Free Republic

According to the Forbes Billionaires List of 2022, most of the world’s richest people are at home in the United States. As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, the country counted 867 billionaires per the list’s last release Tuesday. This is several more than the second-ranked country, China, with 607 and many more than in third-placed India with 165.You will find more infographics at StatistaAccording to Forbes, 236 new billionaire were minted in the last year, translating into an average of 4.5 new billionaires every week. This included the first billionaires from Estonia, Bulgaria, Uruguay and Barbados. The newcomer from the...

A portion of New York City’s Upper East Side, which reportedly boasts residents such as billionaire Glenn Dubin and hedge funder John Paulson, has been riddled with a recent uptick in crime, including a weekend gunpoint robbery spree, police said.

Video:Obama Calls nation's Top Earners "Lottery Winners" The president suggesting that the super successful in this country are super lucky like lotto winners. Obama:If you've got a business, you didn't build that,somebody else made that happen.

If you’re a billionaire living in Connecticut, chances are the tax department is keeping an eye on you. In a state home to some of the richest Americans, tax officials go to some lengths to keep them—or, more accurately, keep the billions of dollars in revenue their income taxes generate. Connecticut tax officials track quarterly estimated payments of 100 high net-worth taxpayers and can tell when payments are down. Of that number, about a half-dozen taxpayers have an effect on revenue that’s noticed in the legislature and Department of Revenue Services. […] Two years ago, tax officials were alarmed that...

Super rich hedge fund managers are buying 'secret boltholes' where they can hideout in the event of civil uprising against growing inequality, it has been claimed. Nervous financiers from across the globe have begun purchasing landing strips, homes and land in areas such as New Zealand so they can flee should people rise up. With growing inequality and riots such as those in London in 2011 and in Ferguson and other parts of the USA last year, many financial leaders fear they could become targets for public fury. Robert Johnson, president of the Institute of New Economic Thinking, told people...

Yes, tax the Super Rich. Tax them now. Before the other 99% rise up, trigger a new American Revolution, a meltdown and the Great Depression 2. We know the Super Rich don’t care. Not about you. Nor the American public. They can’t see. Can’t hear. Stay trapped in their Forbes-400 bubble. An echo chamber that isolates them. They see the public as faceless workers, customers, taxpayers. See GOP power on the ascent. Reaganomics is back. Unions on the run. Clueless masses are easily manipulated. Even Obama is secretly working with the GOP, will never touch his Super Rich donors. Yes,...

How about them political elites, huh? Five million bucks for Chelsea Clinton's wedding, 15K just to rent the air-conditioned shitters -- huge chrome and glass babies with hot water and everything. No gas masks and waxy little squares of toilet paper for those guys. Yes, it looks big time from the cheap seats. But the truth is that when we are looking at the political elite, we are looking at the dancing monkey, not the organ grinder who calls the tune. Washington's political class is about as upwardly removed from ordinary citizens as the ruling class is from the political...

The reality is, the only ones who benefit at all from a government that is growing out of control are the super rich and, if you consider getting "something for nothing" a "good thing," the poor. The rest of us are squeezed by the pressures driven by the highest income groups.

The rich have been getting richer for so long that the trend has come to seem almost permanent. They began to pull away from everyone else in the 1970s. By 2006, income was more concentrated at the top than it had been since the late 1920s. The recent news about resurgent Wall Street pay has seemed to suggest that not even the Great Recession could reverse the rise in income inequality. But economists say — and data is beginning to show — that a significant change may in fact be under way. The rich, as a group, are no longer...

The rich have been getting richer for so long that the trend has come to seem almost permanent. They began to pull away from everyone else in the 1970s. By 2006, income was more concentrated at the top than it had been since the late 1920s. The recent news about resurgent Wall Street pay has seemed to suggest that not even the Great Recession could reverse the rise in income inequality. But economists say — and data is beginning to show — that a significant change may in fact be under way. The rich, as a group, are no longer...

An embarrassment of richness Review by Brian Groom Published: February 15 2008 20:22 | Last updated: February 15 2008 20:22 Who Runs Britain?: How the Super-rich are Changing Our Lives By Robert Peston Hodder & Stoughton £20, 360 pages FT bookshop price £16 Since Margaret Thatcher’s free-market revolution, the orthodoxy in Britain has been that in freeing the wealth-creators to become rich, everyone benefits. Recently, though, the sheer scale of the riches enjoyed by a tiny minority – and resentment at their success in avoiding taxes – has prompted many to question that orthodoxy. Ironically, we now have a Labour...

Anti-Poverty campaigner Bob Geldof is the surprise new entry into The Sunday Times list of Ireland's Richest Entertainers, new figures showed today. The former lead singer of the 1970s band The Boomtown Rats takes fifth place in the table, sitting on top of a fortune worth €51m. According to compilers of The Sunday Times Rich List 2006, his shares in his television production company Ten Alps have soared and he also has a €29m stake in reality TV production firm Castaway Productions. U2 scooped first place in the list and are now worth an enviable €690m. Digital and album sales...

<p>I don't have a problem with super-wealthy people using their money to influence the political process. Have at it.</p> <p>But they should be straight with us: If Bill Gates, Warren Buffett or "the fabulously wealthy" Teresa Heinz take a certain position on legislation, they ought to make it clear whether they will personally benefit in some way.</p>

By John Berlau © 2004 Insight/News World Communications Inc. Though President Bush constantly is criticized and attacked by Democratic partisans for pursuing policies that benefit "the wealthy," why are so many of what would be considered America's superrich his political opponents? In addition to the Hollywood mega-elite, which since the death of Sam Goldwyn have opposed the GOP mainly for cultural reasons, billionaire businessmen have stepped forward calling for the defeat of Bush or his policies. Most prominent has been speculator George Soros, who has pledged to raise $75 million to defeat Bush, given millions to Democratic Bush-bashing groups such...

Idle Thoughts On The Road To Understanding Here are a few random thoughts that might help you to figure out the world in which we are currently living: The U.S. dollar is backed up by nothing and is convertible to nothing. It is a medium of exchange, and compared with the Euro, the currency of the European Union, it has lost 30 percent of its value since 2001. This is bad news for those of us whose investments, savings and life insurance are denominated in dollars. These dollars are exchangeable for less and less in goods and services. If the...