comment from hive minds and kleptocrats ANS

This was a comment to the previous article. I just couldn't not send it....
Find it
here:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/hive-minds-and-kleptocrats/
--Kim

And it will get worse in the near future. Read Ian Bremmer's THE END
OF THE FREE MARKET, wherein he argues that the rise of the state
corporation on the
global stage means that western multi-national corporations will have
to shed the
bothersome intrusions of government regulation, unions, and public
oversight in order to compete with Chinese, Indian and Middle-Eastern
multi-nationals which can act without interference from their populations.

It suggests that democracy will have to be suppressed so that the
oligarchies which control groups of large corporations can act
unimpeded by rule of law, regulation and human rights.

Also, read Naomi Klein's THE SHOCK DOCTRINE for how this has already
been installed in South America during the 1970s and 1980s, and, with
the crises and austerity measure imposed today in Ireland, Greece,
Great Britain, and Spain, how the rise of oligarchies is at work now
in the former democracies of the west.

In 2008, David Faber of CNBC produced a report on the vast inequality
of weath in
this country, and stated that the top 1% wealthiest Americans own or
control 90% of the nation's wealth. That wealth derives from their
control of large corporations.

Today, CNBC announced that during the third quarter of 2010, the
nation's total wealth held by all Americans rose to $ 55 trillion.

The US population is currently approx. 310 million persons.

Let's do the math: 90% of $ 55 trillion is roughly $ 50 trillion.
Divide that by 1% of the population, or 3.1 million persons, and you
arrive at an average individual net worth for the richest 1% of
Americans of $ 16,129,032.00 each. That's sixteen million, one
hundred twenty-nine thousand, and thirty-two dollars.

What of the rest of us? Well, take 10% of all assets, or $ 5 trillion
and divide it by 99% of the population, or 306.9 million, and you see
that each of the rest of us have a personal average net worth of $
16,291.95. That's sixteen thousand, two hundred ninety-one dollars
and ninety-five cents.

What do we conclude? The richest 1% of Americans own or control an amount of
wealth that is 990 times the average wealth of the bottom 99% of the population
( $ 16,129,032.00 divided by $ 16,291.95 = 990 ).

And we can anticipate that the bottom 99% will become poorer in the near future
since nearly all unemployed Americans are part of that group, while
the richest 1% own 83% of all publicly traded securities.

Today, Senator Bernie Sanders is fillibustering the tax cut agreement
on the Senate floor. He correctly asserts that as the US budget
deficit balloons, and as the wealthy become far richer, the call will
go out to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and all those
government services which the bottom 98% of the population depend upon.

Science fiction? Hardly. It's about to become the cold, hard reality
of life in this country and the industrial west as the rise of
Asia-style state capitalism transforms global commerce as we know it.

newspaper reader
USA
December 11th, 2010
6:29 am