Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 21:00:25 -0700 (PDT) From: Tom Condit <tomcondit-AT-igc.apc.org> Subject: M-NEWS: Millionaires: The People The September issue of _The People_, newspaper of the Socialist Labor Party, has the following in a front page story: "_Newsweek_ is one of those magazines that has jumped on the prosperity bandwagon, and it had a splashy cover recently to get everyone to read all about it. "_Newsweek_ said you can tell that the country is prosperous because of all the millionaires and billionaires there are today compared to how many there were back in 1979. It said there are about 70,000 millionaires and billionaires in the country today, up from only 13,500 in 1979. Why, that's an increase of 419 percent! "Are you as impressed as you were supposed to be? Well, neither were we, if only because 70,000 is just a hair's breadth above zero percent of the country's 267 million people. "From zero to zero in 18 years doesn't say much for the accelerating power of capitalism's 'prosperity' machine, and is probably the real reason the 'new rich' are also called the Micro-something millionaires--you wouldn't know they were around unless all the newspapers and magazines joined forces to point them out. "We don't think the microcosmic growth in billionaires has done much to change things for most of the 267 million people who live in America. And we don't think it takes glossy covers or sensational stories to report on the truth." (Then comes a pitch for _The People's_ Thanksgiving Fund drive. You can find out more from thepeople-AT-igc.apc.org.) Of course the real story here, unfortunately, is that there are more millionaires than organized socialists (by anyone's definition of "socialist") in this country. Time to get to work! Tom Condit
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