"The history of the great events of this world are scarcely more than the history of crime." --Voltaire -- Covert History; accessible 2-24-07 "Behind every great fortune there is a crime." -- Honoré de Balzac -- Mexico’s Plutocracy Thrives on Robber-Baron Concessions By EDUARDO PORTER; August 27, 2007; nytimes.com "For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." -- Matthew XXV:29, KJV" -- The Matthew Effect in Social Networks; April 15, 2007; paul.kedrosky.com

This is a draft, subject to change as new information becomes available. Please contact me with any factual errors, inaccuracies, or miscalculations found, so that I may address them. Thank you.

To answer this question we first have to define "rich".

So the basement income to qualify as 'rich' will here be considered to be $400,000 in annual income that'll come in regardless of whether anyone in the family is holding a paying job or not.

As pointed out in The super-rich, the 'plain' rich, the 'poorest' rich... even winning the maximum prizes available in high-profile sweepstakes like the Publisher's Clearinghouse won't get you into the 'rich' category without still more large gobs of luck to go with it. Some winners may find themselves in worse financial shape a few years after winning than they were before! And prestigious awards like the Nobel Prize, Pulitzer, or MacArthur Foundation Award fall even shorter in regards to propelling winners into the 'rich' class.

-- Yahoo! News - Woman Who Won the Va. Lottery Is Broke; Strange News - AP; May 03, 2004; citing The Roanoke Times "These people believe they are millionaires. They buy into the hype, but most of these people will go to their graves without ever becoming a millionaire," -- Winning the lottery with no riches: Unlucky winners who lost the money (Page 1 of 3) By Ellen Goodstein; Bankrate.com; accessible online 4-29-07 "...what has emerged as something of a pattern among lottery winners nationally: Someone with little training in dealing with vast sums of money gets a sudden windfall, only to see it tumble maddeningly into the wind." "This guy's a blue-collar factory worker. The only thing he did that you could even say is wrong is he trusted his financial advisers." -- Lottery winner blames bad advice for his losses From $5.5 million to living on a pension By DERRICK NUNNALLY; April 20, 2007; jsonline.com

Turns out inheritance of wealth is by far your best bet. Flip side? If you have no such prospects your chances of ever attaining riches dims substantially.

It appears that 69% of everyone qualifying as rich today basically inherited their wealth. So if you have a rich relative who really really likes you (and is considerably older than you), you may have a shot there.

Marrying rich? Hope you like your wealthy cousin!

Marrying into wealth isn't so different from inheriting it as many people think. For example, it might still be a requirement that you're related by blood to your spouse(!)

"The rich have frequently chosen inbreeding as a means to keep estates intact and consolidate power" -- Go Ahead, Kiss Your Cousin Heck, marry her if you want to By Richard Conniff; DISCOVER Vol. 24 No. 8 (August 2003)

Don't be too quick to dismiss the notion of marrying into wealth. For that appears to be how 4.2% of the newly rich do it.

Unfortunately for the gold diggers among us, there's only roughly 31 such eligible men per year, and 31 women, throughout the entire country.

So 69% basically inherit their wealth, 4.2% marry into it, and 26.8% make it in other ways.

So what sort of people exist in the 26.8%? It's an eclectic mix representing many different sorts, from top crime lords and corporate executives to superstars among the entrepreneurial, film, and music crowds, and the biggest lottery winners in history. Steve Jobs of Apple Computer was one of the entrepreneurial breakouts of these, long ago.

So is there any way to figure out the percentage of the newly rich getting that way from both outright illegal as well as maybe technically legal but unethical activities? Like both big-time dealers in illicit drugs, weapons, and human trafficking, as well as top corporate executives responsible for stealing the pensions or health benefits from thousands or hundreds of thousands of workers, or bilking investors, or secretly committing acts imperiling worker or customer safety or the environment?

Maybe so. For there are some estimates of money laundering to go on here. And all the money that's successfully laundered ends up making its owners smell like roses so far as the public or law enforcement is concerned in regards to their actions.

Basically big-time crooks must at some point 'launder' their money, or disguise it as legitimately gotten gains, in order to spend or invest it in any practical manner without incurring unwanted scrutiny or other problems from official society.

Today there's probably at least $1.5 trillion per year of money being laundered worldwide.

In 1996 (almost ten years ago as of 2005) it was estimated money laundering worldwide could be occurring at a scale of up to $1.5 trillion per year. -- Basic Facts about Money Laundering; found on or about 9-10-05; www1.oecd.org

As in general some 21.2% of all (accounted for) economic activity occurs in or about the USA, it seems safe to assume at minimum a similar proportion of global money laundering is taking place there as well. Or at least $318,000,000,000 worth. Annually.

In 2004 the estimated USA GDP was $11,750,000,000,000 out of a total $55,500,000,000,000 for the entire world. Or some 21.2% -- CIA - The World Factbook -- Rank Order - GDP; found on or about 9-10-05; cia.gov

If the $318,000,000,000 of laundered money is distributed among criminal households in America in a fashion similar to that of legitimate funds, then even among criminal families only the top 1% of them would qualify as rich as defined on this site. And that 1% might possess close to 40% of the total annual income for the group. Or $127,200,000,000.

"The top 1 percent own almost 40 percent of the wealth–compared with less than 13 percent 25 years ago." -- What kind of capitalism? By Juan T. Gatbonton; manilatimes.net; July 6, 2003

Overall nationwide of ALL the wealthiest 1% (legal and not), 77.38% make between $400,000 and just under $1 million per year, 22.6% between $1 million and less than $175 million, and 0.02% $175 million or more.

So it appears all criminally financed wealthy households of this kind in America enjoy incomes above $400,000 a year, but well below $175 million a year.

As there's just some 1,464 newly rich US households each year, and we've already accounted for 1072 of them deriving from inheritance or marriage, that leaves only 392 in which any new criminally rich may emerge.

If the criminally rich gain in numbers at roughly the same rate as the officially sanctioned rich (which successfully laundered funds would enable), then their total number may grow at about 7% per year.

"The number of ultra-high-net-worth individuals is expected to grow 7% a year during the next few years..." -- US Led a Resurgence Last Year Among Millionaires World-Wide By Robert Frank; Wall Street Journal; June 15, 2004

So we've got an estimate here of a total amount of criminally made money laundered into the system, plus percentages regarding what fraction of that money likely goes to what portion of the wealthy criminal population in America. And an idea for how much that wealthy population may grow annually.

We also have a ceiling for the actual number of newly rich criminals there could be: 392.

