Capitalism - Surrealpolitik

The wealthiest 400 people in the world saw their combined net worth grow by $92 billion last year, hitting $4.1 trillion. The bonanza for the super-rich was underwritten by governments and central banks around the world, which fueled surging stock markets and record corporate profits by pumping hundreds of billions into the financial markets.

The combined net worth of these 400 individuals is greater than the gross domestic product of Germany, the fourth largest economy in the world. The average net worth of each of the billionaires grew by $240 million, to $10.25 billion.

Over the past year the American Nasdaq index has shot up by 14.1 percent. The Japanese Nikkei is up by 7.1 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 18,000 for the first time on December 26, after hitting a record 17,000 in July 2014 and 16,000 in November 2013. The Dow is up by 155 percent over its level in March 2009, when it was below 6,000. Two of the three billionaires who made the most in 2014 reside in China, which is experiencing a stock market bubble, with the country’s FTSE Xinhua 200 index up by 49.49 percent over the past year.

US corporate profits have likewise hit record highs, reaching $1.8 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2014, up from $671 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Investor Warren Buffett, the world’s second richest man, according to the Bloomberg list, saw his wealth grow to $74.5 billion, up by $13.7 billion, or more than 22 percent, in the past year. Buffett’s wealth has more than doubled since 2009. “Dozens of operating businesses the 84-year-old chairman bought over the past five decades churned out record profit” over the past year. Buffett’s business model has been to buy traditional industries such as railroads and food producers, then ruthlessly cut costs, making billions in the process. Buffett’s businesses have profited handsomely from the ongoing fall in labor costs, which have been dropping year after year since 2008 as a result of falling wages and cuts in benefits for workers.

Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba Group, saw his wealth shoot up by $25.1 billion this year, to $28.7 billion, following the September initial public offering of shares in the Chinese Internet trading company he heads. The wealth of Wang Jianlin, chairman and founder of the Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda, nearly doubled over the past year, hitting $25.3 billion, after his company held an initial public offering for its commercial properties division last year. Of the six billionaires whose wealth more than doubled, five live in China.

Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, saw his wealth grow by $9.1 billion, to $87.6 billion. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s net worth grew by $5.7 billion, to $49.4 billion. The wealth of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg increased $10.6 billion to $35.3 billion. Zuckerberg’s wealth has grown nearly 18-fold since 2009, when it stood at $2 billion. Billionaire investors George Soros and Carl Icahn featured prominently, with $26.1 and $23.6 billion, respectively.

Today’s oligarchs make their fortunes on the basis of social plunder and parasitism. The obscene enrichment of the world’s billionaires and multi-millionaires is dependent on the growth of unemployment and poverty around the world.

Last month, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published a report noting: “Today, the richest 10 percent of the population in the OECD area earn 9.5 times the income of the poorest 10 percent; in the 1980s this ratio stood at 7:1 and has been rising continuously ever since.” The OECD reported that the gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom ten percent had reached “around 10 to 1 in Italy, Japan, Korea, Portugal and the United Kingdom, between 13 and 16 to 1 in Greece, Israel, Turkey and the United States, and between 27 and 30 to 1 in Mexico and Chile.”

According to a report issued by the International Labor Organization last year, the number of people worldwide without work has hit 200 million for the first time ever. The figure marked a 5 million increase in one year, surpassing 2009’s record high of 198 million.

12 percent of the world’s population, or 860 million people, lives in poverty. Some 805 million people were chronically undernourished between 2012 and 2014, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

The latest Bloomberg report on the super-rich is one more demonstration of the failure of capitalism and the necessity for the working class to overthrow it and replace it with socialism. Organise for a world of production for use not profit. A world of common ownership and democratic control without the state, leaders, nations, war or money.

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