The other 99%? Try moving the decimal six places to the right!

Oxfam just published their annual report on wealth.   Stop for a second and reflect on the following statement before you proceed:

In 2016, 61 billionaires controlled half of the world’s wealth, then in 2017 that number was 43, before becoming 26 in 2018.

Think about it.   You could probably name a third of the people on this list without struggling very much.

This was too much in 2016, and the acceleration is a blot on civilization.   Not just because policies that allow this kind of obscene profiteering should be embarrassing to the owners, but because the bottom half's income dropped 11% a year during this period.   Poor people are getting poor very. very quickly and they now include the mainstream.   Visit Paris on Saturday to see the Gilet jaune in all their anger and fear.   Why aren't you out there marching with them?   You've lost 11% in the last year too!

Meanwhile, what's our plan?   Build a wall to keep out unemployed citizens from the rest of our continent?   Vote Democrat again in 2020?  Complain that Elizabeth Warren is too anti-banking?  (Note:   we've actually now got a candidate who supports $12,000 as universal basic income--that's something.   $1000 a month would hugely improve living standards for 34% of people living in the US.).

Think of the outpouring of success this would generate:

• The top half of the wealth curve (those dwindling 26) are not consumers.   No one can spend that fast--not even the US government.   So they accumulate.   Give that money to every one in the US?  You'd have 6 million energized consumers enter the market.   Is your small business struggling now?   That's because Jeff Bezos, and Bill and Melinda, and Sergey and whatever his partner's name is, can't come to your gas station or pizza joint or law firm every day.   But six million people could!   You're gonna be hiring like crazy to handle the demand!
• Poverty is a cash problem.   It's not a psychological problem.   Having cash equates with better health, better education, less crime, less teen pregnancy, less drug addition.   Give people cash and the huge infrastructures we've developed to imprison poor people would become redundant.
• Art.   A lot of our folks under the basic poverty line are artists.   Imagine if they could work, instead of begging for a living.   

Back to giving every citizen--you and me, too--$12,000.    Scary huh?   We could never support that...first of all, it would cost $72 billion dollars!!!   Poor people like you and me definitely don't deserve $72 billion!   Pathetic, huh?

The top 26 people in the world control $1.4 trillion.   The Google duo control about---hey, here's a coincidence--$70 billion. The Gates Foundation and Bill and Melinda are at about that same number.   Bezos?   In the ballpark somewhere.

If each of those three graveyards of lucre gave one half of what they have, every person in the United States could have a check of around $1500 a month.

At a lower strata, JK Rowling was a billionaire, though nowhere near this list.   She managed to fall off the top list, but with great honor.   The Harry Potter creator gave so much to philanthropies that there's now one less individual at her reasonable level of wealth.   A billion is still a billion (or not) even if dragons breath fire on it.

This is disgraceful.   And it's a policy issue.   Here's one reason you should continue to hate the "top 1%."   Just like you, they're losing ground rapidly.   But, unlike you, they still believe this loss of standard of living is temporary.   They believe they'll be number 27 next year.   Oops...this is musical chairs, boys, and there are only 25 chairs in the room today...19 in 2020...14 in 2021...

If you make over $400,000K a year, you too are a Gilet Jaune.   I'm sorry if classing you with angry French farmers makes you squirm.  Where do you think the top two dozen are getting their wealth from?  Them?   They don't have anything more to give up.  Rather-- Check your investment account--the one at Fidelity or Citi--and tell me I'm wrong.

You can't survive having half of the world's wealth out of the consumer cycle.   Or the civilization cycle.   Wealth has never been anywhere near this concentrated, and the last time it came close...well, you know the musical Oliver?  Let's just say grime and insolvency predominated (we added the music in the 20th Century to make it pretty, but it wasn't.)

You can count.  Look at the Oxfam report.   If you think you're doing pretty damn well, take a look at your savings account.  Don't lie to yourself.

One vote of Congress could end this disgrace.