ECONOMICS - LOOKING GLASS NEWS

Ownership Statistics: Why a Shared Capitalism is Needed...
from The Shared Capitalism Institute
Entered into the database on Saturday, July 09th, 2005 @ 22:32:21 MST


 

Untitled Document

Current trends in economic inequality, both domestically and abroad, pose dangers to human dignity, democracy, political stability, fiscal sustainability, social justice, freedom, civil society, physical/mental health and environmental sustainability. These dangers are palpable, real and on the rise.

These statistics are also included in the newest book by the President of the Shared Capitalism Institute, Jeff Gates. Look for Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street from Wall Street — A Populist Vision for the 21st Century, published by Perseus Books in May, 2000. See the book page for more information.

  • The financial wealth of the top one percent of households now exceeds the combined wealth of the bottom 95 percent. [Note 1]
  • The wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans grew by an average $940 million each from 1997-1999 [Note 2] while over a recent 12-year period the net worth of the bottom 40 percent of households declined 80 percent. [Note 3]
  • For the well-to-do, that's an average increase in wealth of $1,287,671 per day. [Note 4] If that were wages earned over a 40-hour week, that would be $225,962 an hour or 43,876 times the $5.15 per hour minimum wage.
  • The Federal Reserve found in its latest survey of consumer finances that although median family net worth rose 17.6 percent between 1995 and 1998, family wealth was "substantially below" 1989 levels for all income groups under age 55. [Note 5]
  • From 1983-1997, only the top five percent of households saw an increase in their net worth while wealth declined for everyone else. [Note 6]
  • As of 1997, the median household financial wealth (marketable assets less home equity) was $11,700, $1,300 lower than in 1989. [Note 7]
  • Anticipated Social Security payments are now the largest single "asset" for a majority of Americans. Funded by a levy on jobs, the Social Security payroll tax is now the largest tax paid by a majority of Americans (the largest for 90 percent of GenXers), funded with a flat tax of 12.4 percent on earnings up to $72,600.
  • For the first time since the Great Depression, the national savings rate turned negative (during the first quarter of 1999). [Note 8]
  • What about the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history -- that $12 trillion in the hands of baby-boomers' parents? Current wealth patterns indicate that one-third of that pending transfer will go to 1 percent of the boomers ($1.6 million each). Another third will go to the next 9 percent ($336,000). The final slice will be divided by the remaining 90 percent (an average $40,000 apiece). [Note 9]
A Boom for Whom?
  • The richest 400 Americans hold wealth equivalent to one-eighth of the GDP. [Note 10]
  • The average wealth of the Forbes 400 was $200 million in 1982, just after the enactment of the Reagan-Bush "supply-side" tax package - paid for with $872 billion in deficit financing. [Note 11] By 1986, their average wealth was $500 million.
  • In 1982, inclusion on the Forbes 400 required personal wealth of $91 million. The list then included 13 billionaires. By 1999, $625 million was required for inclusion on a list that included 268 billionaires. [Note 12]
  • The federal debt was $909 billion in 1980. At the close of the Reagan-Bush era, the debt was $4,202 billion. It currently hovers around $5,700 billion. [Note 13]
  • Government debt securities are owned dominantly by upper-crust households. The latest figures show that tax-exempt interest was reported on 4.9 million personal tax returns for 1997, about 4 percent of all taxpayers. Total tax-exempt interest income was $48.5 billion in 1997. [Note 14]
  • The combined net worth of the Forbes 400 topped $1 trillion in September 1999, up from $738 billion 12 months earlier, for an average one-year increase of $655 million each ($12.6 million per week). [Note 15]
  • Less than one-fifth of that increase ($48.4 billion) would have been enough to bring every American up to the official poverty line, leaving each of the Forbes 400 with an average one-year increase of $534 million ($10.2 million per week).
