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According to the Boston Consulting Group, which is not suspicious of socialist agitation, there are currently 2,900 ultra-rich in Germany.
This is not a fighting term either, but the translation of the technical term ultra-high-net-worth-individuals.
This includes people who have "financial assets" of more than $ 100 million.
There are around 60,000 of this variety worldwide, most of them live in the USA, followed by China without Hong Kong, Germany is in third place.
Unlike many other people, these ultra-rich got through the corona crisis excellently: They got even richer.
The trend is unbroken.
At the same time, their share of global wealth continues to grow.
The poor suffer most, the rich not at all
Bank Credit Suisse, which was also unsuspected of socialist activities, reported in 2017 that the richest percent of the world's population now owned just over half of all household assets worldwide.
The rich keep getting richer, no matter the injustice that happens to the world.
And they keep increasing.
In Germany this is particularly blatant: Here the ultra-rich own 20 percent of all wealth.
Worldwide it is 13 percent.
People who are fans of a market economy that is as unregulated as possible often claim that rich people are rich because they work particularly hard.
Or because they are ready to take special risks.
Both are obviously wrong: Many German ultra-rich, for example, have inherited their wealth.
And they are obviously well protected against risks such as a global pandemic.
When things go wrong, the poor suffer most and the rich do not suffer most in the world.
Because the system has been agreed in favor of the rich.
Fortresses for the time after the apocalypse
It is very clear to them that many of their business models are taking the world down into the abyss.
They are also protecting themselves against this risk, for example with fortresses for the time after the apocalypse.
In the United States, the non-profit journalism organization ProPublica has just demonstrated that the wealthiest people there - people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg - have become incredibly wealthy in recent years, but at the same time have real income tax rates of sometimes below enjoy one percent.
If you point out something like this in this country, then the friends of the unregulated market economy like to react with fighting terms.
In particular, one is then reliably assumed that one is striving for "socialism", and that will undoubtedly also happen again in the forum for this column.
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Christian Stocker
We are the experiment: our world is changing so breathtakingly that we stagger from crisis to crisis.
We have to learn to manage this tremendous acceleration.
Publisher: Karl Blessing Verlag
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Karl Blessing Verlag
Number of pages: 384
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The two big lies
This is an example of the extremely successful communication strategy that global companies and those who benefit most from them have been distorting the discourse in their favor for many years: if you want to change something, you want the Soviet Union back.
This propaganda strategy is based on two proven false claims:
1. Taxing the rich more harms economic growth.
That's not true.
2. The rich contribute proportionally much more to the common good.
That is also not true, see above.
In the Financial Times, which is also unsuspicious of socialist activities, Edward Luce commented on the revelations of ProPublica as follows: "The elaborate US system rewards those who can afford an army of lawyers and accountants."
And the fact that the ultra-rich make ruthless use of this system is completely independent of their political convictions: “The left may admire George Soros and abhor Musk.
The accountants ensure the same result everywhere. "
A planned game
Luce also points out that large companies in the USA also benefit from this broken tax system: They paid an average of 11.7 percent corporate taxes there, "that's less than the 12.5 percent that are due in Cyprus and Ireland," that is in the European tax havens.
The evidence is crystal clear: At the moment, the financial and tax system is a staged event all over the world, favoring ultra-rich and multinational corporations.
This has nothing to do with socialism, just catastrophically poor tax justice.
The global corporate tax of 15 percent targeted by the G7 nations would be a small, first step in the right direction.
The tremendous success of the world's rich people in influencing the system in their own favor, of course, has a lot to do with money.
It is well known that election campaigns in the USA are extremely expensive affairs, largely financed by mega donors and large corporations.
Turbo-financed mud battle election campaign
In Germany, this has not yet been pronounced in the same way.
Of course, companies and wealthy people also donate money to political parties in this country, but we haven't had a turbo-financed mud battle election campaign based on the US model so far.
That is changing right now.
On Friday of this week, the lobby organization “Initiative New Social Market Economy” (INSM), which is largely financed by the German metal, electrical and automotive industries, appeared in many large German newspapers (including “FAZ”, “Süddeutsche”, and print like online, online also the »ZEIT«) large-format advertisements.
These advertisements show the Green top candidate Annalena Baerbock dressed up as Moses, with two stone tablets on which there are nine prohibitions, none of which the Greens are striving for, but that doesn't matter.
Next to it is: "Why we don't need a state religion." The advertising motif is apparently intended to set the fear-framing, which is desirable from the point of view of German industry, before the green party congress taking place this weekend.
Anti-Semitic wink to the far right
The advertising space that the lobby association bought alone cost many hundreds of thousands of euros. The motif itself serves anti-Semitic clichés, at least that is what the Baden-Württemberg anti-Semitism officer Michael Blume thinks. The motif also uses the nonsense thesis popular in right-wing extremist circles that the desire to prevent the climate crisis is a "religion". In addition to straw man claims on the subject of climate policy, the "law tables" also contain other usual INSM talking points on subjects such as the labor market and taxes.
Incidentally, the official "ambassadors" of the INSM also include several members of the richest German families.
Arend Oetker, for example, Roland Berger, Randolf Rodenstock.
And of course, behind the associations that finance the lobby organization, there are other German ultra-rich who own significant shares of large corporations.
Inhibitions are falling everywhere
For years, the INSM has been massively in the process of preventing effective climate protection in Germany with pseudo-information and political influence, in close harmony with the climate policy brakes in the Union and other parties.
The lobby organization is currently organizing a series of discussion events with the daily newspaper "Die Welt", the editor of which Stefan Aust has "doubts" about man-made climate change, which can only be interpreted as campaign events for the Union.
Newspaper, lobbying organization, party, side by side.
Inhibitions are falling everywhere.
I cannot remember that in recent German history a lobby organization on behalf of the ultra-rich and corporations ever tried so openly and with so much effort to influence a federal election campaign.
The people who were not harmed by the crisis, who even benefited from it, are now setting themselves higher goals: With their money they want to use their money to influence who governs in Germany.
With ad hominem attacks, defamation, disinformation and a sympathetic wink in the direction of the far right.
This is a breach of the dam.
Note: The INSM also wanted to place the mentioned ad on SPIEGEL.de, but it was rejected. In the past, however, the organization has also repeatedly advertised on SPIEGEL.de.
