rich get richer

Chris Burford cburford at gn.apc.org
Mon May 25 00:28:56 PDT 1998


(BTW I admire how Doug is using short items with new thread titles to move the collective debate on. This approach really seems to be coming into its own, and I suspect may be an answer to the problem of lists not only making a good start but being sustainable. Anyway this item caught my eye and made a serendipitous connection.)

Coincidentally this Saturday the Guardian (daily UK paper) has an apparently flippant but perhaps not so flippant article on this theme. It did not support the theory that the rich are getting richer, from a historical survey.

In historic terms expressed as current figures (I am afraid in sterling, but I am sure the majority of subscribers can survive looking at what is comparative data) the table of assets goes like this in billions of pounds.

754 Napoleon

692 Knights Templar (in thirteenth century)

28 Gates

23 Sultan of Brunei

20 Cleopatra

20 Henry VIII of England (from expropriating the monasteries)

20 Montezuma last Aztec Emperor

19.8 Sam Walton of Wal-Mart store chain

19.4 (sic) Croesus last king of Lydia 546 BC

12.7 (sic) Alexander the Great

The Guardian claims an exclusive on this because no one has ever tried it before, because it is impossible.

It quotes a 1996 book presumably known to Doug and already quoted in marxism-space, called The Wealthy 100: From Benjamin Franklin to Bill Gates - A Ranking of the Richest Americans, Past and Present." But the methodology of comparing an individuals worth to the GNP got criticised in Fortune magazine, and is impractical in a case like Croesus who in effect (it is alleged - ??) owned the entire kingdom's output.

A senior economist, at the exclusive St Anthony's College, Oxford, was drawn into the pithy remarks: "Really interesting, but impossible. How do you construct a price index? Napoleon might have had lots of money but could not fly the Atlantic."

Undeterred, the intrepid Guardian reporters (the paper that has just got a former Conservative minister charged with perjury) conscientiously set out to apply modern values to historic "possessions".

They point out that Bill Gates had to pay $30.8 million for one Leonardo da Vinci manuscript whereas Napoleon looted the pick of Europe's art collections. This alone makes him hundreds of times more wealthy than Gates, in currently realisable assets if sold at an international auction house.

Croesus kept his store of wealth, unfortunately for modern comparisons, almost entirely in gold, so only comes in ninth.

The Knights Templar got a papal exemption from the ban on usury and collected 9000 estates across Europe. Arguably they are not a single individual, but as a way of accumulating totally disproportionate wealth in a pre-capitalist society, it does seem interesting.

The Sultan of Brunei also interestingly straddles historical economic formations.

Montezuma seems to be a ghastly misunderstanding since for the Aztecs and Incas gold was not primarily a store of wealth.

How come someone as boring as Sam Walton come in 8th? Are the assumptions behind this sort of comparison fundamentally and inescapably capitalist?

Chris Burford

London.



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