  • While the number of households expanded 3 percent from 1995 to 1998, households with a net worth of $10 million or more grew 44.7 percent. [Note 16]
  • Eighty-six percent of stock market gains between 1989 and 1997 flowed to the top ten percent of households while 42 percent went to the most well-to-do one percent. [Note 17]
  • If Congress adopts Martin Feldstein's proposal for the partial privatization of Social Security, the U.S. Treasury will pump budget surpluses equal to 2.3 percent of the national payroll into the stock market each year. That's $100 billion-plus per year in tax revenues to boost stock prices. [Note 18]
In a Nation of Equals
  • In 1998 the top-earning one percent had as much income as the 100 million Americans with the lowest earnings. [Note 19]
  • From 1983-1995, only the top 20 percent of households saw any real increase in their income while the middle-earning 20 percent, if they lost their jobs, had enough savings to maintain their standard of living for 1.2 months (36 days), down from 3.6 months in 1989. [Note 20]
  • Economist Robert Frank reports that the top one percent captured 70 percent of all earnings growth since the mid-1970's. [Note 21]
  • The Federal Reserve found that "median income between 1989 and 1998 rose appreciably only for families headed by college graduates." [Note 22]
  • On an inflation-adjusted basis, the median hourly wage in 1998 was 7 percent lower than in 1973 - when Richard Nixon was in the White House. [Note 23]
  • The pay gap between top executives and production workers grew from 42:1 in 1980 to 419:1 in 1998 (excluding the value of stock options). [Note 24]
  • Executive pay at the nation's 365 largest companies rose an average 481 percent from 1990 to 1998 while corporate profits rose 108 percent. [Note 25]
  • Had the typical worker's pay risen in tandem with executive pay, the average production worker would now earn $110,000 a year and the minimum wage would be $22.08.
  • Business Week reports that in 1998 the average large company chief executive was paid $10.6 million, a 36 percent jump over 1997. [Note 26] That omits unexercised stock options.
  • Compensation expert Graef Crystal identifies five CEOs who each saw their wallets widen by more than $232 million in 1998 as they exercised their stock options. For a 40-hour week, that's $116,000 per hour.
In the Pursuit of Happiness
  • The work year has expanded by 184 hours since 1970, an additional 4-1/2 weeks on the job for the same or less pay. [Note 27]
  • Household working hours reached 3,149 in 1998, roughly 60 hours a week for the typical family, moving Americans into first place worldwide in the number of hours worked, nudging aside the workaholic Japanese. [Note 28]
  • According to the Bureau of Labor statistics, the typical American now works 350 hours more per year than a typical European -- almost nine full weeks.
  • More than 65 million anti-depressant prescriptions were written in 1998.
  • Parents spend 40 percent less time with their children today than they did thirty years ago. [Note 29]
  • A 40-hour week at today's minimum wage of $5.15 per hour nets a pre-tax annual income of $10,300. That's $6,355.00 below the official 1998 poverty line for a family of four.
  • Had increases in the minimum wage kept pace with inflation since the 1960s, the minimum wage would now exceed the earnings of nearly 30 percent of U.S. workers. [Note 30]
  • The after-tax income flowing to the middle 60 percent of households in 1999 is the lowest recorded since 1977. Among the bottom fifth of households, average after-tax income fell nine percent from 1977 to 1999.
  • In New York, the highest-income five percent of families gained nearly $108,000 in average income per family from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, while the lowest-income 20 percent of New Yorkers lost $2,900. [Note 31]
  • The Census Bureau reports that the pretax median income was $1,001 higher in 1998 than in 1989. For the decade of the 1990s, that's an average annual raise, adjusted for inflation, of $111.22, or 0.3 percent.
  • According to the Census Bureau, the top fifth of households now claim 49.2 percent of national income while the bottom fifth gets by on 3.6 percent. [Note 32]
  • Except for inflation adjustments, today's poverty formula remains unchanged since 1965 when it was designed by Lyndon Johnson to address severe nutritional deprivation but only if "the housewife is a careful shopper, a skillful cook and a good manager who will prepare all the family's meals at home."
