BILLIONAIRES

By Tom Kando

            We learned from the news recently that  in 2013  the  richest 85 individuals in the world have as much wealth as the poorest half of mankind combined.  This is so interesting that even Fox News reported  it, even though they usually hate to talk about  inequality, accusing anyone who does  of envy and class warfare. (See the Forbes  article: http://www.forbes.com/billionaires)

Factoids:

!           There are now 1,426 billionaires in the world.  Together their worth is $5.4 trillion. That’s

roughly one third of the US  GDP. This amount is up from $4.6 trillion a year earlier, i.e. up 17%. There are 210 new billionaires.

!           442 of the 1,426 billionaires  (=31%) are in the US, 386 are in the Asia-Pacific region, 366

in Europe, 129 in  the Americas  and 103 in the  Middle East and Africa.

!           I totaled the wealth of the top 85 billionaires and  came up with  $1.73 trillion.  This is the

same amount as the total wealth of  the bottom 3.5 billion people on earth.  In other words, the 85

super-rich are worth $20.3  billion per person, whereas the bottom 3.6 billion  people in the  world

are worth $4,700 per individual. Or put another way, each of the super-rich is worth as much  as

FOUR AND A HALF MILLION people in the world’s bottom half, a  population larger than that

of many countries.

!            !           Here are some of the better known celebrities on the list:

Rank	Name	Business	fortune	country
# 1	Carlos Slim Helu	Telecom	73 billion	Mexico
# 2	Bill Gates	Microsoft	67 billion	US
# 4	Warren Buffett	Misc.	53.5 billion	US
#6, 6, 329	Koch brothers	Misc.	72 billion	US
#9	Liliane Bettencourt	L’Oreal	30 billion	France
#11,14,1617,346	Walton family	Wal-Mart	111.3 billion	US
# 13	Michael Bloomberg	Misc.	27 billion	US
#15	Sheldon Adelson	Casinoa	26.5 billion	US
#23	Michele Ferrero	Chocolates	20.4 billion	Italy
# 26	Carl Icahn	Leveraged buyouts	20 billion	US
# 30	George Soros	Hedge Funds	19.2 billion	US/ Hungary
# 36,37,38	Mars family	Mars candy	51 billion	US
# 66	Mark Zuckerberg (29 years old)	Facebook	13.3 billion	US
# 94	Charlene Heineken	Heineken beer	11 billion	Holland
# 131	Georgio Armani	Fashion	8.5 billion	Italy
# 166	Ralph Lauren	Fashion	7 billion	US
# 346	George Lucas	Star Wars	3.9 billion	US
# 423	Donald Trump	Real Estate	3.2 billion	US
# 1,175	Bruce Nordstrom	Nordstrom	1.2 billion	US

 Number of top 85 Billionaires by Countries:                                                                                                                                                           

Countries	Number of billionaires
US	32
Russia	10
Germany	6
France	5
Hong Kong	4
Mexico, Brazil	3 each
Italy, India, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia	2 each
Spain, Sweden, India,Canada, Chile, Thailand, Australia, Nigeria, Ukraine, Japan, Philippines, South Korea	1 each
total	85

!           Sources of wealth: The usual suspects:

Many:   Electronics, Amazon, Google, Dell, Microsoft, Facebook, Samsung, Telecom, etc.

Many: Oil, gas, cement, petrochemicals, mining, steel, coal, metals.

Many : Banking, hedge funds, leveraged buyouts, etc

Many: Real Estate

Some: Chain stores (Wal-Mart, Aldi, Trader Joe,)

Some: Fashion, cosmetics (Prada, L’Oreal)

Some: Beverages, candy, chocolate.

!         Gender: 10 women, 75 men.

!         In 2013, Amancio Ortega, Spain, gained $19.5 billion and moved  up to third position.

Warren Buffett gained $9.5 billion, yet dropped to #4. The biggest loser was the  Brazilian Eike Batista, who lost $19.4 billion in one year,  =  $50 million per day, and thus fell from #7 to #100. Not included in Forbes’ list are Royal families  and dictators.

Conclusions:

Of course, I  have to insert a few socialist comments:

!         The US’ 442 billionaires make up 31% of the total, and  we  only make up 4% of the 

world’s population. But this is no cause for joy. The US is also experiencing the greatest polarization of income of ANY developed country. Furthermore, contrary to the stereotype (“the American Dream,” “the land of opportunity,” etc.) upward mobility is more limited in the US than  in Europe. In other words, there is more poverty and there are fewer opportunities here than elsewhere. I doubt that THIS is the sort of “exception” flag waving Republicans have in mind when they harp on that tired old theme -  “American exceptionalism.”

