As 2015 unfolds, we sit in a crumbing America at the seat of global inequality, fastened to violence and cruel and punishing wars. While the Dow Jones average rockets higher and higher, stagnation and out-and-out recession continues to feed off much of the world landscape, leaving in its wake the decimation of billions of lives and increasingly savage and merciless conflicts between corporate and financial ogres for resources, markets and profits.
The intensification and growth of tremendous wealth for the elites together with worsening conditions for the overwhelming majority of the world's population signifies a build-up of enormous social and economic tensions that, if not abated, promises to erupt in a major global war sometime soon.
Inequality and war are inextricably tied together --- inequality is the blood on the blade of capitalism.
For capitalism cannot solve the economic and social crises it creates, it can only exacerbate them. Capitalism can do little more than produce global collapse and create ruthless conflicts between corporate and financial tyrants, leading to confrontation and warfare.
Global inequality and the swelling of the ranks of the uber-rich
The three richest familes in the world have more assets than the combined wealth of the forty eight poorest nations
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Economic inequality has reached extreme, fanatical levels. From Ghana to Germany, Italy to Indonesia, the gap between rich and poor is broadening at remarkable rates.
According to the United Nations, over one billion 200 million people worldwide are living on less than $1.25 a day.
As early as 2006 the UN found that the richest 1% of the world had accumulated 39.9% of global wealth.
In 2011, the "Global Wealth Report" (Global Study of Wealth) of Credit Suisse Research Institute, found that 10% of the super-rich had 84% of all the wealth in the world, while the poorest half of the world population had only 1% of the cornucopia (http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2014/05/140513_economia_riqueza_invisible_desigualdad_en).
The following web-site presents statistics, country by country, regarding the members of the global top 1% of ultra-high net worth individuals in 2014 ((http://www.statista.com/statistics/204100/distribution-of-global-wealth-top-1-percent-by-country/).
About 18 million individuals residing in the United States belong to the global top 1% the of ultra-high net worth individuals worldwide.
In the US, the Walton family wealth in 2010 was as large as the wealth of the bottom 48.8 million families in the United States, or 41.5 percent of all American families (click here).
In 2013, seven out of 10 people lived in countries where economic inequality was worse than 30 years ago.
In 2014, Oxfam calculated that just 85 individuals in the whole world have the equivalent wealth as half the people on our planet. (http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/even-it-up-time-to-end-extreme-inequality-333012).
During 2013, the 85 richest people in the world increased their fortunes by 14%, which means that together they made profits of $668 million every day, or nearly half a million dollars per minute.
Inequality is not limited to India, Africa or the usual familiar haunts of global poverty.
Spain, for example, is no stranger to this abysmal trend. Throughout 2013, the 20 richest people in Spain increased their fortune by more than $1,760,000 per hour. They now have as much money as the poorest 30% of the population (nearly 14 million people).
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