  • The national poverty rate remains above that for any year in the 1970's.
  • One in every four preschoolers in the United States now lives in poverty. [Note 33]
  • Bill Clinton reported a 12.7 percent poverty rate in September 1999, the lowest level in a decade.
  • Raising the poverty threshold to $19,500 (as recommended by the Census Bureau) boosts the poverty rate to a record-high 17 percent, leaving 46 million Americans short of that minimal level.
  • In 1998, the nation's three primary income security programs -- Social Security, Medicare and civil service pensions -- consumed $805.2 billion in federal tax revenues. [Note 34] Meanwhile, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) reports that we need $112 billion to repair dilapidated public schools.
  • In 1973, the United States imprisoned 350,000 people nationwide. By 1998, the prison population was 1.8 million or roughly 674 people in prison per 100,000, while Europe-wide the imprisonment rate is 60 to 100 per 100,000. Florida now spends more on corrections than on colleges. California spent nine percent of its 1998 budget on prisons as it responded to an 8-fold increase in its prison population over the past two decades. The Rand Corporation projects that California's prison spending will top 16 percent by 2005.
Whose Wealth of Nations?
  • In 1998, Disney CEO Michael Eisner received a pay package totaling $575.6 million, 25,070 times the average Disney worker's pay. [Note 35]
  • In the same year (1998) when one American (Bill Gates) amassed more wealth than the combined net worth of the poorest 45 percent of American households, [Note 36] a record 1.4 million Americans filed for bankruptcy -- 7,000 bankruptcies per hour, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. [Note 37] Personal bankruptcy filings topped 1.3 million in 1999.
  • Since 1992, mortgage debt has grown 60 percent faster than income while consumer debt (mostly auto loans and credit cards) has grown twice as fast. The fastest growing segment of the credit card market consists of low-income holders, with the average amount owed growing 18 times faster than income. [Note 38]
  • Nine years into the longest economic expansion in the nation's history, labor's share of the national income remains two to four percentage points below the levels reached in the late 1960's and early 1970's. [Note 39]
  • Household debt as a percentage of personal income rose from 58 percent in 1973 to an estimated 85 percent in 1997.
  • In 1997, 142,556 people reported adjusted gross income of $1 million or more, according to the IRS, up from 86,998 for 1995. [Note 40]
  • For 1999, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the top one percent will report average before-tax income of $786,000 and average after-tax income of $516,000. [Note 41]
  • The top one percent pocketed, on average, an annual tax cut of $40,000 since 1977, an amount exceeding the average annual income of the middle fifth of households. [Note 42]
  • If the richest one percent of the population had received the same share of the nation's after-tax income in 1999 as it did in 1977, it would have received $271 billion less in 1999 -- $226,000 less per household. [Note 43]
  • Between 1977 and 1999, the after-tax income of the top one percent grew faster (115 percent) than their before-tax income (96 percent). [Note 44]
  • In 1998, 9,257 new and existing homes sold for $1 million or more, triple the number of million-dollar homes on the market in 1995. Annual mortgage interest payments on a newly purchased $1 million home total $79,247 (assuming 10 percent down and a 30-year adjustable rate mortgage at 8 percent). The home mortgage interest deduction for someone in the top 39.6-percent tax bracket saves on that house $31,382 a year in federal income taxes. When that saving is added to the $40,000 average annual tax cut allowed the top one percent since 1977, that $1 million home costs $7,865 per year, or $655 per month.
  • Federal tax law allows a personal income tax deduction on home mortgage interest costs up to $1 million. If that limit were reduced to $300,000, the CBO calculates that federal tax receipts would increase by $40.8 billion over nine years. In 1998, four percent of new mortgages exceeded $300,000.
