|
|
Sat March 10th, 2007
A recent study reveals a widening gap between the world's rich
and poor.
2007 List of Billionaires which
place the Americans such as Bill
Gates and his friend Warren Buffett on top of the world in
having more money for the 13th year running has reminded
people how yet exploitative the capitalists still are, making
the Africans and Asians poorer and poorer as so-called
entrepreneurs grow greedier and greedier and their governments
even more deceptive in helping the Africa and Asia beat
poverty
It's not surprising Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates's
net worth swelled to $56 billion, making him the world's
richest person, followed by his close friend Warren Buffett,
at No. 2, according to Forbes magazine's annual survey of
billionaires. Gates's fortune climbed 12 percent from last
year, while that of Buffett, 76, chairman of Berkshire
Hathaway Inc., surged 24 percent to $52 billion. Gates, 51,
has been at the top of the Forbes list for the last 13 years.
The remaining three billionaires in the top five all are
from outside the U.S.: Mexico's Carlos Slim Helu, 67, whose
companies include mobile-telephone carrier America Movil SA,
remained in third place for a second year, with $49 billion.
Sweden's Ingvar Kamprad, 80, founder of Ikea, the world's
biggest home furnishings retailer, held fourth place for a
second year with $33 billion; and India's Lakshmi Mittal, 56,
chairman of Mittal Steel Co., held fifth place, at $32
billion.
The magazine counted 946 billionaires around the globe,
with a total net worth of $3.5 trillion, up 35 percent from
last year's $2.6 trillion, in part because of booming stock
markets and a surge in wealth in nations such as Russia.
As many as 36 Indians figure on the coveted list of the world's richest people compiled annually by Forbes magazine, led by steel tycoon L.N. Mittal, with 14 new entrants from the country joining the billionaire club.
Mittal is ranked fifth with a net worth of $32 billion, while brothers Mukesh and Anil Ambani are ranked 14th and 18th with personal wealth of $20.1 billion and $18.2 billion, respectively, says the list released by the magazine.
'India's rich are marching toward the top of our rankings,' Forbes said. 'After a 20-year reign, Japan is no longer Asia's top spot for billionaires: India has 36, worth $191 billion followed by Japan, with 24 worth a combined $64 billion.'
'India now has three in the upper echelons, second only to the US,' the magazine said, referring to Mittal, and the Ambani brothers, who are now among the top 20 billionaires in the world. Wipro's Azim Premji is ranked 21st with 17.1 billion.
'Strong equity markets combined with rising real estate values and commodity prices pushed up fortunes from Mumbai to Madrid,' says the magazine, adding that the combined net worth of all billionaires jumped $900 billion to $3.5 trillion.
The other Indians on the list include DLF's K.P. Singh, ranked 62nd with $10 billion, Sunil Mittal's family (69th with $9.5 billion), Kumar Mangalam Birla and Essar's Ruia brothers (both 86th with $8 billion).
Also on the list are Unitech's Ramesh Chandra, investor Pallonji Mistry and Adi Godrej's family.
Gibraltar-based Anurag Dikshit, an engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, who is now an online gambling mogul is featured as a young billionaire at 35 and ranked 618th with $1.6 billion.
Presenting some interesting statistics, the magazine says the average age of the billionaires is 62 years now, two years younger than in 2005. Also, this year's new billionaires are seven years younger than the average.
Two-thirds of this year's billionaires are richer and only 17 percent are poorer with 32 failing to make to the billion-dollar club. The 178 new entrants include 19 Russians, 14 Indians, 13 Chinese and 10 Spaniards, as also first billionaires from Cyprus, Oman, Romania and Serbia.
Ponder on all these people, their wealth and whatever they
might or they might not have done to deserve their billions,
can must you accept that human resources must outght to be
controlled as usual by US businessmen and their government or
by people that follow their imperialistic capitalistic
principles?
Perhaps you would need to examine thoroughly the world
economics as mandated by the West. Well, in 2000, the wealthiest one percent of the world's
adults owned 40 percent of its assets. The richest ten percent
of adults controlled 85 percent of global wealth, according to
a recent study by the United Nations University's World
Institute for Development Economics Research in Helsinki.
