Brother, Can You Spare A $Trillion ?

Il nous faut avouer une honteuse adaptation de la tragique ballade de la Grande Dépression, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime ?”... Dans cette époque, la tragédie de la crise était patente, particulièrement aux USA où cette crise était celle d’une civilisation, – et elle ne fut jamais résolue comme telle, bien entendu ; elle s’exprima sans aucun doute dans la culture populaire.

Aujourd’hui où cette chose nommée “culture populaire” semble devenue si insaisissable, au point que le mot “culture” vous laisse dans une grande perplexité, le grotesque de la situation du point de vue de l’argent, de la répartition des richesses, etc., est tel que seule la caricature et le pastiche parviennent à en rendre compte. D’où ce Brother, Can You Spare A Trillion ? (quelque chose comme “Mon frère, peux-tu me passer un $trillion ?”)… Grotesque de la situation, effectivement, comme il apparaît à la lecture de cet article du 11 août 2011, sur Alternet.org, sur la répartition des richesses et le volume des fortunes aux USA. Nous parlons là de $trillions (unité valant mille $milliards) et, du côté des possesseurs, de pourcentages dans le voisinage d’un dixième de 1% de la population. A ce niveau quantitatif, il serait grotesque de discuter de ces chiffres d'un point de vue économique et financier, social, voire moral ; il est évident que nous sommes, qualitativement, dans un autre domaine, où l'on peut mieux mesurer les dimensions de cette crise. Comme l’on sait, c’en est au point où ceux qui se trouvent dans ces pourcentages et volumes, ressentant sans doute les effets de la solitude, commencent à réaliser eux-mêmes le grotesque de cette situation.

«While 68.3 million Americans struggle to get enough food to eat and wages are declining for 90 percent of the population, US millionaire household wealth has reached an unprecedented level. According to an extensive study by auditing and financial advisory firm Deloitte, US millionaire households now have $38.6 trillion in wealth. On top of the $38.6 trillion this study reveals, they have an estimated $6.3 trillion hidden in offshore accounts.

»In total, US millionaire households have at least $45.9 trillion in wealth, the majority of this wealth is held within the upper one-tenth of one percent of the population.

»If all this isn’t obscene enough, to further demonstrate how the global economy has now been completely rigged, Deloitte’s analysis predicated, based on current trends, that US millionaire households will see a 225 percent increase in wealth to $87.1 trillion by 2020. Accounting for wealth hidden in offshore accounts, they are projected to have over $100 trillion in total within the next decade.

»

Most people cannot even comprehend how much $1 trillion is, let alone $46 trillion. One trillion is equal to 1000 billion, or $1,000,000,000,000. To put it in perspective, last year the entire cost of feeding all 40 million Americans on food stamps was $65 billion.

»Now consider, according to the latest IRS data, only 0.076 percent of the population, less than one-tenth of one percent, earned over $1 million in 2009. […]

»The highest bracket for annual income is $50 million or more. Only 74 Americans are in this elite group. The average income within this category was $91.2 million in 2008. As astonishing as that is, in 2009 they averaged $518.8 million each, or about $10 million per week. This means, in the depths of the recession, the richest 74 Americans increased their income by more than five times within this one year. These 74 people made more money than 19 million workers combined.

In context, overall, the richest 400 people in the US have as much wealth as 154 million Americans combined, that’s 50 percent of the entire country. The top economic 1 percent of the US population now has a record 40 percent of all wealth, and have more wealth than 90 percent of the population combined...»

dedefensa.org