  • For every age group under 55, home ownership remains below where it was in the early 1980s. [Note 45]
Minorities and Foundations
  • The percentage of black households with zero or negative net worth (31.3 percent) is double that of whites. [Note 46]
  • As of 1997, the net worth of white families was 8 times that of African-Americans and 12 times that of Hispanics. The median financial wealth of African-Americans (net worth less home equity) is $200 while that of Hispanics is zero. [Note 47]
  • The poverty rate among blacks, 26.1 percent, is 2.5 times greater than the rate for whites. For Hispanics, the rate is 25.6 percent.
  • Black applicants were granted less than one percent of total home mortgages approved between 1930 and 1960. [Note 48]
  • Only in 1999 did home ownership among blacks recover ground lost since 1983.
  • Black-owned small businesses were three times as likely as whites to have their loan applications turned down in the 1990s. [Note 49]
  • The United States has 18,000 black farmers, down from 925,000 in 1920. Less than one percent of farmers are black, and they are abandoning farming at three times the rate of whites. In 1999, the Agriculture Department gave its long-delayed assent to a class-action settlement to compensate black farmers who have complained for decades at being shut out of federal loan programs due to racism. [Note 50]
  • In 1865, blacks owned 0.5 percent of the nation's net worth. In 1990, their net worth totaled 1 percent. [Note 51]
  • Black students scored 144 points less on the SAT than white students where the parents of both earn over $70,000. When black test scores are compared to those of white students with the same family wealth, the "achievement gap" disappears. [Note 52]
  • If your financial wealth is $225,000 (about 20 times the national median) and you give $1,500 to charity, how large a donation would be required for Bill Gates to experience a similar dent in his net worth? According to Wired magazine, $6.7 billion. That's almost seven times the amount he pledged in September 1999 to provide 20,000 minority scholarships over the next two decades. [Note 53] With the December 1999 completion of Windows 2000, the value of Gates's personally held Microsoft shares rose to more than $130 billion, almost 12 times the $11 billion or so in securities owned by all 33 million African-Americans combined.
  • If an entry-level Forbes 400 member gives away $1 million of their income, how much would a median-level household need to donate to make a similar financial sacrifice? A bit less than $60.
Making the World Safe for Plutocracy
  • The world's 200 richest people more than doubled their net worth in the four years to 1999, to more than $1 trillion, for an average $5 billion each. [Note 54] Their combined wealth (the top seven are Americans) equals the combined annual income of the world's poorest 2.5 billion people. [Note 55]
  • Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen plus Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffet have a net worth larger than the combined GDP of the 41 poorest nations and their 550 million people. [Note 56]
  • Warren Buffet's 1999 net worth ($31 billion) equals the GDP of Kuwait.
  • The wealth of the world's 84 richest individuals exceeds the GDP of China with its 1.3 billion people. [Note 57]
  • If the value of Bill Gates's Microsoft stock continues to grow at the same pace as it has since Microsoft's 1986 initial public offering (58.2 percent a year), Wired projects he will become a trillionaire in March 2005, at the age of 49, and his Microsoft holdings will top $1 quadrillion (one million billion) in March 2020, at the age of 64. The Gross World Product for 1998 was $39,000 billion.
  • The UN Development Program (UNDP) reports that 80 countries have per capita incomes lower than a decade ago. [Note 58] Sixty countries have been growing steadily poorer since 1980. [Note 59]
  • Three billion people live on less than $2 per day while 1.3 billion of those get by on less than $1 per day. [Note 60]
  • In 1960, the income gap between the fifth of the world's people living in the richest countries and the fifth in the poorest countries was 30 to 1. By 1990, the gap had widened to 60 to 1. By 1998, it had grown to 74 to 1. [Note 61]
  • With global population expanding 80 million each year, World Bank President Jim Wolfensohn cautions that, unless we address this "challenge of inclusion," 30 years hence we will have 5 billion people living on less than $2 per day.