That is, in a year around 2005 where it just so happened that every newly wealthy household was generated either via inheritance, marriage, or crime-- and no other method whatsoever-- 392 would be approximately the maximum number possible for such criminals.

So since we're hurting here for more precise data, why not play with the numbers available to us, and see if that gives us an idea how far off or wrong the 392 number might actually be?

For instance, if 392 represented the total number of newly rich US crooks in 2005-- and approximately 7% the number of pre-existing rich crook population in the country-- then the total number of rich criminal households in America would have to be around 5,600. Out of maybe 132 million total households.

That would put the wealthy criminal element in America at roughly 0.00424% of the total population.

Hmmm. That sounds entirely plausible! Which is surprising to me personally, as I expected the opposite result. I.e., I did the calculation simply to get a sense of how preposterous it might be for all 392 newly rich in America each year without inheritance or marriage sources to usually stem from crime alone.

So newly rich criminal households could easily account for every single new wealthy household appearing in a given year in America without benefit of inheritance or marriage. That would leave the number stemming from actual legal breakthrough entrepreneurial successes like Steve Jobs of Apple Computer, superstar billing in music or films like Britney Spears or Cameron Diaz, or the biggest lottery wins in history as basically just statistical noise. So that in general very near 100% of the newly wealthy in America are getting there by way of inheritance, marriage, or outright crime.

Keep in mind the above figures dealt only with criminals like the higher ups of drug, prostitution, and slavery rings; crooks who must launder their money to get it into the conventional economic system.

But there's a whole other bunch of wrong doers who might never have to launder their money in such a way, as their profits are generated from 'inside' the system to start with, rather than outside: the white collar bunch who exploit secrecy, weaknesses in government regulations and law enforcement, the lag of policy updates behind technological advances, and plain old political corruption to wrongfully endanger or steal from their employees, investors, customers, or tax payers, leaving the rest of us facing the fallout for years or decades to come in environmental degradation, higher deficits and taxes, fewer public services, deteriorating infrastructure, looted pensions and benefits, higher prices, fewer good paying jobs, and slower innovation due to less honest competition. For those additional figures we'd have to plumb the estimates of securities fraud and other such elements occurring per year in America. And yes, I'll try to get to that too as I get the opportunity.

But just skimming some estimates for these seem to further support the overall criminal path to riches, and in the proportion speculated of here.

For example, one old estimate of corporate crime costs stands at 2.6 trillion dollars.

"...corporate crime cost the U.S. economy about 2.6 trillion dollars (in 1994 dollars)... These mind-boggling numbers actually leave out a number of other serious and costly crimes, such as money laundering, redlining, capital flight, insurance fraud, illegal attempts to destroy unions, and securities fraud." -- Capital Crimes: The Political Economy of Crime in America by George Winslow; Monthly Review November 2000; monthlyreview.org

Yikes!

Although the reference above provides a breakdown of the total into items including tax fraud, a much larger number than that for total tax cheating is given in the 2004 article below: $311 billion per year. This larger figure may account for both the lost taxes from white collar corporate crime and the more easily defined crime lords described earlier.

And as the 2006 article shows, the number just keeps rising.

-- Stroke the rich IRS has become a subsidy system for super-wealthy Americans IRS winks at rich deadbeats by David Cay Johnston; April 11, 2004; sfgate.com "...roughly $345 billion, or more than 16% of all taxes owed, initially went unpaid in 2001....this year's gap could be $400 billion or more." "...average taxpayers pay a "surtax" of more than $2,000 a year to subsidize those who don't pay." -- U.S. sees red over back taxes By Richard Wolf, USA TODAY, 3-1-06

The US government actually seems to encourage internal corruption as well as corporate crime-- so long as it involves sufficiently large sums.

For the richer a crook gets from his crimes, the less likely the government will investigate his ill-gotten gains with a tax audit or other means.

Heck, besides doing its best to stamp out whistleblowing and independent audits and investigations, the government also bends over backwards in other ways to empower insider crime. Like literally hiding some possibly incriminating information under the rubric of "national security" or "executive privilege" or by utilizing other forms of censorship.

Of course the best and easiest way to avoid the availability of incriminating information is to not collect it in the first place. Or else avoid any credible analysis of existing information which might lead to you or your cronies getting into hot water.

"precise financial losses resulting from White Collar Crime (WCC) for consumers, government, and business are unknown since no systematic data collection exists." -- quote from the 2001-2006 strategic plan of the US Justice Department -- Corporate Crime and Abuse: Tracking the Problem; Center for Corporate Policy; corporatepolicy.org; accessible online on or around 10-5-05

One way the government does things like this is by basically allowing corporate lobbyists to write the rules of regulation under which big businesses (and even government agencies!) are run.

But despite them writing their own rules, these guys often can't even abide by those! Apparently due to them feeling they have everything so securely under their thumb that even their own custom-made rules are meaningless.

"The researchers went on to theorize that getting power causes people to focus so keenly on the potential rewards, like money, sex, public acclaim...preferably all at once — that they become oblivious to the people around them." "The corollary is that as the rich and powerful increasingly focus on potential rewards, powerless types notice the likely costs and become more inhibited." "In social psychology terms, disinhibited Fast Forward types need ordinary cautious mortals to remind them that the traffic lights do in fact occasionally turn yellow or even, sometimes, red." -- The Rich Are More Oblivious Than You and Me - New York Times By RICHARD CONNIFF; April 4, 2007; nytimes.com -- Top 20 Largest Cases of Companies Caught For Committing Fraud Against the Government | Government Dirt; accessible online 4-18-07; governmentdirt.com

Another way government aids wealthy crooks and insiders is by making it easy for them to hide portions of their income or assets through use of various loopholes which serve to protect them from taxes or accurate accounting by outsiders. So often the actual net worth and income of the rich or the corporate are even larger than the awesome amounts indicated by the statistics released to the public.

I'm curious if this policy has anything to do with the fact many of our top governmental officials appear to be substantially better off than the rest of us (financially speaking). And election campaign laws have practically assured no poor person can run for office without the blessing of the rich themselves.

Now if you steal a TV set or car (or rob a bank) all sorts of law enforcement folks will be after you.

But just juggle the books in government or corporate business to shift millions or billions from employee pensions or health benefits (or small investors) to the pockets of you and co-conspirators, and often no one will care at all. Yeah, the employees will get a horrible surprise at retirement (or the next time they get injured or ill)-- as will the investors in their own aspirations-- but you and your cohorts will likely get away scot-free. That's how it's done in America.

