by Joe McVeigh
These are some facts you may or may not be interested in hearing about -but I think they should cause us to think about the kind of world we live in and the whole capitalist empire that creates such wealthy people in the midst of increasing poverty.
There are 9 Irish people included on the Forbes Billionaire’s List 2022, with a combined net worth of approximately $54.8 billion.
The Irish list is topped by billionaire Pallonji Mistry, the head of the Shapoorji Pallonji Group, a 156-year-old construction and engineering giant that is based in Mumbai. Mistry has a net worth of $15 billion and he became an Irish citizen in 2003.
Second and third on the list are the Collison brothers, John and Patrick Collison, who cofounded the payment company Stripe. Both men have a net worth of $9.5 billion, which has almost tripled from $3.2 billion in 2021. Stripe was founded in 2010 and the company is currently dual headquartered in both San Francisco and Dublin.
Fourth on the Irish list is John Grayken, the founder and owner of Lone Star Funds which is a private equity firm based in Dallas, Texas. He has a net worth of $6.5 billion.Grayken is originally from Boston but renounced his US citizenship in the 1990s and became an Irish citizen.
Also included on the list is Denis O’Brien, who owns and operates Digicel, a mobile phone network provider that is based in the Caribbean, Central America and parts of Asia. He formerly owned both Communicorp and Independent News and Media, before both companies were sold to Bauer Media Group and Mediahuis respectively. According to Forbes, O’Brien has a net worth of $3.8 billion.
Hedge fund cofounder, John Armitage, has a net worth of $2.9 billion while Kingspan Group founder, Eugene Murtagh is also included in the list, with an estimated net worth of $2.8 billion.
Billionaire Dermot Desmond, who began working in Citibank, has his net worth listed as $2.1 billion. He founded NCB Stockbrokers in 1981 before it was sold in 1994 for $39 million.
John Dorrance III, an heir to the Campbell Soup fortune, is also included on the Irish billionaire list after he became an Irish citizen in 1995. Dorrance is worth an estimated $2.7 billion.
The world’s richest man-the first ever trillionaire – is Tesla founder Elon Musk, with an estimated net worth of $i trillion. It was announced earlier this year that Musk would be appointed to the board of Twitter after he took a 9% stake in the company. Musk surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who had a net worth of $171 billion.
This is the same Mr Musk who has been on Twitter this week to make the outrageous claim that the riots in Belfast were caused by Immigrants and the Immigration policy.
Should any individual or family be allowed to amass such fortunes while poverty exists and the poor in our world are getting poorer? Who can stop this disgusting wealth in the midst of poverty? Should the United Nations put a cap on how much any individual or any individual family can earn and hold in their bank accounts? Do we need some new world authority with power to stop the accumulation of wealth by a few corrupt individuals? Who will lead the way?
Wealth follows a Pareto distribution in that a small percentage obtain most of the riches.
This is similar to how a small percentage of footballers score the majority of the goals, or how a small number of musicians sell the most albums.
Regimes such as the Khmer Rouge solved wealth inequality by burning money and Cambodians all became equally poor.
Understandably, the aesthetics of someone being a trillionaire whilst so many others starve isn’t a nice image. But accepting inequality and a bigger pie is probably preferable to a smaller pie with a more equal distribution.
Elon Musk is not a very likeable person, if he had the disposition of say a Pope Leo then it wouldn’t be so bad. But he doesn’t. You can’t put a cap on people’s wealth, communism has failed miserably. Someone like Bill Gates who has (supposedly) given away millions still gets it in the neck, albeit for other actions. The big worry is the malign influence people like Musk exert. Spreading right wing propaganda, buying certain politicians.