  • The UNDP reports that two billion people suffer from anemia, including 55 million in industrial countries. Current trends suggest that in three decades we could inhabit a world where 3.7 billion people suffer from anemia.
  • UNDP's assessment of today's development trends: "Development that perpetuates today's inequalities in neither sustainable nor worth sustaining." [Note 62]
  • In Indonesia, 61.7 percent of the stock market's value is held by the nation's 15 richest families. The comparable figure for the Philippines is 55.1 percent and 53.3 percent for Thailand. [Note 63]
A Closer Look at Globalization
  • The world's 200 largest corporations account for 28 percent of global economic activity while employing less than one-quarter of one percent of the global workforce.
  • The World Bank estimates that $100 billion to $150 billion has flowed out of the former Soviet Union since the fall of the Berlin Wall. As of July 1999, one-third of Russians were living below the official poverty line of $38 per month.
  • The UNDP identifies six core ingredients as minimal conditions for a decent life: safe drinking water (1.3 billion people lack access to clean water), [Note 64] adequate sanitation, sufficient nutrition, primary health care, basic education (one in seven children of primary school age is out of school), [Note 65] and family planning services for all willing couples. UNDP calculates the cost at $35 billion each year for the next 15 years. That's about what the United States spent in 1999 to maintain its nuclear readiness, a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall. For the world community to bear the cost would require 1/7 of 1 percent of global GDP; the United States contributes to the UN 0.09 percent of its GDP. [Note 66]
  • Every jet fighter sold by a developed country to a developing country costs the schooling of three million children. [Note 67] The cost of a submarine denies safe drinking water to 60 million people.
  • In the 1997 fiscal year, the United States exported $8.3 billion of arms to non-democratic countries.
  • The Clinton-Gore Administration is calling for a $110 billion increase in the Pentagon budget, including a 50 percent increase in weapons procurement through 2004; Republican Congressional leaders insist on considerably more funds for military remobilization.
  • What if those individuals who have captured the most wealth in the global economy were to bear this $35 billion development cost? An annual 3.5 percent levy on the $1 trillion in assets owned by the world's 200 wealthiest people would raise the requisite funds. Three-quarters of those people live in OECD countries; one-third of them reside in the United States. [Note 68]
  • Experts report that the well-to-do have hidden at least $8 trillion in tax havens. [Note 69]
  • If the international community identified the owners of that $8 trillion -- held in an estimated 1.5 million offshore corporations (up from 200,000 just since the late 1980s) -- an annual "freeloader levy" of 3.5 percent, less than the typical sales tax, could generate $280 billion each year. That's 165 times the current budget for all UN development programs. Or 93 times the UN's annual expenditure for peacekeeping operations, now raised pass-your-hat style. That's enough to build 140,000 schools at $2 million apiece. That's also the bulk of the $300 billion that environmental researchers at Cambridge and Sheffield Universities report would be required each year to "save the planet." [Note 70]
  • Eighty percent of the world's people live in developing countries.
  • Ninety-five percent of the next generation's children will be born to women there.
  • Seventy percent of those women live on less than $1 per day.
  • Ninety percent of those women labor on average 35 hours more per week than the typical paid workman. None of their work is reflected in the GDP.
  • Women in developing countries produce 80 percent of the food and receive 10 percent of the agricultural assistance.
  • Seventy percent are illiterate.
  • For every year that women attend school beyond the fourth grade, the birth rate declines 20 percent.
  • Fifty percent of women over age 18 can neither read nor write.
  • Less than one percent of the world's assets are held in the name of women.