But maybe you'd like some more information regarding the massive corporate and/or government crime going on in America these days. Well, for those of you presently visiting the version of this page which includes references, a sampling follows below [CLICK HERE to get the references page if necessary]:

Notice anything here? Namely, the amount of crime going on in government and corporate agencies in America dwarfs that in the so-called 'outlaw' community our leaders typically rail against.

So in America, various corporate executives, politicians, bureaucrats, and generals appear to be responsible for at least EIGHT TIMES the criminal acts of folks like drug dealers, human traffickers, and black market arms dealers-- at least in financial terms.

Yikes!

Folks, if there's almost TEN TIMES the crime going on in our government and corporate circles than among the 'outlaws' we officially send our police and FBI agents after every day-- and we punish shop-lifters and the homeless much more frequently and about a zillion times harsher than the well dressed crooks stealing tens of millions or even billions of dollars from the rest of us-- isn't there something wrong with our system?

So 69% basically inherit their wealth, 4.2% marry into it, and virtually all the rest make it via criminal acts.

Yeah, sure there's the occasional superstar like Apple's Steve Jobs or Britney Spears who defy the mainstream statistics. Plus a mega-lottery winner now and then. But those are so few as to rate as noise or rounding off errors in the numbers.

"Despite a $1 yearly salary, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs still managed to top Forbes' list of highest paid CEOs for 2006, raking in more than $646 million through stock-based compensation -- more than twice that of the next highest paid boss." -- Apple's Steve Jobs tops list of highest paid CEOs By AppleInsider Staff; May 4, 2007; appleinsider.com

Plus there's a small multitude of popular entertainers and athletes whose incomes spike into rich territory briefly only to sputter out later, leaving those folks in the bottom 99% of income again at some point, if they didn't save for a rainy day.

"History is filled with examples of wealthy people who have squandered their fortunes through poor money management." -- Lifestyles of the Rich and Stupid 1st April 2007 (by J.D.) ; getrichslowly.org/blog/ -- Bankrupt celebrities; accessible online 4-18-07; nndb.com

Yikes! Surely that's not so! You might say. Not in America! That inheritance, marriage, and crime represent the only realistic paths to wealth!

Alas, this appears to be the case according to research.

"We are living the American Dream in reverse..." "...The hourly wages of average workers are 11 percent lower than they were back in 1973 (adjusted for inflation), despite rising worker productivity. CEO pay, by contrast, has skyrocketed -- up a median 30 percent in 2004 alone...[and]...Americans work over 200 hours more a year on average than workers in other rich industrialized countries....The share of national income going to wages and salaries is the lowest since 1929." -- American Road Leads Off a Cliff by Holly Sklar, citing the Providence Journal, December 29, 2005 ["http://www.projo.com"] "America may still think of itself as the land of opportunity, but the chances of living a rags-to-riches life are a lot lower than elsewhere in the world...The likelihood that a child born into a poor family will make it into the top five percent is just one percent..." -- America's rags-to-riches dream an illusion: study By Alister Bull; Apr 26, 2006

Don't believe me? Then let's examine the numbers further... What's the number of folks ACTUALLY getting rich each and every year in America? How many are reaching the point where they're likely to have $400,000 a year or more coming in from now on, despite being effectively 100% retired?

Well, in order to earn $400,000 a year purely from something like interest, how big would your principal have to be?

Based on the interest currently generated by my own savings it appears that number would be roughly around $35 million.

So someone a millionaire 35 times over could swing it.

With income taxes roughly amounting to 50% for gigantic lottery wins in America, that means someone who won around $70 million all for themselves (no need to split it with a pool of ticket buyers) could get rich-- IF they immediately stuck the money into interest bearing accounts and waited a full year to spend a penny. And never ever withdrew more than a single year's worth of interest annually.

In 2003 the USA boasted 2.3 million millionaires. A 14% increase in a year, according to CNN. Or perhaps some 322,000 new millionaires for the year.

a - j m o o n e y h a m . c o m - o r i g i n a l

Unfortunately you'd need to be a 35x millionaire at minimum to earn the interest required to be rich.

So can we determine how many 35x millionaires are created in the US each year on average?

Hmmm. That number is apparently very hard to come by. But let's try making an educated guess.

Turns out somebody documented the fact there were around 70,000 individuals worldwide in 2003 with $30 million or more in financial assets each.

Yeah, I know. I said 35x millionaires were needed to reach the level of wealth defined here. And these figures at hand will only help determine numbers relating to 30x millionaires. So we are fudging a bit. But still our calculations should get us into the general ballpark for the purposes of this page. And if 30x millionaires could find a way to get a better interest rate than I currently do, then they might achieve the magnitude of wealth we're looking for after all. That's not entirely implausible. After all, folks with a much bigger principal than I possess should have more options interest-wise.

For reasons of comparison with other estimates here I'm going to assume that each of these individuals basically accounts for the lion's share of the income for their immediate family or household.

So we've got 70,000 households worldwide in 2003 possessing $30 million or more in financial assets each.

Around 2001 Merrill Lynch coined the term "ultra-high-net worth individuals" or "UHNWIs" to describe these folks. Another source said they expected this group would grow by roughly 7% each year around 2005 and thereabouts.

"The ranks of deca-millionaires--those with more than $10 million in net assets--has grown from just 48,100 households in 1983 to 274,000 in 1998--a fivefold increase in 15 years." -- Tuesday, citing Fairy Tale Falls Short for Rich By ASHLEY DUNN; March 14, 2000; Los Angeles Times -- Google Search: newly minted multi-millionaires "Mr. Smith noted the wealth of ultra-high-net worth individuals (UHNWIs) have investable assets of more than $30 million) increased 6% to $8.37 trillion. The number of UHNWIs rose 3% to an estimated 57,000 people at the end of last year." The report seems to be saying this was so for the year 2000. -- portland imc - 2003.08.30 - The Super Rich Are Out of Sight citing "World Wealth Report - 2001" at http://www.ml.com/about/press_release/pdf/05142001_worldwealthreport2001.pdf from Merrill Lynch. "Most striking: the study found that in the U.S. and Canada, the number of ultra-rich -- those with investment assets of more than $30 million -- has reached 30,000..." "The number of ultra-high-net-worth individuals is expected to grow 7% a year during the next few years..." -- US Led a Resurgence Last Year Among Millionaires World-Wide By Robert Frank; Wall Street Journal; June 15, 2004 -- Google Search: ultra-high-net worth individuals

So we've got roughly 70,000 of these "ultra-high-net worth individuals" in 2003, with some analysts expecting this number to grow by around 7% annually.

