Do you ever wonder when wealth becomes, obscene wealth? Well, consider this.
“$70,000 per minute. According to Bloomberg, that’s how much money the Walmart-owning Walton family has made in the year since Bloomberg’s previous list of the world’s richest families. The Waltons top that list this year, with wealth of $190.5 billion. The Mars, Koch, Al Saud, and Wertheimer (of the Chanel fashion house) families round out a top five. The 25 richest families in the world
control $1.4 trillion, a figure which is up nearly a quarter from last year.”
I’ll do the math for you:
- $70,000 a minute equals $4,200,000 an hour.
- $4,200,000 an hour equals $100,800,000 a day.
- $100,800,000 a day equals $3,024, 000,000 a month.
- $3,024,000,000 a month equals, give or take, $36,288,000,000 a frearking year.
Now consider this. If my Googling is close to accurate Walmart hires 1.5 million Americans to work in their US stores. Assuming they all work forty-hour weeks (which they don’t) and are paid $14.26 an hour (which they aren’t), that would figure out to Walmart’s annual salary outlay at around, $855,600,000. In other words, the heirs to old Sam Walson’s estate earn thirty-six times the total earned by all of Walmart’s American wage earners.
In my humble opinion, that Virginia is obscene. And, don’t lose sight that the wealthiest twenty-five families in the world have a combined wealth of $1.4 trillion and that their wealth has increased by 25% over the past year.
The times of greatest human despair have usually been associated with a broad gap between the incomes of the upper and lower economic classes. It was true in the 1890s and it’s just as true today. Americans always feel better and more at ease when the middle class is thriving. Well, in 1890 it, the middle class, barely existed and today it is in declining health. I dare suggest that Donald J. Trump would have never been elected had the middle-class been as strong as it was in the 1970s before the serious deregulation of the economy began under the conservative Reagan administration.
John-Boy: “Goodnight Mary-Ellen.
Mary Ellen: “Goodnight John Boy.”
John Boy: “Mary Ellen, I may not be here tomorrow. I think I’m gonna run away and live with our uncle Sam, He’s got electricity and indoor hot and cold water!”
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