END NOTES
1 Edward N. Wolff, "Recent Trends in Wealth Ownership," a paper for the conference on "Benefits and Mechanisms for Spreading Asset Ownership in the United States," New York University, December 10-12, 1998. In 1995, the financial wealth of the top one percent was greater than the bottom 90 percent. [Back to text]

2 Forbes 400, October 11, 1999. [Back to text]

3 Edward N. Wolff, "Recent Trends in Wealth Ownership," Ibid. The period cited was 1983 to 1995, based on the Federal Reserve's 1995 Survey of Consumer Finances. [Back to text]

4 Forbes 400 wealth was $624 billion in 1997, $738 billion in 1998 and $1 trillion-plus in 1999. See www.forbes.com. [Back to text]

5 Federal Reserve Bulletin, January 2000, p. 6. [Back to text]

6 Ibid., p. 10. [Back to text]

7 Median household financial wealth was less than $10,000 in 1995. The $11,700 figure is based on a 12-percent growth projection in Wolff, "Recent Trends in Wealth Ownership," Ibid. [Back to text]

8 Albert B. Crenshaw, "Taking Reduced Saving Into Account," The Washington Post National Weekly Edition, June 28, 1999, p. 21. [Back to text]

9 Near Karlen, "And the Meek Shall Inherit Nothing," The New York Times, July 29, 1999, p. B1. [Back to text]

10 See www.forbes.com. [Back to text]

11 Joint Committee on Taxation, General Explanation of the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, p. 401. [Back to text]

12 Forbes 400, September 13, 1982; Forbes 400, October 11, 1999. [Back to text]

13 Economic Report of the President (February 1999), p. 419. [Back to text]

14 "Tax Report," The Wall Street Journal, July 21, 1999, p. 1 [Back to text]

15 Forbes 400, October 11, 1999 (see www.forbes.com). [Back to text]

16 Louis Uchitelle, "More Wealth, More Stately Mansions," The New York Times, June 6, 1999, p. A 16, citing research by Prof. Edward N. Wolff. [Back to text]

17 David Wessel, "U.S. Stock Holdings Rose 20% in 1998," The Wall Street Journal, March 15, 1999, p. A6.. [Back to text]

18 Feldstein, chairman of Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers, was a key architect of supply-side economics. [Back to text]

19 Congressional Budget Office Memorandum, Estimates of Federal Tax Liabilities for Individuals and Families by Income Categoy and Family Type for 1995 and 1999, May 1998. [Back to text]

20 Edward N. Wolff, Ibid., p. 10. [Back to text]

21 Robert Frank, Luxury Fever (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999). [Back to text]

22 Federal Reserve Bulletin, January 2000, p. 53. [Back to text]

23 Median earnings based on Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis data reported in State of Working America 1998-99; labor's share of non-farm business sector income based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data reported in Economic Report of the President (February 1999), at p. 384. [Back to text]

24 Business Week, "49th Annual Executive Pay Survey," April 19, 1999. [Back to text]

25 A Decade of Executive Excess: The 1990s (Boston: United for a Fair Economy and Institute for Policy Studies, 1999). [Back to text]

26 Business Week, "49th Annual Executive Pay Survey," April 19, 1999. [Back to text]

27 Juliet S. Schor, The Overworked American (New York: Basic Books, 1992) indicating that the annual work year increased by 139 hours from 1969-1989. The Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute found that the annual hours worked expanded by 45 hours from 1989-1994. [Back to text]

28 Steven Greenhouse, "So Much Work, So Little Time," The New York Times, September 5, 1999, p. WK1. [Back to text]

29 Charles Handy, The Hungry Spirit (New York: Broadway, 1998), p. 17. [Back to text]

30 See Joel Blau, Illusions of Prosperity: America's Working Families in an Age of Economic Insecurity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). [Back to text]

31 "State Income Inequality Continues to Grow in Most States in the 1990s, Despite Economic Growth and Tight Labor Markets," report by the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, Washington, D.C., January 18, 2000. [Back to text]

32 See www.census.gov ("income" at Table H-2). [Back to text]

33 Tamar Levin, "Study Finds That Youngest U.S. Children are Poorest, The New York Times, March 15, 1998, p. Y 18. [Back to text]

34 Economic Report of the President (February 1999), p. 421. [Back to text]

35 It was only after strenuous objection from institutional investors that Eisner agreed to remove his personal attorney from the compensation committee of Disney's board of directors. [Back to text]