!         And another thing: most people learn exactly the wrong lesson from data such as these. 

Many folks come to the idiotic conclusion that such information shows us the individual characteristics it takes to become successful. Hard work, talent, dedication, etc.

            In other words, most people believe that these 85 top billionaires, and the other 1,341 too,  are somehow BETTER than the rest of us - more talented, with more work ethic, more genius of one sort or another...

             Hogwash. The list teaches  us nothing  at the individual level. Were you to meet these people, you would see that they are not smarter, funnier, better looking, more intelligent, more talented, or more anything than your average neighbor. They have more of only one thing: Money.

            Individual characteristics don’t explain who becomes a billionaire. Only one thing explains who becomes a billionaire: ADVANTAGE.

            And where does advantage come from? CIRCUMSTANCE. In other words: your location in time and (social)  space. Put another way: LUCK.

            If you happen to be born in Africa or in the South Bronx, or in the middle of  World War Two, bad luck for you. If you are born the son of the President of American Motors, or the governor of Michigan, you luck out. Is it a coincidence that only ONE of the top 85 billionaires is from Africa?

            This is called Sociology, folks. And it’s correct. Get used to it. We are all billiard balls. We are   volleys of  molecules shot into space, or  swarms of mosquitoes.  A few end up on top, a few at the bottom, some on  the far left, some on the far right, and most somewhere in the middle. It’s all about probabilities, randomness, the normal distribution, (the “bell curve”), regression towards the mean. Individual characteristics have very little to do with success or failure. Sorry.

© Tom Kando 2014

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AMERICA HAS BEEN AT PEACE FOR 11 YEARS OUT OF THE PAST 72 YEARS.

By Tom Kando

America’s active participation in World War Two began 72 years ago, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Since then, the country has been at war about half of the time if you only count hot wars, or 85% of the time if you include the Cold War. (See: List of wars involving the United States)

Here is a list of our wars over the past 72 years:

Hot Wars: (Note that there have been overlaps. Often, there were several simultaneous wars or campaigns.)

1	World War Two	December 1941 to September 1945	3 years and 10 months
2	Korean War	June 1950 to July 1953	3 years and 1 month.
3	Invasion of Lebanon	July 1958 to October 1958	3 months.
(4)	Invasion of the Dominican Republic	April 1965 to September 1966	1.5 years. However, I didn’t count this, because it occurred during the Vietnam War, and I didn’t want to double count).
5	Vietnam War	April 1963 to April 1975	12 years.
6	Invasion of Grenada	October and December 1983	2 months.
7	Invasion of Panama	December 1989 and January 1990	2 months.
8	Gulf War/Desert Storm	August 1990 to February 1991	6 months.
9	Somalia	1992 through 1994, intermittently	2 months?
10	Bosnia and Kosovo	1993 through 1995; 1999, intermittently	6 months?
11	Misc. other short campaigns	Haiti (1994-95); Sudan (1998); etc.	6 months?
12	War on Terror: This includes	October 2001 to present	12 years
	The Iraq War	From March 2003 to December 2011	8 years and   9 months
	The Afghanistan War	October 2001 to the present	12 years
	The 2011 Libyan campaign		6 months
Total amount of time at war:  33 years and 2 months = 46% of the past 72 years.

America at peace during the past 72 years:

1	From the end of World War Two to the beginning of the Korean War	September 1945 to June 1950	4 years and 10 months.
2	From the end of the Korean War to the invasion of Lebanon	July 1953 to July 1958	5 years
3	From the invasion of Lebanon to the beginning of the Vietnam War	October 1958 to April 1963	4.5 years
4	From the end of the Vietnam war to the invasion of Grenada	April 1975 to October 1983	8.5 years
5	From the invasion of Grenada to the invasion of Panama	December 1983 to December 1989.	6 years
6	From the invasion of Panama to the Gulf War	January 1990 to August 1990	7 months
7	Intermittently	Between Feb. 1991 and October 2001	9.5 years.
Total amount of time at peace: 35 years and 10 months = 54% of the past 72 years.

If you include the Cold War:

The Cold War lasted from   1947 to 1991, including the Berlin Blockade (1948-49), the   Bay of Pigs (1961), the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) and other flashpoints: It lasted 44 years. This raises the amount of time America has been at war between 1947 and 1991 by 27 years and 10 months.

If you include the Cold War in the total amount of time America has been at war since 1941, that total becomes 61 years, i.e. 85% of the time.

The only times when America was clearly NOT at war were the 1945-47 years and, intermittently, the 1991-2001 decade (Clinton, essentially). This means that we have enjoyed 11 years of peace in nearly a century.

© Tom Kando 2014

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