Couture Cereal, Taxing the Rich & Protests Rattling Republicans
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It’s time to pull up a chair in the Anne of Carversville kitchen. Let’s talk tax turkey over some Burberry Flakes or Gucci Fruit Loops, sorta like Warren Buffett would do it.
You probably know that Warren Buffett is the rich guy who believes he should pay more taxes.
The oracle of Omaha is deeply concerned about the demise of America’s middle class. Buffett knows that his companies will struggle in the future, if Americans don’t have the Pillsbury dough to buy his products and services.
Few people want to pay more taxes, but Buffett believes that he has a moral obligation — and a vested interest — to keep America strong, its children educated and our crumbling infrastructure from killing people when they are driving over collapsing bridges.
Let me stay with the taxes. We’ll do roads and bridges another night.
Millionaires Support Warren Buffett’s Tax on the RichWSJ
Today’s Wall Street Journal — that Republican newspaper that also hates higher taxes — reports on a new survey from Spectrem Group that asked — not people whose mortgages are under water — but millionaires to weigh in on Warren Buffett’s thinking.
Because the lot of millionaires can be very responsible, highly moral people who worked hard for their money, it’s not a surprise to read that more tha a third of millionaires and ultra-high-net-worth individuals reported that Warren Buffett’s stance on taxes had raised their opinion of him.
Only 19% of the Captain Crunches expressed less respect for the Oracle of Omaha.
Before we all applaud the fact that noble virtue among millionaires won in the Spectrem Group survey, it’s true that the uber wealthy expressed greater disapproval for Buffett’s inability to keep his clap trap shut on the subject of higher taxes.
Because we have more Food Couture by Glam Foodie to share with readers — after cereal comes dessert in our financial feast — here is more gourmet lovers news?
Millionaires Control 39% of Global WealthWSJ
According to the latest Global Wealth Report from Credit Suisse, the 29.7 million people in the world with household net worths of $1 million (representing less than 1% of the world’s population) control about $89 trillion of the world’s wealth. That’s up from a share of 35.6% in 2010, and their wealth increased by about $20 trillion, according Credit Suisse.
Revealed — the capitalist network that runs the world New Scientist
The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York’s Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world’s transnational corporations (TNCs).
The research revealed that a core of 1318 companies out of the 37 million companies in the database and the 43,060 TNCs (trans national corporations) represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues. The data is more complex still because these companies also owned the majority of other companies through stock. Considered to be the “real economy”, these firms represent 60 percent of global revenues.
At the core of this interlocking web of companies and stock ownership is a group of 147 companies who represent the super-entity — the bullseye that controls 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. In the top 20 are the big financial institutions including Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.
The research team agrees that ownership doesn’t always prove proactive control of how a business operates. More analysis is required. Nor is the research pointing to concerted, collective action of the 1% against the 99%.
Richest 1 pct in US saw incomes tripleFOX News
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office shows that the after-tax incomes for the richest 1 percent of America’s population soared by an average of 275 percent between 1979 and 2007. By contrast, the poorest fifth saw a gain of only 18 percent in 28 years.
The 60 percent of Americans considered to be the middle class increased only a 40 percent increase in income in this period.
“(T)he distribution of after-tax household income in the United States was substantially more unequal in 2007 than in 1979,” the CBO said, noting that the share of total household income going to the top percent more than doubled over the 28-year span, from 8 percent to 17 percent.
Why ‘Class Warfare’ Is WinningSanta Barbara Independent
The Occupy Wall Street (or your town name) is beginning to make Karl Rove nervous. One of his own polling groups agrees that the populist anger over America’s huge wealth-equality gap should be taken very seriously.
Analyzing the data behind the growing disparity between the super-rich who are getting even richer and the rest of us, analyst Henry Blodget concludes that America is seeing an extraordinary confluence of factors:
• The current sustained level of high unemployment is the worst since the Great Depression.
• Corporate profits are at an all-time high, both in absolute dollars and as a share of the economy.
• Wages as a percent of the economy are at an all-time low.
Not only is the divide between the 1% and 99% the widest in America since the Great Depression, but it larger than in most other developed nations.
America is more like Russia with its oligarchs and also Iran, writes Blodget, on his Business Insider blog.