That would give us approximately 4,900 new 30x millionaires or better a year worldwide, circa 2005.

So how many of these are new US millionaires? Maybe 1,464 if the 30x and better millionaires number is proportional to the total US share of global millionaires.

In 2003 there were 2.3 million millionaires in the US, compared to 7.7 million worldwide. So near 29.9% of all millionaires worldwide lived in the US. -- 1 in 125 Americans are millionaires - Jun. 15, 2004; money.cnn.com

So there's possibly 1,464 new 30x and better US millionaires per year.

On 4-3-05 there were about 295,798,362 people in the US. -- U.S. and World Population Clocks - POPClocks; census.gov

1,464 new truly rich folks a year out of 295,798,362 in America results in a 0.000004949 chance of any US citizen attaining this status for the first time next year.

Or about one chance out of 202,061.

That means if somehow you could make the whole world maintain its current state indefinitely-- with the only difference being you yourself were immortal-- then you'd need only wait another 202,061 years to definitely become rich yourself! Hooray!

But wait! The above figures include those who basically inherit their wealth. So what's the number who get rich without such an advantage?

Apparently around 454 per year. Of course this number may still include many who get rich by marrying into wealthy families. Could we possibly estimate that number? Maybe.

Let's see: It appears over two million marriages a year take place in America. So over four million (at least some 1.56% of Americans) marry each year.

If we assume that wealthy Americans possess the same tendency towards marriage as all other Americans, then some 62 marriages in the US each year may involve at least one person of sufficient wealth to establish an all new rich household.

"More than two-million marriages are performed each year in the United States." -- THIS IS AMERICA #1068 - Weddings By Jerilyn Watson; 6/11/ 01; manythings.org "More than 2.3 million couples will tie the knot in the United States this year..." -- Love in bloom: Summer brides embrace traditions and trends; pressroom.americangreetings.com; Contact: Amanda Todorovich / 216.252.7300, ext. 2912; accessible online on or about 8-24-05 There appears to be around 999,800 households or family units in the USA around the dawn of the 21st century who qualify as independently wealthy. BUT-- the vast majority of these likely cannot spin off an entirely new household or family group which itself will qualify as rich too. Even if the wealth available is split right down the middle for the task. So we need to further prune the numbers. How many wealthy households could actually generate a whole new rich household via marriage if wished? At minimum twice the annual income required to get into the wealthy ranks in the first place would have to be available. Or $800,000 a year. This takes us to about 226,000 US households. But of course few households would likely be willing to hand over as much as 50% of their net assets to help form a new wealthy household. So just how rich would a family have to be in order to shrug off the assets required to form an all new wealthy household via marriage? Or at least $400,000 worth of annual unemployed income? Well, the 200 households making at minimum $175 million a year could do that with no concern whatsoever-- as $400,000 for them per year amounts to a rounding error. So those 200 families can certainly spin off such new family units via marriage with no problem at all. Indeed, they might spend $400,000 or more on the marriage ceremony alone. If 1.56% of those super-rich 200 families produce a marrying member per year, that would amount to three supremely eligible men and women annually. But what of the rich households making between $800,000 and $175 million per year? Where's the typical cut off point? That is, at what level of wealth does it become sufficiently bearable for an existing household to basically hand over $400,000 a year in income in order to begat a new one of 'poor' rich status? I suppose that depends on just how extravagant a lifestyle the original household is accustomed to. Plus how easily they might be able to ratchet up their subsequent income to make up for the permanent diversion of funds. Perhaps most households would tend to sustain such a loss if $400,000 represented something less than 20% of their yearly income. After all, there will be the side benefit of the kids moving out! So let's settle on the figure of 20% here. That would put the threshold of income for willingly spinning off a new $400,000 per year income family unit at around $2 million annually for the original household. So how many households earn $2 million or more annually in the US? Well, there's roughly 225,800 making between $1 million and $175 million per year. But how to figure how many make at least $4 million a year? Asset net worth. If a net worth of $30 million is necessary to collect $400,000 minimum a year in interest, then a net worth of $150 million may be required to get $2 million annually. Yikes! OK, I admit here I don't have the financial savvy claimed by Wall Street brokers and big bankers. So there may be all sorts of ways to make more than $2 million a year off a nest egg of $150 million. All I'm doing here is basing my calculations on what my own bank gives me in interest on my own investments, and scaling it up. So in the dumbest, easiest, most straightforward, and maybe worst way to generate income off a nest egg, it appears at least $150 million would be necessary to earn $2 million a year. If anything like this number holds for a substantial number of the truly wealthy, then that drastically reduces the likely number of all new wealthy households which might be spun off annually from existing family units. -- The super-rich, the 'plain' rich, the 'poorest' rich ...and everyone else For there appears to be only some 3959 US households in possession of net worths of $150 million or more (rounded off from 3958.63). If these households produce marrying folks at the same rate as Americans in general, then some 62 (rounded off from 61.76) eligible men and women from these families get married each year. I derived this number from an interpolation where F(x)=(((x-xb)/(xa-xb))ya)-(((x-xa)/(xa-xb))yb). (Yes, I'm awfully rusty in my mathematics, so anyone more proficient is invited to correct my calculations.) Forbes reported in 2004 some 400 Americans of a net worth of $750 million or more. -- The Forbes 400 By David Armstrong and Peter Newcomb, Matthew Miller, Jackie Brown, Danielle DiPenti and Adam Kemezis. Additional reporting by Kiri Blakeley, Erika Brown, Brendan Coffey, Kerry Dolan, Jonathan Fahey, Stephane Fitch, Lea Goldman, Christopher Helman, Patrick Keenan-Devlin, Daniel Kruger, Seth Lubove, Victoria Murphy, Dorothy Pomerantz, SarahThorpe and Nathan Vardi; 10.11.04 The Rich Register 2005 lists 4,700 Americans as having a net worth of more than $25 million apiece. I'm assuming here that we can take the above number as representing some 4700 separate wealthy households. That is, that the majority of individuals listed do not live in the same home with one another. -- The Rich Register 2005; hoovers.com So are my estimates of the interest generated on such sums even in the ballpark when compared to real world situations? Well, getting hold of such information is notoriously difficult. But here goes. The legal battle over the estate of the late founder of Herbalife International offers us one peek. The estate was reportedly worth close to $400 million in mid-2000. Since then some $17-20 million in various legal and other fees have been subtracted from it. But the trustees expect the estate to be worth well over $500 million by around 2027-- when it all goes to its legal heir. Whatever the total amount currently existing, it's yielding something like $3 million a year. Information relating to a different family member involved in all this says they themselves have a net worth of over $10 million, which is yielding them over $600,000 per year in income. The article seems to say that this second person also gets $120,000 a year in child support, plus $100,000 a year for other expenses. It's unclear if these other amounts are included in the $600,000 annual income mentioned before. But my impression is that they are not. $600,000 generated per year from $10 million works out to maybe a 6% interest rate. $3 million generated per year from $400 million indicates a 0.75% interest rate. I guess the awful rate has something to do with ongoing legal fees taking a bite out of the action. So anyway in these two cases of real world big money we get an interest rate range between 0.75% and 6%. A range in which my previous assumptions seem still to fit. -- A boy and his $400 million By Robert W. Welkos; 9-13-05; news.yahoo.com

As the truly wealthy represent such a miniscule percentage of the population, we can probably safely assume that the number of annual marriages where both partners are wealthy is so small as to be statistically insignificant.

