All the world wealth in one chart

howmuch.net

• the U.S. remains by far the richest country in the world, controlling some $105.99T of wealth, or almost 30% of the entire world’s net worth.
• Taken together, countries in Asia have a higher net worth than the U.S. at $141.21T, or about 39% of the world’s total.
• The poverty of underdeveloped countries is also obvious in our visual. Africa and Latin America only control 1.14% and 2.75% of the world’s wealth, respectively.
• The U.S., Europe and China control comparable amounts of the world’s wealth, indicating how important trade relationships are to the global economy.

Notes on Excessive Wealth Disorder

Date: 09-07-2019
Source: The New York Times By Paul Krugman

How not to repeat the mistakes of 2011.

People waiting in line at a job fair in Bloomington, Minn., in 2011.

In a couple of days I’m going to be participating in an Economic Policy Institute conference on “excessive wealth disorder” — the problems and dangers created by extreme concentration of income and wealth at the top. I’ve been asked to give a short talk at the beginning of the conference, focusing on the political and policy distortions high inequality creates, and I’ve been trying to put my thoughts in order. So I thought I might as well write up those thoughts for broader dissemination.

While popular discourse has concentrated on the “1 percent,” what’s really at issue here is the role of the 0.1 percent, or maybe the 0.01 percent — the truly wealthy, not the “$400,000 a year working Wall Street stiff” memorably ridiculed in the movie Wall Street. This is a really tiny group of people, but one that exerts huge influence over policy.

The Trouble With Taxing Wealth

Date: 07-03-2019
Source: The Wall Street Journal By Greg Ip

Elizabeth Warren’s proposed tax on net worth seems like a nearly surgical strike at inequality, but it may not be efficient

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has proposed a tax of 2% on net worth above $50 million and 3% above $1 billion.

Around the world, governments in recent decades have sought to lighten the burden on capital by reducing taxes on dividends, capital gains, corporate profits and wealth. The motivation is straightforward: more capital means more investment, higher productivity and faster growing wages. Capital is also highly mobile: Tax it too much, and it will go elsewhere, undermining growth.

Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren has broken with that consensus by proposing a tax of 2% on net worth above $50 million and 3% above $1 billion. It may never be enacted; yet in spirit it marks a historic pivot in the focus of capital taxation, from growth to inequality.

While there is no “right” level of inequality, it stands near historic highs and Democrats are unified in wanting to reduce it. Taxing wealth is an immensely appealing, nearly surgical strike at its most glaring manifestation. Yet it may not be an efficient response.

Where Millionaires are the Wealthiest

https://www.statista.com/chart/16685/country-with-most-millionaires/

Notenbank-Studie: Bauern haben die größten Vermögen

Günther Oswald, 14. Jänner 2019, 17:01 derstandard.at

Von einer Erbschaftssteuer halten die Österreicher wenig, selbst jene, die davon wohl gar nicht betroffen wären

Wien – Martin Bartenstein erntete seinerzeit viel Spott für seinen Sager, wonach er sich nicht als reich, sondern als „typischen Mittelständler“ bezeichnen würde. Dem früheren Wirtschaftsminister, der als Pharmaunternehmer zu ordentlichem Wohlstand kam, geht es in der Selbsteinschätzung aber ähnlich wie anderen Reichen. Das zeigt eine am Montag veröffentlichte Studie der Nationalbank (OeNB) zu den Vermögensverhältnissen in Österreich. Die Daten beziehen sich auf das Jahr 2017. Bei den obersten zehn Prozent (die Ökonomen sprechen vom obersten Dezil) gehen Realität und Selbstwahrnehmung am weitesten auseinander. Wer statistisch in diese Gruppe fällt, glaubt fälschlicherweise, dass 40 Prozent der Haushalte mehr haben. Theoretisch könnte es natürlich auch sein, dass diese Menschen bei der Befragung (Sample 3.000, durchgeführt von Ifes) lügen, also einfach nicht ehrlich sagen wollen, wie viel sie besitzen. Dagegen spricht aber eine andere Auswertung: Wer sich unterschätzt, ändert nämlich auch sein Sparverhalten, legt also mehr Geld zur Seite.

Ungleiche Verteilung

Investing and the super-rich: How the 0.001% invest

Date: 13-12-2018
Source: The Economist

The family offices through which the world’s wealthiest 0.001% invest are a new force in global finance that few have heard of

Think of the upper echelons of the money-management business, and the image that springs to mind is of fusty private banks in Geneva or London’s Mayfair, with marble lobbies and fake country-house meeting-rooms designed to make their super-rich clients feel at home. But that picture is out of date. A more accurate one would feature hundreds of glassy private offices in California and Singapore that invest in Canadian bonds, European property and Chinese startups—and whose gilded patrons are sleepwalking into a political storm.

