The average net worth of the 400 wealthiest Americans shot up by $400 million to a record $4.2 billion, Forbes said, serving to underscore glaring wealth inequality in America.
Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft Corp, is one year shy of topping the list for two decades straight with $66 billion, a massive $7 billion hike from the previous year.
Warren Buffet, the American investor who likely became infamous amidst the uber-rich for proposing a tax hike on the wealthy, somewhat ironically trailed Gates with $46 billion. Larry Ellison, the cofounder and CEO of Oracle, clinched third with $41 billion - up $8 billion from last year. Charles and David Koch, the energy and chemical magnates notorious for bankrolling scores of right-wing advocacy groups, came in fourth and fifth respectively with $31 billion each.
The top five remain unchanged from last year, though collectively they are much richer: all five men are worth $34 billion more than in 2011.
One notable entry on the list - founder and CEO of Facebook Inc Mark Zuckerberg - did not see his fortunes rise, however.The social networking giant's wealth nearly halved to $9.4 billion after Facebook's lackluster initial public offering in May. His position dropped from 14 to 36 on the list.
Median workers' wages meanwhile have been flat over the last forty years. The real minimum wage has also actually declined over the same period from $10.55 (adjusted for inflation) in 1968 to just $7.25 today.
By contrast, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that between 1979 and 2007, the top 1 per cent of Americans income grew by 275 per cent. Meanwhile, it is estimated that during the economic expansion between 2002 and 2007, the income of the top 1 per cent grew 10 times faster than the income of the bottom 90 per cent.
The CBO also found that between 1979 and 2005, after-tax income for middle-class Americans (adjusted for inflation) rose by 21 per cent while the richest 0.1 per cent grew by 400 per cent.
Income is the flow of money coming into a household over a year, while wealth or net worth represents the stock assets it has as a result of inheritance and savings.
As America remains embroiled in a jobless recovery, the latest Forbes 400 list confirms a sentiment expressed by Paul Krugman last year. In an op-ed for the New York Times, he said Occupy Wall Street had aimed too low in identifying their enemy, as the movement's real slogan should read: "we are the 99.9 per cent."
Thirteen per cent per year seems to be about average for the super-wealthy, although individually their expectations are usually higher.
So if they expect to increase their wealth by another thirteen per cent next year, that would be some $200 billion out of an economy that last year generated $15 trillion. [Link]The year after that they would be expecting another $250 billion.
The real reason the economy is stagnating is that the super-wealthy (as well as the tier just below them) are taking too much to use productively, and are demanding too high of a rate of increase in their fortunes, outstripping the ability of the economy to simultaneously provide for their desires and everyone else's needs. Hence the move to "invest" in financial devices like derivatives to increase their wealth faster than wealth can physically be created.
Unlimited wealth-building is unsustainable. It is in the process of destroying the host on which it feeds.
The only reasonable solution is to cap wealth at one billion per person, period, globally. Economic retirement would then be mandatory. No one has a right to indulge in any behavior that ultimately harms society at large, no matter how much they enjoy it and can't think of what to do with themselves if deprived of it. Excessive wealth-building is just as much of an addiction as crack cocaine, with vastly huger societal consequences. It is a behavior, pure and simple, that definitely harms the majority of humanity that doesn't indulge in it.
No matter what the super-wealthy calim or think, most people have no desire to be billionaires: most want just enough to have a decent life without slaving every day abd being too exhausted, worried, and anxious to enjoy family and friends. The desire to be the richest person in the world is a pathological one, a symptom of a diseased ego that can never be satiated.
Ultimately, to mediate misery, hunger and despair in the world, the solution is simple: tell a couple of thousand people they want more than they need, take more than they can use, and the game is over for them, we will no longer tolerate their demands to let them take more and more. They have enough. They are retired.
Cap wealth.