Millionaires, eat your heart out. You have no longer made it. For the first time since it was set up in 1982, Forbes magazine’s list of the 400 richest Americans contains not a single nine-figure fortune in it.
It is the age of the dollar billionaire, and everyone makes the grade. Even number 400, Los Angeles magnate Sehat Sutardja, has $1-billion. Cuts in taxes for the wealthy have accounted for a large part of the surge. Twenty-five years ago, there were only 13 billionaires on the list. Since then, marginal tax rates for the rich have fallen from 60% to 35%.
But set against this is a boom in philanthropy. Numbers one and two are yet again Bill Gates, worth $53-billion, and Warren Buffet, with $46-billion.
Buffet announced earlier this year that he was giving most of his Berkshire Hathaway shares to the foundation set up by Gates and his wife, Melinda, which already had assets of $30-billion. The gift is believed to be the largest in history, worth an extra $31-billion to the foundation, which focuses on health issues and poverty reduction in Africa.
Against this picture of the caring rich stands the fact that four of the top 10 are from the Wal-Mart family, the world’s largest retailer, which refuses to allow unions and has been widely criticised for the paltry wages and benefits it provides for its 1,3-million ”associates”.
But wealth is not evenly distributed. Ten of the 50 states have no billionaires, including Alaska, Mississippi and Kentucky. Two states dwarf the others: California with 90 and New York with 44.
California’s dominance reflects the increasing grip the new technocrats have on wealth in the United States. — Â