WILL BILLIONAIRES FIGHT INEQUALITY?

America's leading consumer activist writes a provocative public letter to
billionaire Bill Gates.

By Ralph Nader
Third World Network Features




Mr William H Gates,
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer,
Microsoft Corporation, 1 Microsoft Way,
Redmond, WA 98052.
27 July 1998

Dear Mr Gates:


An astonishing calculation comes from Professor Edward Wolff of New York
University and presents an important opportunity for you. Professor Wolff, a
wealth economics specialist, estimated that your net wealth is greater than
the combined net worth of the poorest 40% of Americans (106 million people).
That includes their home equity, pensions and mutual funds, but excludes
their personal cars.

When Professor Wolff made his analysis, your net worth was only $40 billion.
Now, according to the latest Forbes listing of billionaires, your assets
exceed $51 billion and that may be outdated, given the most recent surge in
Microsoft stock. So it is fair to assume that the mostly secondhand cars of
these 106 million Americans can now be included and then some.

All this wealth makes you the world's number one working rich person. Apart
from the more than medieval size gap between your wealth and theirs, it is
more than a little worrisome that tens of millions of Americans have so
little net property worth, some after a lifetime of labour. As Jeff Gates,
author of the new book, The Ownership Solution, says: 'Capitalism is very
good at creating capital but terrible at creating capitalists.'

The United States now has the sharpest wealth disparity of any Western
nation. The wealth of the top 1% is greater than that of the bottom 90% of
Americans. As author Gates observes: 'The implications attending inaction
are staggering fiscally, socially, politically and even environmentally.' If
you knew the range of Gates' experience in Washington and the business
community, you would conclude that his normative conclusion was not 'a
random thought'.

As might be expected, on a worldwide plane, wealth disparities are
staggering. According to the United Nations Development Programme, the
assets of the world's 358 billionaires were greater than the combined
incomes of countries with 45% of the world's people (about three billion
human beings)!

All these chasms are widening against a background of modern and
accelerating technology, declining trade barriers, mobility of capital,
medical advances and presumably a greater awareness of what history's most
tragic mistakes, avarice, monopolies and cruelties can produce.

As one illustration, last year, more people in the world died (nearly six
million) from tuberculosis and malaria than in any previous year. The growth
in gross global GNP and capability did not stop these diseases of poverty
from their mass destruction. Concentration of power and wealth and the gross
insensitivity of economic and political leadership had a good deal to do
with these preventable casualties.

There is obviously a problem of distributive justice that has not been given
the attention it deserves by the leaders of global capitalism. I saw a
T-shirt being distributed at a conference recently with the message: 'A
Rising Tide Lifts All Yachts.' A telling phrase for our times.

Warren Buffett, possibly the world's number two working rich person with
assets exceeding $33 billion, is your dear friend and fellow card player.
Let me suggest that you team up with him to sponsor, plan and lead a
conference of billionaires and multi-billionaires on the subject of National
and Global Wealth Disparities and What do Do About It.

The quantity, quality and distributional dimensions of economic output will
drive participants to come to grips with the fundamental purposes of
economic systems and their economic indicators.

With the dual sweep of the Gates-Buffett hands, the serious and
consequential plight of humanity would become a matter of high alert for
those business colleagues and acquaintances of yours who aspire to move from
success to significance.

During our brief meeting earlier this year at the Time-Warner 75th
anniversary dinner in New York, you replied that you were open to
communication (by E-Mail, you smilingly suggested). I look forward to your
response.

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader

-ends-

About the writer: Ralph Nader can be contacted at P O Box 19312, Washington,
DC 20036.

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