[lbo-talk] Fed kicks it up another quarter

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Sep 21 13:44:38 PDT 2005


Charles Brown wrote:


>Overposterly here, I'm thinking of the ruling class as 1/2% who get 50% of
>GDP or is it own 50%,or whatever that lopsided top group is. 500 who own as
>much as 1/2 of the human population. The group not included in the survey.
>The secret proprietors and expropriators. They got big turnover ? Let me
>guess. It's a big secret who they are so who knows if there's turnover.

The very rich aren't the same as the ruling class. There are plenty of arrivistes with little social power. Next to Steve Ballmer, Henry Kissinger is poor, but who has more political heft? Ross Perot is very rich and he's a joke. You need institutional affiliations to be a member of the ruling class.

In the US, the Forbes 400 has about 2% of total household wealth. The top 1/2% have about 31% of nonresidential net worth, and the next 1/2% about 9%.

Doug



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