Most of the wealth, says New York University economist Edward
Wolff, who co-wrote the report, is narrowly concentrated. 'A
big chunk of it is in the United States, about 30 percent. And
if you look at just the richest one percent of households, the
United States accounts for 40 percent of that. Another third
is in Europe. And another third is in the rich Pacific-Asian
region, Japan, Australia and so on. And the rest of the world
has only about ten percent of the world's wealth. That
actually includes today China, India, Latin America and
Africa,' says Wolff.
Household wealth, as defined by the study, includes welfare
benefits, investments and properties, including homes and
land, but excludes wages. Average household wealth in the
United States was $144,000 per person in 2000, compared to per
capita assets of about $1,100 in India and $1,400 in
Indonesia.
According to the World Bank, 1.1 billion of the world's
6.5-billion people live on less than a dollar a day. People in
developed countries earn, on average, an annual per capita
income of more than $17,000.
But Maurizio Bussolo, a senior economist with the World Bank,
says the income gap between rich and poor states and within
countries themselves is smaller than the disparity in
household wealth.
'Currently, the disparity between income in developing
countries with respect to income in rich countries is 16
percent. This disparity will be reduced by 2030. For each
dollar a high-income country earns, the average earning in a
developing country will be 16 cents. This is in purchasing
power parity. If it were in market exchange rates, it would be
even worse because there are differences in the cost of
non-tradable goods. ervices cost much less in developing
countries. So that is to taken into account.'
Most analysts agree that some of the reasons for the
disparities in wealth and income are historical. Other causes
include political, cultural and economic dynamics, such as
high productivity levels in industrialized countries, which
typically lead to higher per capita incomes. That, in turn,
notes New York University's Edward Wolff, yields more savings
and personal wealth.
'That's probably the main reason. But secondarily is the fact
that different countries have different savings behaviors. In
the United States, for example, families have accumulated a
lot of wealth. They have very advanced financial markets. They
have a well-developed housing market. But most countries in
the world don't have financial markets. They don't have
housing markets. So it's a combination of differences and
income levels, plus the availability of savings instruments.
That plays a big role. Japan, for example, has high savings
rates because they have historically had institutions that
encourage them,' says Wolff.
Nonetheless, many economists concede that regardless of a
country's savings rate, the poorest families need all of their
income just to meet basic needs and are unlikely to save.
Some experts say globalization is helping narrow the gap as
more and more people from poor countries seek better-paying
jobs in the industrialized world. But the same technological
advancement that creates some of these jobs also contributes
to wealth and income disparities, according to Oxfam's
Research Director in London, Duncan Green.
'Technology tends to be something that exacerbates
differences. If you look at where the knowledge is, 97 percent
of patents are taken out in the north [i.e., the Northern
Hemisphere]. So the north is creating technology and giving
patents to keep its technology from filtering down to the poor
countries. That gives them an edge. And that means that's
where most of the wealth is generated,' says Green.
Many analysts emphasize that bridging the divide between the
two worlds is a long-term, slow process. One reason for this,
says David Roodman, a senior fellow with the Washington-based
Center for Global Development, is that many of the world's
poorest countries have not undergone the kind of industrial
renaissance the West has seen.
'The rich people are not rich because they took money from
everybody else. For the most part, the rich countries are rich
because they had a particular history of industrial
development. And the real question is how can we help the rest
of the world go through that same process so that they too can
become much better off,' says Roodman.
Current initiatives designed to help narrow the wealth and
income gaps include a United Nations micro-credit program that
helps finance small businesses in developing countries, and a
World Bank program that gives cash assistance to needy
families if they agree to provide their children with
schooling and health care.
World Bank experts predict that globalization will lift many
more of the globe's poorest people out of poverty during the
next 25 years. But even if the gap between rich and poor
countries begins to narrow, many experts warn that a bigger
problem may be the widening income disparity within rich and
poor countries themselves.
esinislam.com + Agencies
|
|
