Tag: Wealth

Robert Kiyosaki Responds to Arizona State University Faculty Members Condemning Event Featuring Him, Dennis Prager, and Charlie Kirk

Rachel Alexander

Arizona State University’s Barrett Honors College is sponsoring a “Health, Wealth & Happiness” panel discussion on February 8 featuring Rich Dad Poor Dad bestselling author Robert Kiyosaki, conservative leaders Dennis Prager and Charlie Kirk, and wellness expert Dr. Radha Gopalan. Most of the faculty at Barrett — 37 of 47 members as of February 2 — denounced Kiyosaki, Prager, and Kirk in a February 1 letter addressed to the dean. Kiyosaki spoke to The Arizona Sun Times about the criticism.

“If they picket me, this won’t be the first time I’ve been received like this,” he said. Kiyosaki served in the Marines as a gunship pilot during the Vietnam War, and when he returned home, protesters targeted him and his fellow Marines and spit on them. Kiyosaki has written over 26 books related to finance, and Rich Dad Poor Dad is the best-selling personal financial book of all time. 

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St. Paul to Hold Community Meetings on Reparations

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Mayor Melvin Carter

A St. Paul City Council committee will soon be holding community meetings on the establishment of a “permanent standing commission” that aims to create “generational wealth” for descendants of slaves and increase “economic mobility and opportunity” for blacks.

The council’s Legislative Advisory Committee on Reparations, established last June after the idea was approved last January, says it will produce a report on this permanent commission by Friday, June 10, and lay out its recommendations on creating wealth and boosting black economic opportunity the following Wednesday, June 15.

But first, it will hold four community meetings — two virtual, two in person. The virtual meetings will take place on Thursday, April 7, from 5 to 6 p.m. and Friday, April 29, from noon to 1 p.m.

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Top Ten Wealthiest Men in the World Doubled Their Wealth During the Pandemic

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A recent report claims that the world’s top 10 richest men all saw their wealth double over the course of the Coronavirus pandemic, while 99 percent of global income dropped dramatically during the same period.

As reported by ABC News, a study published on Monday by the group Oxfam showed that the collective wealth of the top 10 doubled from approximately $700 billion to over $1.5 trillion between March of 2020 and November of 2021. During that same time, over 160 million people fell into poverty as incomes plummeted. The increase for the top 10 in less than two years represented a greater increase for their wealth than their growth over the previous 14 years combined.

The 10 men who were the focus of Oxfam’s study were: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Ballmer and Warren Buffett. The data for the study was gathered from the World Bank.

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Commentary: The Flaw in Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying’s Proposal for the Future of Humanity

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Bret Weinstein podcast

Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, evolutionary biologists and visiting fellows at Princeton University, have written a fascinating new book, A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century, which Penguin Random House released in September.

The instant New York Times bestseller is riddled with interesting ideas and clever insights, ultimately arriving at a radical conclusion about how humanity must be governed in the future if we are to avoid civilizational collapse. However, the book’s concluding argument is built upon one fundamental economic fallacy, and to understand the flaw in the proposal is to understand how truly catastrophic the pursuit of Weinstein and Heying’s vision would be.

The Fear of Abundance

Weinstein and Heying’s fundamental claim is about the human propensity to seek economic growth, and the ultimate unsustainability of that goal.

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Commentary: Income Inequality in America Related to Deaths

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Holding Hands

The top quarter of American income earners can expect to live a decade longer than the bottom quarter, medical research shows. This health disparity seems downright cruel. Not only do those in poverty have to pay more for things like credit and insurance, they also pay more years to the Grim Reaper.

Unlike income inequality, transferring years of life from the rich to the poor is not a feasible option. To find a real solution, we must know what drives the inequity.

