{"id":140901,"date":"2014-10-17T14:01:48","date_gmt":"2014-10-17T14:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=140901"},"modified":"2014-10-17T14:01:48","modified_gmt":"2014-10-17T14:01:48","slug":"americas-grand-fortunes-go-overboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/americas-grand-fortunes-go-overboard\/","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s Grand Fortunes Go Overboard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sam Pizzigati<\/em><\/p>\n

Imagine yourself part of the typical American family. Your household would have, the Federal Reserve reported<\/a> in September, a net worth of $81,200.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not a whole lot of money. But half of America\u2019s households would actually have less wealth than you do.<\/p>\n

Now imagine that your net worth suddenly quadrupled, to about $325,000. That sum would place you within the ranks of America\u2019s most affluent 20 percent of income earners. You would be \u201ctypical\u201d no more. On the other hand, you still wouldn\u2019t be rich, or even close to possessing a grand fortune.<\/p>\n

So suppose your wealth quadrupled again. That would bump your net worth \u2013 your total assets minus the sum of your debts \u2013 all the way up to $1.3 million.<\/p>\n

Congratulations. You now hold 16 times more wealth than the typical American. You probably have paid off your mortgage. You have a healthy balance in your 401(k). You have investment income. You have it made.<\/p>\n

But not really. You still have to worry financially about everything from losing your job to helping your kids pay their college tuition.<\/p>\n

So imagine that your net worth quadruples once again \u2013 to $5.2 million.<\/p>\n

You now sit comfortably within the ranks<\/a> of America\u2019s richest 1 percent. You can afford, well, just about anything you want. A getaway in the mountains, another getaway on the shore. Two BMWs in the driveway. Impressive philanthropic gestures. Direct access to your U.S. senators.<\/p>\n

Enough already? Actually, no. With a fortune of just $5.2 million, you still have to put up with the inconveniences of mere mortal existence. Yes, you can fly first class. But you still have to share a plane with the unwashed masses back in coach \u2013 and they take forever getting their carry-ons up in those overhead bins.<\/p>\n

You need relief. So multiply that $5.2 million fortune 1,000 times over<\/em> \u2013 to $5.2 billion. Now you can buy your own private jet.<\/p>\n

Even better, you get your name printed in the annual Forbes<\/em> magazine list of America\u2019s 400 richest people. But even at $5.2 billion, your fortune would rate as just fair-to-middling in super-rich circles. America\u2019s wealthiest 400 now hold a combined net worth<\/a> of $2.3 trillion. That places the average Forbes<\/em> 400 fortune at $5.7 billion, an all-time record high.<\/p>\n

The richest of the 400 hold far more than that average. Take Larry Ellison, who just stepped down as the CEO of Oracle business software and holds the No. 3 spot. His net worth: $50 billion.<\/p>\n

What does Ellison do with all those billions? He collects<\/a> residences, for starters, with 15 or so homes scattered all around the world. Ellison likes yachts, too. He currently has two<\/a>\u00a0extremely big ones, each over half as long as a football field.<\/p>\n

Ellison also likes to play basketball, even on his yachts. If a ball bounces over the railing, no problem. Ellison has a powerboat following his yacht, the Wall Street Journal<\/em> noted<\/a> this past spring, \u201cto retrieve balls that go overboard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hiring that ball-retriever qualifies Ellison as a \u201cjob creator,\u201d right? Maybe not. Ellison has regularly destroyed<\/em> jobs on his way to grand fortune. He has mastered the merge-and-purge two-step: First you snatch your rival\u2019s customers, then you fire its workers.<\/p>\n

In 2005, for instance, Ellison shelled out $10.6 billion to buy out PeopleSoft, an 11,000-employee competitor. He then proceeded to put the ax <\/a>to 5,000 jobs.<\/p>\n

Job massacres like this have been hollowing out America\u2019s middle class ever since theForbes<\/em> 400 first appeared back in the 1980s. Since 1989, Federal Reserve figures show<\/a>, the median net worth of families in America\u2019s statistical middle class \u2013 the middle 20 percent of income earners \u2013 has actually dropped from $75,300 to $61,700, after taking inflation into account.<\/p>\n

Forbes<\/em> doesn\u2019t bother asking how our absurdly rich went about making their fortunes. But we should. Our top 400, after all, haven\u2019t just made monstrously large fortunes. They\u2019ve made a monstrously large mess.<\/p>\n

\n

OtherWords<\/a>\u00a0columnist Sam Pizzigati, an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow, edits the inequality weekly\u00a0Too Much<\/em><\/a>. His latest book is\u00a0The Rich Don\u2019t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0OtherWords.org<\/a><\/p>\n

This piece<\/a> was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sam Pizzigati Imagine yourself part of the typical American family. Your household would have, the Federal Reserve reported in September, a net worth of $81,200. That\u2019s not a whole lot of money. But half of America\u2019s households would actually have less wealth than you do. Now imagine that your net worth suddenly quadrupled, to about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":139131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1616],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-140901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}