So for our purposes here virtually all (100%) American marriages including a person of such wealth will also include a much poorer mate.

This leaves us with around 392 Americans each year getting rich without basically inheriting it or marrying into wealth (454 minus 62).

Unless of course already wealthy households are willing to part with more than 20% of their wealth to help the new family unit enjoy wealthy status. In that case the number of newly rich achieving their wealth without benefit of inheritance or marriage could be lower.

But let's be optimistic!

This leaves us with maybe as many as 392 openings for folks being reborn rich per year in America without benefit of inheritance or marriage.

392 per year amounts to 26.8% (rounded off from 26.7759) of the total 1,464.

So how do the 26.8% of the newly rich without benefit of inheritance or marriage do it?

Unfortunately, it appears almost all of them do it by breaking the law. As described earlier on this page.

But once in a blue moon someone seems to make it in legal fashion.

So let's examine the channels of wealth-acquisition available to average, law-abiding citizens. Albeit microscopic opportunities compared to the monumental avenues of inheritance, marriage, and crime, most of these courses are none-the-less often touted by various popular authors and powerful political factions, despite them almost never working out for the vast majority of those who try them.

Note that the fact these channels never work for more than 1% of those who try them, at most (based on official historical records of wealth) and likely truly work for only something like 0.0004% of the population (according to the information listed in this page: a rate no better than pure random luck, as in a lottery), has done nothing to diminish the credibility of those authors and political groups among the populace, as there's virtually zero media scrutiny of their claims. Before, during, or after the fact. So those authors and political operatives reliably rake in the profits and other benefits of their claims year after year, decade after decade, with no one of prominence challenging the truth of their statements.

Why? Partly because the truth is so hard to come by-- and even if acquired, difficult to analyze. And after that, awfully complex to present to the man in the street.

Haven't you noticed that aspect of this page? The bewildering, overpowering nature of the details and complexity necessary to get at the truth?

Another reason those folks aren't challenged on their claims is Americans-- like all folks everywhere-- want to believe their country is the best place in the world; special. Better than other places, in all the ways that matter most.

And maybe more than anything else, Americans want to believe in the American dream.

But the truth shows that to be overwhelmingly a lie.

Who wants to accept that? Certainly not me! Nor most other Americans, I'm sure.

But anyone who truly craves freedom and opportunity must seek out the truth of their existence. To do otherwise is to court failure at the least-- and calamity at worst.

So shall we examine those avenues to wealth-building so often hyped by charlatans among us?

#1: Getting rich in the stock market: For most small investors the stock market is basically just a branch office of Las Vegas

So it's just another lottery, where pure luck will usually be the major determining factor of success or failure (unless you're already wealthy). See further below for more on pure luck ventures.

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However, if you are a psychopath you have a considerably better chance than 99% of other Americans at attaining wealth in the stock market and elsewhere.

"...the best stock market investors might plausibly be called "functional psychopaths." ...many company chiefs and top lawyers may also show they share the same trait." -- Psychopaths could be best financial traders?; Reuters; 9-19-05; news.yahoo.com "Professor Hare estimates that 1% of the general population in North America are psychopaths." "They could be perfectly qualified for top posts in the military, politics or in huge multi-national companies..." -- Is your boss a 'corporate psycho'?; 13 January, 2004; news.bbc.co.uk "...up to 50 per cent of business managers could have psychopathic or similar tendencies...manipulative characteristics are often rewarded in the business world." -- 50pc of managers could be psychopaths: research 12/01/2007. ABC News Online; BBC; abc.net.au "One of the most important comments on deceit, I think, was made by Adam Smith. He pointed out that a major goal of business is to deceive and oppress the public. And one of the striking features of the modern period is the institutionalization of that process, so that we now have huge industries deceiving the public—and they're very conscious about it, the public relations industry. Interestingly, this developed in the freest countries—in Britain and the US—roughly around time of WWI, when it was recognized that enough freedom had been won that people could no longer be controlled by force. So modes of deception and manipulation had to be developed in order to keep them under control." -- Noam Chomsky -- Noam Chomsky + Robert Trivers The anti-war activist and MIT linguist meets the Rutgers evolutionary biologist in the Seed Salon to discuss deceit. by Edit Staff • Posted September 6, 2006; seedmagazine.com "...employees in the US are bullied up to 50% more often than workers in Scandinavia. However, just 9% of employees were aware that the negative acts they experienced constituted bullying, suggesting that bullying behaviour is ingrained in the culture of the US workplace." "...the negative effects are widespread: employees who witness others being bullied suffer secondary harm, reporting high levels of stress, and low levels of work satisfaction." "The study concludes that US organizational and cultural structures frequently enable, trigger, and reward bullying. U.S. companies stress market processes, individualism, and the importance of managers over workers, which discourages collaborative efforts and enables powerful organizational members to bully others without recrimination." -- Workplace bullying 50 percent higher in the US than Scandinavia; 29-May-2007; Contact: Verity Warne verity.warne@oxon.blackwellpublishing.com Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

#2: Inventing, marketing, or working your way to riches: For most getting rich will have little or nothing to do with the merit of their ideas or how hard they work

Got a great idea you think could make you rich? There's very little chance of that. Sure, your idea might be great, but it's much more likely to be effectively stolen from you in one manner or another rather than bringing you great rewards. Or else you'll simply never be able to gather the resources needed to launch it.

This is why stories about the very very few folks who did succeed in such efforts (like Steve Jobs of Apple Computer) are so well known to practically everyone around the world: they are the ultra rare exceptions.

And all this is despite the fact that the very best company workers might be 50 times more valuable to their employer, than the worst. And yet the very worst in the company may well often get the top positions and top pay(!)

