIONAIRES?
by
LAWRENCE WITTNER
_______________________________________________________
Dr.
Lawrence Wittner (http://www.lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor
of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting
the Bomb (Stanford University Press).
According
to numerous reports, the world’s billionaires keep increasing
in number and, especially, in wealth. In March 2018, Forbes
reported that it had identified 2,208 billionaires
from 72 countries and territories. Collectively, this group was
worth $9.1 trillion, an increase in wealth of 18 percent since
the preceding year. Americans led the way with a record 585 billionaires,
followed by mainland 
China
which, despite its professed commitment to Communism, had a record
373. According to a Yahoo Finance report in late November 2018,
the wealth of U.S. billionaires increased by 12 percent during
2017, while that of Chinese billionaires grew by 39 percent.
These
vast fortunes were created much like those amassed by the Robber
Barons of the late nineteenth century. The Walton family’s
$163 billion fortune grew rapidly because its giant business,
Walmart, the largest private employer in the United States, paid
its workers poverty-level wages. Jeff Bezos (whose fortune jumped
by $78.5 billion in one year to $160 billion, making him the richest
man in the world), paid pathetically low wages at Amazon for years?until
forced by strikes and public pressure to raise them. In mid-2017,
Warren
Buffett ($75 billion), then the world’s second
richest man, noted that “the real problem” with the
U.S. economy was that it was “disproportionately rewarding
to the people on top.”
The situation
is much the same elsewhere. Since the 1980s, the share of national
income going to workers has been dropping significantly around
the globe, thereby exacerbating inequality in wealth. “The
billionaire boom is . . . a symptom of a failing economic system,”
remarked Winnie Byanyima, executive director of the development
charity, Oxfam International. “The people who make our clothes,
assemble our phones and grow our food are being exploited.”
As a
result, the further concentration of wealth has produced rising
levels of economic inequality around the globe. According to a
January 2018 report by Oxfam,
during the preceding year some 3.7 billion people?about half the
world’s population?experienced no increase in their wealth.
Instead, 82 percent of the global wealth generated in 2017 went
to the wealthiest 1 percent. In the United States, economic inequality
continued to grow, with the share of the national income drawn
by the poorest half of the population steadily declining. The
situation was even starker in the country with the second largest
economy, China. Here, despite two decades of spectacular economic
growth, economic inequality rose at the fastest pace in the world,
leaving China as one of the most unequal countries on the planet.
In its global survey, Oxfam reported that 42 billionaires possessed
as much wealth as half the world’s population.
Upon
reflection, it’s hard to understand why billionaires think
they need to possess such vast amounts of money and to acquire
even more. After all, they can eat and drink only so much, just
as they surely have all the mansions, yachts, diamonds, furs,
and private jets they can possibly use. What more can they desire?
When
it comes to desires, the answer is: plenty! That’s why they
drive $4 million Lamborghini Venison, acquire mega-mansions for
their horses, take $80,000 “safaris” in private jets,
purchase gold toothpicks, create mega-closets the size of homes,
reside in $15,000 a night penthouse hotel suites, install luxury
showers for their dogs, cover their staircases in gold, and build
luxury survival bunkers. Donald
Trump maintains a penthouse apartment in Trump
Tower that is reportedly worth $57 million and is marbled in gold.
Among his many other possessions are two private airplanes, three
helicopters, five private residences, and 17 golf courses across
the United States, Scotland, Ireland, and the United Arab Emirates.
In addition,
billionaires devote enormous energy and money to controlling governments.
”They don’t put their wealth underneath their mattresses,”
observed U.S. Senator Bernie
Sanders; “they use that wealth to perpetuate
their power. So you have the Koch brothers and a handful of billionaires
who pour hundreds of millions of dollars into elections.”
During the 2018 midterm elections in the United States, America’s
billionaires lavished vast amounts of money on electoral politics,
becoming the dominant funders of numerous candidates. Sheldon
Adel son alone poured over $113 million into the federal elections.
This
kind of big money has a major impact on American politics. families
the Koch’s, the Mercers, and the Adelsons?played a central
role in bankrolling the Republican Party’s shift to the
far Right and its takeover of federal and state offices. Thus,
although polls indicate that most Americans favour raising taxes
on the rich, regulating corporations, fighting climate change,
and supporting labour unions, the Republican-dominated White House,
Congress, Supreme Court, and regulatory agencies have moved in
exactly the opposite direction, backing the priorities of the
wealthy.
With
so much at stake, billionaires even took direct command of the
world’s three major powers. Donald Trump became the first
billionaire to capture the U.S. presidency, joining Russia’s
president, Vladimir Putin (reputed to have amassed wealth of at
least $70 billion), and China’s president, Xi Jinping (estimated
to have a net worth of $1.51 billion). The three oligarchs quickly
developed a cozy relationship and shared a number of policy positions,
including the encouragement of wealth acquisition and the discouragement
of human rights.
Admittedly,
some billionaires have signed a Giving Pledge, promising to devote
most of their wealth to philanthropy. Nevertheless, plutocratic
philanthropy means that the priorities of the super-rich (for
example, the funding of private schools), rather than the priorities
of the general public (such as the funding of public schools),
get implemented. Moreover, these same billionaires are accumulating
wealth much faster than they donate it. Philanthropist Bill Gates
was worth $54 billion in 2010, the year their pledge was announced,
and his wealth stands at $90 billion today.
Overall,
then, as wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, most
people around the world are clearly the losers.