36 Professor Edward N. Wolff cited in "A Scholar Who Concentrates... on Concentrations of Wealth," Too Much, Winter 1999, p.8. [Back to text]

37 Doug Henwood, "Debts Everywhere," The Nation, July 19, 1999, p. 12. [Back to text]

38 Ibid. [Back to text]

39 Louis Uchitelle, "As Class Struggle Subsides, Less Pie for the Workers," The New York Times, December 5, 1999, p. BU4 (reporting on research by Professor Edward N. Wolff). [Back to text]

40 "Tax Report," The Wall Street Journal, July 28, 1999, p. 1. [Back to text]

41 CBO Memorandum, Estimates of Federal Tax Liabilities for Individuals and Families by Income Category and Family Type for 1995 and 1999, May 1998. [Back to text]

42 Issac Shapiro and Robert Greenstein, "The Widening Income Gulf," Washington, D.C., Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, September 4, 1999, citing CBO figures. [Back to text]

43 Isaac Shapiro and Robert Greenstein, Ibid. [Back to text]

44 Ibid. [Back to text]

45 Homeowners are also now much more highly leveraged than in the 1980s, with down payments at record lows and mortgage levels at record highs. Lou Uchitelle, "In Home Ownership Data, A Hidden Generation Gap," The New York Times, September 26, 1999, p. BU4. [Back to text]

46 Edward N. Wolff, Ibid. [Back to text]

47 Ibid., p. 41, table 6. [Back to text]

48 Results of 1991 Federal Reserve Board study analyzing 1990 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data. [Back to text]

49 "Credit Gap in Black and White," FOMC Alert, Financial Markets Center, May 18, 1999, p. 11. [Back to text]

50 "15,000 Black Farmers File Claims in Racial Settlement," The New York Times, September 21, 1999, p. A25. [Back to text]

51 Dalton Conley, Being Black, Living in the Red, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). [Back to text]

52 Ibid. [Back to text]

53 Evan L. Marcus, "The World's First Trillionaire," Wired, September 1999, p. 163. [Back to text]

54 United Nations Human Development Report 1999, Ibid. [Back to text]

55 United Nations Human Development Report 1998 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). [Back to text]

56 "Rich Comparison," The Wall Street Journal, July 30, 1999, p. 1. [Back to text]

57 United Nations Human Development Report 1998, Ibid. [Back to text]

58 United Nations Human Development Report 1999 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 2. [Back to text]

59 Ibid. at p. v. [Back to text]

60 Ibid., at p. 3. [Back to text]

61 United Nations Human Development Report 1999, Ibid., p. 28. [Back to text]

62 United Nations Human Development Report 1996 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 4. [Back to text]

63 Stijn Claessens, Simeon Djankov and Larry H.P. Lang, "Who Controls East Asian Corporations?" (Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 1999). [Back to text]

64 United Nations Human Development Report 1999, Ibid., p. 28. [Back to text]

65 Ibid. [Back to text]

66 Mahbub ul Haq, "Charter of Human Development Initiative," State of the World Forum (San Francisco, October 3, 1996). [Back to text]

67 See Oscar Arias, "Stopping America's Most Lethal Export," New York Times, June 23, 1999, p. A23. [Back to text]

68 United Nations Human Development Report, 1998, p. 30. [Back to text]

69 The IMF estimates that the amount in offshore tax havens grew from $3.5 trillion in 1992 to $4.8 trillion in 1997. Other estimates put the amount as high as $13.7 trillion. See Douglas Farah, "A New Wave of Island Investing," The Washington Post National Weekly Review, October 18, 1999, p. 15. Alan Cowell and Edmund L. Andrews, "Undercurrents at a Safe Harbor," The New York Times, September 24, 1999, p. C1. [Back to text]

70 The Times (London), September 23, 1999. [Back to text]