#3: And yes, the above relates to your chances of getting rich via your own small business, too.

For the vast majority of small business folk, having their own business basically offers them a bit more freedom of personal decision-making and (often) greatly dilutes the power of others to 'boss them around', as the self-employed tend to possess lots of 'little bosses' (customers) while the plain employed usually suffer one or two 'big bosses' (an immediate supervisor, etc.) instead.

In recent history the self-employed usually were forced to effectively work more hours for less pay than the average plain employed person. So it could often be a toss up as to which worker was truly in a superior situation.

But in places like America the edge may now be going to the self-employed, as regular employers are increasingly squeezing their workers to put in similar numbers of hours for similar amounts of pay as the self-employed. Add to that the increasing job and wage insecurity for plain workers these days, and it appears virtually everyone may soon be living like the majority of the self-employed have for perhaps generations.

Only the truly self-employed may enjoy at least slightly more autonomy and security than the plain employed. Plus, there's always the 'lottery' factor for those truly self-employed who are capable of both recognizing a golden opportunity if it appears, and scaling up their organization to exploit it-- as well as willing to do so. That 'lottery' factor is what largely accounts for the success of people like Michael Dell of Dell Computer, who was self-employed in college building PCs for others, and seized a rare opportunity to eventually put his organization in the top tier of computer companies worldwide.

"Besides education, self-employment is popularly perceived as a major route to upward mobility. Opportunities to get ahead on the basis of being self-employed or striking out on one's own to start a new business, however, have sharply declined. In colonial times, about three fourths of the non-slave American population was self- employed most as small family farmers. Today, only seven percent of the labor force is self employed..." "As self-employment has declined, the size and dominance of corporations has increased. This leaves many fewer opportunities for "self-made" individuals to enter existing markets or to establish new ones." -- The Meritocracy Myth by Stephen J. McNamee and Robert K. Miller, Jr. University of North Carolina at Wilmington; ncsociology.org; accessible online on or around 8-25-05; Sociation Today Volume 2, Number 1 Spring 2004 "The breadth of executives’ social networks with colleagues at other firms plays a crucial role in deciding which tech start-ups will live or die..." -- Size Really Matters – New Insights for Tech Start-Ups’ Survival in February Management Insights Hanover, MD, February 26, 2007; Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences; informs.org "Just 18.7 percent of the millionaires own — or owned before they retired — part of a business or professional practice...." -- New Rise in Number of Millionaire Families By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON; March 28, 2006 "Completely without warning, their family business, South End Cleaners and Tailors, had won a "Best of Boston" prize as the best neighborhood dry cleaners. The letter came with a certificate and an invitation to a fancy party to mingle with the rest of Boston's finest. The next news to arrive wasn't nearly as gratifying. Their landlord stopped by to tell them that he was increasing their rent from $2,900 a month to $5,000. If they chose not to pay, they had to vacate the Tremont Street property by Oct. 1. That's wasn't all the bad news. The landlord, Wayne Doherty, also told them that he planned to open his own dry cleaners at the same location, once they departed." -- Undoing their 'Best' By Adrian Walker, Globe Columnist | August 28, 2007 "There is a large random factor in the success of any company. So the guys you end up reading about in the papers are the ones who are very smart, totally dedicated, and win the lottery." -- How to Make Wealth; May 2004; paulgraham.com

But let me reiterate: most of the self-employed NEVER see such a rich opportunity come their way. And of those who do, fewer still have the skills or other resources available to suitably ramp up their operations to exploit it before someone else. And of the tiny number who both get such an opportunity and can effectively scale up to meet it, some simply choose not to. Why? Because money isn't everything, of course. And often chasing it too far and hard will force you to become a different person entirely, as well as lose many or all of your loved ones-- much the same as might happen if you acquire a drug addiction.

-- Be Careful What You Wish For Lottery Win Exacerbated Va. Man's Troubles, Friends and Family Say By Eric M. Weiss; washingtonpost.com; June 26, 2003; Page B01

#4: Make your fortune in real estate? Dream on

#5: As for simply working hard to get rich, well, that's a very very long shot too.

Americans in general have always been among the hardest working folks in the world. The entire nation seems to have inherited a strong work ethic from the Puritans: some of the earliest colonizers from Europe. And in the centuries since, the country has gradually and steadily handed over ever more control over its destiny to purely commercial interests (i.e. business interests and employers as opposed to public interest and employees), sometimes to the detriment of everything else. So today average Americans tend to be at least in the top two or three of the hardest working populations in the world, if not number one. And this may still hold even if the populations of third world countries are included, where in general life tends to be much harsher than that in developed nations.

All that work and the stresses and health problems that go with it has thus far failed to make 99% of Americans rich, generation after generation after generation...

" In 1977, the richest 1 percent of Americans had as much to spend after taxes as the bottom 49 million. Just 22 years later, in 1999, the richest 1percent—about 2.7 million people—had as much as the bottom 100 million Americans." -- Perfectly Legal The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else by David Cay Johnston; excerpt, ThinkingPeace; accessible online on or about 4-21-05; thinkingpeace.com -- P-I Focus: Our tax system is helping the super rich get richer by DAVID CAY JOHNSTON; March 7, 2004; seattlepi.nwsource.com "In 1979, the top 1 per cent of the US population earned, on average, 33.1 times as much as the lowest 20 per cent. In 2000, this multiplier had grown to 88.5." -- There's one rule for the rich...; eurekalert.org; 9-Mar-2005; UK CONTACT - Claire Bowles claire.bowles@rbi.co.uk 44-207-611-1210 New Scientist Press Office, London; US CONTACT – Kyre Austin kyre.austin@reedbusiness.com 1-617-558-4939 New Scientist Boston office "Americans are being taxed more than twice as heavily on earnings from work as they are on investment income..." -- Big Gap Found in Taxation of Wages and Investments by By EDMUND L. ANDREWS; May 8, 2004; New York Times

Heck, in America working hard won't even guarantee you a place to live or an income above that of abject poverty, circa 2005.

Working hard at the right things should help you achieve some goals-- but in all my research I've yet to see a single case where hard work alone made someone rich. Indeed, the evidence that hard work alone won't make you rich is much more plentiful.

#6: Saving your way to riches is also out for the vast majority of us-- even where we give up everything which makes life worth living to attempt it.