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Commentary: California Is a Cruel Medieval State

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One way of understanding California is simply to invert traditional morality. What for centuries would be considered selfish, callous, and greedy is now recalibrated as caring, empathetic, and generous. The current ethos of evaluating someone by his or her superficial appearance – gender or race – has returned to the premodern values of 19th-century California when race and gender calibrated careers. We don’t pay medieval priests for indulgences of our past and ongoing sin, but we do tweet out displays of our goodness as the penance price of acting amoral.

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The Poorest 20 Percent of Americans Are Richer on Average Than Most Nations of Europe

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A groundbreaking study by Just Facts has discovered that after accounting for all income, charity, and non-cash welfare benefits like subsidized housing and Food Stamps – the poorest 20% of Americans consume more goods and services than the national averages for all people in most affluent countries. This includes the majority of countries in the prestigious Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), including its European members. In other words, if the U.S. “poor” were a nation, it would be one of the world’s richest.

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Federal Report Says Millennials Are Poorer Than Other Generations

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by Ryan McMaken   One of the challenges in looking at income and wealth data is getting a sense of how different demographic groups are affected. It’s relatively easy to find median income and wealth data over time for the entire population, for example. But then problems of interpretation immediately present themselves. For example, if the data is household data, what are we to make of things if the household compositions has changed over time? And what if the demographics of the individuals within the households themselves have changed? For example, if a larger proportion of all households are now younger households, perhaps that could have an effect on the income and wealth data overall. After all, younger heads of household tend to have lower incomes and less wealth than older heads of households. This problem of measuring workers and incomes over time has been the challenge that presents itself to anyone trying to figure out if so-called millennials are richer or poorer — as a group — than other age cohorts. To do this, researches must find some way to estimate wealth and incomes for different age cohorts at similar ages or at similar points in their careers. Otherwise,…

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Maryland is the Wealthiest State, Our Civil Service Explains Why

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by Natalia Castro   Residents of Maryland were likely filled with pride when the USA Today state wealth index listed Maryland as the wealthiest state in the country. With the second lowest poverty rate and the highest median household income, one might assume Maryland has an engaged and efficient workforce. Unfortunately, this workforce may not be functioning as effectively as it seems, because Maryland also surpasses the national average in federal government workers. Nationally about 15 percent of workers are employed by some level of government, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Maryland, that number is 18 percent. While many states across the wealth index surpass the national average for government employees, most are employed by state and local government. Maryland and Virginia top the charts for federal government employees, likely due to their proximity to D.C. Only about 2 percent of workers are employed by the federal government, either in D.C. or satellite offices across the country. In Maryland, more than 13 percent of workers are employed by the federal government. In Virginia, which ranks ninth on the list, 11 percent of workers are employed by the federal government. Hawaii, which ranks third on the list, also…

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Commentary: The Ticking Fiscal Time Bomb Set in 1937 Could Tip America Into Despotism by 2030

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US Flag

by Robert Osburn   Celebrated this past July 4, America’s founding story of freedom is truly remarkable: unity, courage, integrity, and national integration (incorporating people from around the world). In most other places, the freedom story is bloody, exclusive, and, ultimately, tyrannical. Take Nicaragua, for one example: In 1979, the Sandinistas overthrew dictator Anastasio Somoza.  Nearly four decades later, hundreds are dying because the very people who led the Sandinista revolution (Daniel Ortega and friends, now in power) are behaving exactly like Somoza.  It’s déjà vu all over again for our Central American neighbors. In an age when democracy is clearly retreating, will America eventually succumb to autocracy while waving sayonara to democracy?    It’s a question that National Review’s JonahGoldberg once very handily dismissed. He now admits that American totalitarianism is a real possibility. Utilizing a scenario-building skill that I learned during my doctoral studies, let me offer what I consider a very plausible scenario that takes America down the rathole of tyranny: Sometime between 2028 and 2034, America’s president will use executive or emergency powers to solve the nation’s Social Security trust fund crisis. As Americans celebrate that presidential act of courage, we will begin the long road to tyranny because we cannot rule ourselves.  Does this remind anyone of the books of Judges and I Samuel when, because everyone did what was right…

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