Filthy Rich

The richest one percent of people own 40 percent of global wealth. The world’s 946 billionaires have three times the money of the poorest half of the world’s population—3.3 billion people. These incredible statistics are an important reminder that the gulf between the rich and the poor is growing at an exponential and fearful rate. Even more frightening is the almost total monopoly of information by the wealthy and the megacorporations they run—just as an example NewsCorp owns Fox, newspapers including the Wall Street Journal and New York Post, and MySpace. The result is that the information we receive and the way we receive it is controlled by a small group of (unelected) billionaires. In Filthy Rich we see that the true power and luxuries enjoyed by the world’s wealthiest lay not in private planes or expensive houses, but in unmarshaled control and influence of news, laws and politicians.