Arthur,
The attention always seems to be directed in the wrong direction. The 60,000 families with more than $30 million net worth are unimportant. What is important is how they got their $30 million. If they got it serving the public, they should keep it. It's nobody's business.
If they got it from privileges - they should give it all back. The idea that you take from the rich and give to the poor is nonsensical. The poor, along with those who should know better, might think that's a good idea but all it does is obscure their real need - justice.
I remember Stafford Cripps, then Chancellor of the first UK Labor government after the war, making the point. At the annual conference, the rank and file were demanding higher taxes on incomes and profits. Cripps pointed out that if they took every penny of income over 2000 pounds, it wouldn't run Britain for one day.
Don't worry about millionaires, and over-paid CEOs. Just work on Henry George's question: "Why, is spite of the enormous increase in our power to produce, is it so hard to make a living."
Harry
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Arthur wrote:
And fat cats there are. Fat cat families too.
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There are 60,000 families worldwide with net worths of $30 million or more, according to a report released in May by Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, a consulting firm. At the time, the number of superrich people was growing 5.8 percent annually, although recent market declines may have slowed or even reversed that rate.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/07/business/yourmoney/07RICH.html?pagewanted=print
- -----Original Message-----
- From: G. Stewart [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
- Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 9:57 AM
- To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Subject: Fat cat pay hikes
- "In response to a series of high-profile rows over apparent boardroom greed, the Trade and Industry Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, won Cabinet approval for a shareholder-led crackdown on excessive salary increases paid to directors. In future, all boardroom remuneration packages, including bonus schemes, must be made subject to an annual separate vote by ordinary shareholders rather than by shadowy, unaccountable "remuneration committees" composed of other directors...."
- From the Guardian Weekly October 25-31, under UK News, The Week in Britain, "Crackdown on fat cat pay hikes."
- Gail Stewart
- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Harry Pollard
Henry George School of LA
Box 655
Tujunga CA 91042
Tel: (818) 352-4141
Fax: (818) 353-2242
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