Getting rich via savings is inextricably linked for most Americans to working harder and/or longer hours [see above for more on that topic]. And becoming wealthy by retirement age through extraordinary life-long personal savings efforts is often touted by various financial sources who wish to directly or indirectly capture our income in their investment pools-- or perhaps merely manipulate us into a futile pursuit of riches for their own (financial service institutions') benefit.

But the percentage of Americans who can afford to religiously adhere to such savings plans for a lifetime is exceedingly small. So small that the actual figure for those achieving wealth in this fashion appears to be negligible.

For instance, let's say you only aspire to be rich during your retirement years. From 65 to 83 (83 is the average American's life exectancy at age 65). Recall you'll require an effective after-retirement income of at least $400,000 a year to be rich by the definition of this page. Ignoring the relatively small addition interest will add to this (especially after income taxes are eventually levied against what you withdraw, and inflation also diminishes your real buying power), you'd need to pile up some $7.2 million in the bank by retirement age to insure a minimum of $400,000 per year withdrawals from age 65 through 83.

In 1997 the life expectancy at age 65 was 82.7, and wasn't expected to increase significantly any time soon. -- Raising the Retirement Age The wrong direction for Social Security by Christian E. Weller; September 2000 Briefing Paper; epinet.org

Let's also assume you can't or won't get serious about saving for retirement until around age 45. That gives you 20 years to build up $7.2 million. Savings you can't use for anything else in the meantime. That works out to $360,000 per year for 20 years on average, or $30,000 per month.

$30,000 PER MONTH.

The average American household only brings in around $40,000 PER YEAR.

So clearly the 20 year savings plan to retirement riches will be impossible for most folks.

But let's say you instead begin 20 years earlier-- age 25. Surely you can manage it now, right?

This early bird savings plan will require you to put away $180,000 per year for 40 years, or $15,000 per month on average.

$15,000 PER MONTH.

Again, the average American household only brings in around $40,000 PER YEAR. If somehow they could live without food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and all else indefinitely, it would take their entire year's salary to put away only 2.7 months of what's required for building retirement wealth in that period.

So the 40 year savings plan to retirement riches will be impossible too for most people.

So let's simply throw out the whole notion of saving our way to retirement riches. It's a pure myth for the vast majority of us.

But even for those few who can achieve such a goal, the accomplishment could be a hollow victory, as it required them to avoid most of the things which made life worth living, such as getting married and raising a family, among other things.

The idea of squandering your youth and vitality for the sole purpose of having a fat bank account by the time you're lying in your deathbed-- with few or no loved ones with which to share it-- wouldn't appeal to most reasonable and well adjusted people.

Then there's the chicken-and-egg problem of luck and profligacy. Namely, it seems luck rewards criminal levels of waste and inefficiency and outright fraud at least slightly more often than the virtues of efficiency, productivity, frugality, and honesty.

So attempting to honestly save your way to a fortune may well be an unnatural act so far as the cosmos is concerned. And thus be greatly hampered by natural forces.

Of course it may be tough to discern which came first in many real-world cases: the good fortune or the wasteful or dishonest behavior. But they do seem to have some sort of consistent relationship over time.

#7: Attaining wealth through education is a popular notion in America, likely strengthened by the fact the further you go education-wise the more likely you are to be healthier, and to consistently earn a higher-than-average salary.

But education alone won't make you rich in America-- or anywhere else.

#8: Writing the next great American novel. Gaining fame and fortune via writing books is a cherished dream for many of us. But the reality is overwhelmingly against it.

No more than around 500 folks in America make their living solely from writing fiction. And most of those never ever get rich.

Indeed, as of late 2007, in the entire history of the world(!) ONLY ONE author has ever managed to become a billionaire: J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame. If the second billionaire author takes as long to appear as the first did after the invention of writing itself, there's thousands of years to go before we'll see the next one!

Just approximately "500 adults" in all of America actually earn a living exclusively through fiction writing. -- Writing Well Installment One; Dan Simmons - Author's Official Web Site; January 2006 "...it is virtually impossible for an unknown author to break into print through the U.S. mails..." -- Polish Joke; Feb. 19, 1979; time.com "1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives." "42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college." "80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year." "70 percent of the books published do not make a profit." "A successful fiction book sells 5,000 copies. A successful nonfiction book sells 7,500 copies." -- Some startling statistics by Robyn Jackson; accessible online 2-24-07; humorwriters.org "Rowling...now estimated to be worth $1.12 billion, making her the first dollar-billionaire author." -- JK Rowling says wizard Dumbledore is gay; Oct 20, 2007; Reuters; news.yahoo.com

#9: Getting rich via a single extraordinary stroke of luck has always been a popular hope for many-- but that route favors the evil among us more often than the good

If you believe your best shot at wealth will come largely via a great stroke of luck, you have lots of company: 40% of Americans of close to average income or below believe the same.

40% of Americans in households earning near the average or below US income believe a lottery or sweepstakes win offers them the best chance at getting a windfall of $500,000 or more during their lifetime. -- Many See Lottery As Way to Wealth By Alice Ann Love; Associated Press; citing www.yahoo.com; October 28, 1999 "Abetted by Congress, legislatures from 48 states now sponsor gambling operations and lottery monopolies to balance their budgets on the backs of their poorest and most vulnerable citizens -- while basking in the virtue of fighting tax increases." "Last year, Americans legally wagered more than $1.1 trillion. Along the way they lost more than they spent on movie tickets, recorded music, spectator sports, video games, and theme parks combined." "...80 percent of gambling revenue comes from households with incomes of less than $50,000 a year." "...US gamblers -- most of them scraping by on limited incomes -- had to lose $84 billion last year in casinos and lotteries for the states to raise $24 billion in new revenues." "For the state to make its $350 million on slots after payouts...147,000 gamblers -- about 3 percent of the entire adult population -- have to lose a total of $496 million. That's an average annual loss of $3,374 apiece." -- The Gambling Scam on America's Poor By Mark Lange, Christian Science Monitor; May 3, 2007

Unfortunately, as luck favors evil more often than good, most folks who'll get rich solely or mostly through luck will be bad guys of one sort or another.

Ergo, if you're a good person, honest, and law-abiding, your chances of striking it rich are at least slightly less than the worst person you know.

In addition, circa 2005 you're far far more likely in America to become poorer rather than richer, as time goes by.

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Think about the relationship of luck to evil for a moment, and you get another surprising conclusion.

Namely that luck, like water, always wants to reach a lower place. That is, all luck wants to be bad. And the better quality and more quantity it begins with, the worse and faster it wants to sour.

Think of money as being analogous to luck for a moment. If the nature of luck is as I describe here, and money is basically just one tangible form of luck, then large amounts of money will tend to want to pool where it can either do the most damage, or the least good.