Global finance is being transformed as billionaires get richer and cut out the middlemen by creating their own “family offices”, personal investment firms that roam global markets looking for opportunities. Largely unnoticed, family offices have become a force in investing, with up to $4trn of assets—more than hedge funds and equivalent to 6% of the value of the world’s stockmarkets. As they grow even bigger in an era of populism, family offices are destined to face uncomfortable questions about how they concentrate power and feed inequality.

U.S. Leads the Way in the Billionaires Race—but China Is Catching Up

Date: 29-10-2018
Source: The Wall Street Journal

Global billionaire wealth rises by a record $1.4 trillion to $8.9 trillion

Alibaba founder Jack Ma is one of a growing number of Chinese billionaires.

The U.S. is home to more dollar-based billionaires than any other country but China has cut into its lead, according to Swiss bank UBS Group AG’s annual report card on the state of the megarich.

Overall, global billionaire wealth increased by a record $1.4 trillion to $8.9 trillion in 2017, a year in which economies around the world grew at robust rates, equity markets soared and bond yields stayed low as central banks mostly maintained easy-money policies in an environment of low inflation.

The financial backdrop has been less supportive this year, as global equity markets are mostly down on the year and bond yields have risen. But billionaires’ wealth is likely to rise further this year. Much of the riches generated by billionaires come from their own businesses and not the financial markets, UBS noted. U.S. tax cuts that went into effect this year will likely also have an impact.

The Deadly Risk of Losing Your Financial Nest Egg

Date: 13-05-2018
Source: The Wall Street Journal

Many people lost their life savings in the last recession.
New research on the health damage done

Is it worse to suddenly lose your financial nest egg or never to have saved any money at all? This question concerns many of us: A quarter of Americans watched much or all of their life savings evaporate during the last recession, while nearly half of U.S. families have nothing put aside for retirement, according to the Economic Policy Institute and federal data.

Either way, there’s no happy answer. Both scenarios can increase our risk of dying within the next 20 years by more than 50%, a recent study shows.

We’ve long known that a financial shock causes immediate distress. Suit-clad men leaping from buildings were dismal hallmarks of the Great Depression, and soon after a major recession began in 2007, there were notable spikes in clinical depression, substance abuse and suicides.

Richard Murphy – It’s time to tax wealth

Thanks to M.R.

March 25, 2018, Brave New Europe

Richard Murphy once again proposes to reform a tax system, which is already biased towards capital and is regressive.

Richard Murphy is Professor of Practice in International Political Economy, City University of London. He campaigns on issues of tax avoidance and tax evasion, as well as blogging at Tax Research UK

Cross posted from Tax Research UK

There has been some welcome discussion of wealth taxation of late. Given the scale of wealth inequality in society this is overdue. But in this context, it is important to discuss the subject appropriately.

There is, of course, an economic concept of wealth. This, in my opinion, explains stores of value. What this concept does not do is explain capital, which is something quite different.

There is also a legal concept of wealth. This is the claim, backed by law, to exercise control over an asset.

And there is a metahysical concept of wealth. This relates to the power that the exercise of wealth affords to the person in possession of it, and the consequent reaction amongst those impacted by the decisions of those with that power.

What all three concepts make clear is that wealth is not a thing: it is instead a human construct that could not exist without the support of the society that sustains it.

Kapitalismus, Reichtum und Macht

Gero Jenner, 16/2/2018

Bei allem Gejammer über den Neoliberalismus geht manchmal die Einsicht verloren, dass die vergangenen zweihundert Jahre den größten Fortschritt in der Geschichte des Menschen bewirkten – vorausgesetzt natürlich, man beschränkt sich ganz und gar auf dessen materiellen Aspekt. Nie ist es einer so großen Zahl so gut gegangen, selbst die von Jean Ziegler so dramatisch beschworenen Hungertoten, die es nach wie vor gibt, fallen prozentuell kaum ins Gewicht, vergleicht man sie nämlich mit den Verwüstungen, welche die Hungersnöte früherer Zeiten regelmäßig verursacht haben. Der Kapitalismus hat – so viel ist zweifellos richtig – die Kapitalisten ungeheuer reich gemacht, reicher als die Fürsten und Könige vergangener Epochen, aber sie sind nur deswegen so reich geworden, weil sie den Reichtum mit der arbeitenden Bevölkerung teilen – ihn sogar teilen müssen.

Die zwei widerstreitenden Prinzipien der Industriellen Revolution

Diese Behauptung mag auf den ersten Blick paradox erscheinen. Gehört es nicht zum Prinzip des Wettbewerbs zwischen den Unternehmen, dass jeder die Kosten senkt, um seinen eigenen Anteil am Verkauf und damit den eigenen Gewinn zu erhöhen? Und muss der dadurch in Bewegung gesetzte Wettbewerb nicht zwangsläufig dazu führen, dass jedes einzelne Unternehmen, wenn es nur kann, die Löhne bis auf das Überlebensminimum drückt?