Golden touch

By Tony Staley
Compass Editor

Last month, Forbes magazine published its annual list of the 400 richest people in the United States. For the first time, everyone on the Forbes list has a fortune of at least $1 billion. Plus, the collective net worth of America's richest people rose to $1.25 trillion, an increase of $120 billion.

Bill Gates continues to top the list, as he has for 13 years. Eight members of the Walton family - think Wal-Mart, not John Boy - are on the list and five are in the top 11.

For comparison sake, when the annual list began in 1982, there were a baker's dozen worth of billionaires on it.

Undoubtedly some of the increase in wealth comes from inflation. But it must be said there are many other factors, including hard work, right choices, luck, talent, all sorts of personal circumstances and the hard work of others.

And while it's unpopular to say so, government programs also contribute greatly toward the number of billionaires.

Consider, for example, that four people in the top 10 and 38 overall have made their fortune through computer software or computer-related technology. Massive government spending in defense and the space program led to the computer revolution - including the Internet - that made their wealth possible.

The fortunes of five people on the list are gambling related - an industry that exists legally through government sanction.

And everyone on the list has become richer, in part at least, from the federal tax policies of the last five years that both helped them earn more money and keep more of it.

Are all these billionaires good for America?

No, Dean Baker, a macroeconomist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, told Frank Ahrens of the Washington Post. "I think it's very bad," Baker said, because U.S. economic growth in the past 25 years - when these billionaires made their fortunes - is slower than in the previous 25 years, which produced only 13 billionaires. "If these people pull away so much wealth, that means everyone else has less," he said.

And while the billionaire boom has led to a great increase in philanthropy, Larry Katz, an economics professor at Harvard University, told Ahrens that a great concentration of wealth and power can subvert other people's interests.

Our country should be greatly concerned about its shrinking middle class and the possibility that we are heading toward a Latin American-type society of a small wealthy group, a large group of the poor and few people in between.

Truly just societies are not built on a Darwinian economic survival of the fittest, every man for himself model. Rather, they are based on an equitable sharing of wealth and a recognition of the common good.