So if money were very much like luck, it would naturally accumulate in vast quantities around only a very small percentage of the population, in order to at least minimize its productivity or other benefits to anyone at all (including its current owners).

For example, it's quite feasible for an ultra rich individual to simply find it impossible to spend more than a fraction of their fortune in any way which perceptably improves their personal lot over and above what it happens to be already.

As H.L. Hunt (born 1889, died 1974) once said, "...for practical purposes, someone who has $200,000 a year is as well off as I am." William Henry Vanderbilt and John Jacob Astor made similar statements concerning various amounts adjusted for inflation.

-- Google HTML version of PDF Why Do the Rich Save So Much? citing http://www.econ.jhu.edu/Papers/Carroll/why.pdf -- H. L. Hunt Biography / Profile of H. L. Hunt Biographies, accessible online on or about 4-21-05; bookrags.com "...he doesn't see how anybody could study happiness and not find himself leaning left politically; the data make it all too clear that boosting the living standards of those already comfortable, such as through lower taxes, does little to improve their levels of well-being, whereas raising the living standards of the impoverished makes an enormous difference. " -- The Futile Pursuit of Happiness By JON GERTNER; September 7, 2003; nytimes.com "Money that lifts people out of poverty increases happiness, but after that, the better paychecks stop paying off sense-of-well-being dividends..." -- The Keys to Happiness, and Why We Don't Use Them by Robin Lloyd; Special to LiveScience; LiveScience.com; Feb 28, 2006 Either excessive wealth or poverty can lead to a greater tendency towards mental illness related suicide... but the wealthy person is a bit more likely to commit suicide than the poor one, under these conditions. So it would appear an increased redistribution of wealth from rich to poor would actually help reduce suicide rates among both groups. -- Wealth Tied to Suicide Risk in the Mentally Ill; Reuters Health/Yahoo! Health Headlines; February 9 2001; citing British Medical Journal 2001;322:334-335 -- Poor less likely to commit suicide; Agence France-Presse; February 10, 2001; Nando Media/Nando Times; http://www.nandotimes.com -- Greater suicide risk amongst rich people with mental illness; EurekAlert!; 8 FEBRUARY 2001; Contact: Emma Wilkinson; ewilkinson@bmj.com; 44-20-7383-6529; BMJ-British Medical Journal "Human beings are more aroused by rewards they actively earn than by rewards they acquire passively, according to brain imaging research by scientists at Emory University School of Medicine." "It is like the difference between winning the lottery and earning the same amount of money. From the brain's perspective, earning it is more meaningful, and probably more satisfying." -- The human brain responds to receiving rewards 'the old fashioned way' 12-May-2004; eurekalert.org; Contact: Holly Korschun hkorsch@emory.edu 404-727-3990 Emory University Health Sciences Center A survey of people possessing a net worth of $10 million of more revealed that on the average they own between three and five cars, and spend roughly $10,000 a year on jewelry and watches, plus $10,000 on things like shoes and bags. Most spend at minimum $20,000 per year on clothing alone. -- The super-rich have tastes to match their resources by Dana Knight; February 6, 2004; original link (now broken) was http://www.indystar.com/articles/2/118137-8262-033.html.

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To put it another way, money will naturally prefer to flow to where it's least desired, least needed, least productive-- and maybe least deserved.

Certain anecdotal evidence this could be true abounds. For instance, check out lottery and sweepstakes winners. These often seem to consist of individuals who are on their deathbed (or very near to it), or else business folk who are already wealthy by the standards of most others. And when the winners belong to neither of those groups, they are likely to effectively be deranged in some manner-- abysmally ignorant, immature, naive, or suffering other adverse mental issues of some kind which will almost certainly negatively affect their ability to spend or invest their winnings in a wise or efficient manner.

I'm not saying all big money winners belong to such groups. I'm just saying a substantial percentage seem to. And that would seem to back up some of the ideas presented here on the nature of riches in general.

Want more evidence? Well, if what I say is true, you should be able to garner further proof from raising taxes on the wealthy to see if natural forces rush in to compensate for the subtraction.

Apparently they do, according to at least one 1998 Businessweek article (SOAKING THE RICH DOES WORK by Peter Coy).

6-1-98: Perpetual money machines? In my old article Normal Luck, I theorized that it may turn out some people are sort of metaphysically lucky, and so taxing them more heavily than other folks might not only fail to harm them, but prove to be a perpetual fountain of wealth. Now Austan Goolsbee of the National Bureau of Economic Research has..."...used executive-compensation figures from 1,500 corporate proxies in the five years surrounding a 1993 tax hike...[and]...found that these execs' income, excluding stock options, was twice as responsive to growth in GDP as lower-income groups' and 50% more responsive to growth in company earnings. That means in a growing economy, their earnings rose despite the '93 tax increase..." -- "SOAKING THE RICH DOES WORK"By Peter Coy , Business Week: 5-11-98 "...Congress now literally takes money from those making $30,000 to $500,000 per year and funnels it in subtle ways to the super rich -- the top 1/100th of 1 percent of Americans." -- Stroke the rich IRS has become a subsidy system for super-wealthy Americans IRS winks at rich deadbeats by David Cay Johnston; April 11, 2004; sfgate.com "The federal government has taken billions of dollars from the taxes and fees paid by airline passengers every time they fly and awarded it to small airports used mainly by private pilots and globe-trotting corporate executives." -- Traveler taxes awarded to small airports By BOB PORTERFIELD, Associated Press; Apr 15, 2007; news.yahoo.com; ["http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070415/ap_on_bi_ge/ticket_taxes;_ylt=AhngrQACLHu5MS8e5wXCyY4Or7sF"]

Congratulations to any one who might have gotten rich against all odds in America this year without inheriting it, marrying it, breaking the law, or harming thousands or millions of the rest of us along the way!

I hope there was at least ONE of you this year!

As for everyone else in the USA, we'd better hunker down. It's all uphill from here.

Of course we could also try leaving the US to become a citizen of another country, where average folks like us might have it a little easier. And where might that be? Almost any other developed nation in the world. For the USA is rapidly losing ground to just about all of them in practically every measure but for mounting debts and military expenditures. Read the awful truth here.

Unfortunately, many of those other countries aren't very eager to let Americans in these days. At least not as full-fledged citizens. Largely due to the incredible damage done by the Bush Administration to the reputation and credibility of Americans everywhere.

If whilst hunkering down you'd like to also try changing the status quo in America, reading this might be a good place to start.