"He that trusts in his riches shall fall; but the righteous shall flourish as a branch." Pro 11:28
"They that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches...their way is their folly...Like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them...For when he dies he shall carry nothing away: his glory shall not descend after him." Ps 49:6-17
"For the love (lust) of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." I Tim 6:10
There is nothing inherently evil or wrong with having wealth. The problem is when the lust of our eyes and flesh erects these riches as our god. Remember, it's the love (lust) of riches, not the riches themselves. Wealth & riches are two of the most powerful tools in all history which turn us away from the true & living God. The stories of those whose lives have been ruined by their lust, of riches squandered & lost, outnumber the faithful lives with wealth 10000 to 1.
Ever since America exchanged the living God for money, wealth & Wall St. in the late 1960's, she has been toying with fire. While we enjoy the comfort & warmth of riches, off & on, for certain seasons, more often than not, many have been burned & scorched.
In her heart of hearts, America knows full well how & why we are in this awful governmental, economic, financial & spiritual mess. She just refuses to admit it to herself & Almighty God. "You will not come to me, that you might have life." Jn 5:40
_________________NEWS___________________
Rise of the Super-rich Hits a Sobering Wall
John McAfee is auctioning off this property in New Mexico to pay bills. His worth has fallen to about $4 million from a peak of about $100 million.
By DAVID LEONHARDT and GERALDINE FABRIKANT
(edited for content, click headline for full story)
The rich have been getting richer for so long that the trend has come to seem almost permanent...But economists say — and data is beginning to show — that a significant change may in fact be under way. The rich, as a group, are no longer getting richer. Over the last two years, they have become poorer. And many may not return to their old levels of wealth and income anytime soon.
Last year, the number of Americans with a net worth of at least $30 million dropped 24 percent, according to CapGemini and Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. Monthly income from stock dividends, which is concentrated among the affluent, has fallen more than 20 percent since last summer, the biggest such decline since the government began keeping records in 1959.
Bill Gates, Warren E. Buffett, the heirs to the Wal-Mart Stores fortune and the founders of Google each lost billions last year, according to Forbes magazine. In one stark example, John McAfee, an entrepreneur who founded the antivirus software company that bears his name, is now worth about $4 million, from a peak of more than $100 million. Mr. McAfee will soon auction off his last big property because he needs cash to pay his bills after having been caught off guard by the simultaneous crash in real estate and stocks.
“I had no clue,” he said, “that there would be this tandem collapse.”
In the three decades after World War II, when the incomes of the rich grew more slowly than those of the middle class, the top marginal rate ranged from 70 to 91 percent. Mr. Piketty, one of the economists who analyzed the I.R.S. data, argues that these high rates did not affect merely post-tax income. They also helped hold down the pretax incomes of the wealthy, he says, by giving them less incentive to make many millions of dollars.
Since 1980, tax rates on the affluent have fallen more than rates on any other group; this year, the top marginal rate is 35 percent. President Obama has proposed raising it to 39 percent and has said he would consider a surtax on families making more than $1 million a year, which could push the top rate above 40 percent.
What any policy changes will mean for the nonwealthy remains unclear. There have certainly been periods when the rich, the middle class and the poor all have done well (like the late 1990s), as well as periods when all have done poorly (like the last year). For much of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, both the middle class and the wealthy received raises that outpaced inflation.
Yet there is also a reason to think that the incomes of the wealthy could potentially have a bigger impact on others than in the past: as a share of the economy, they are vastly larger than they once were.
In 2007, the top one ten-thousandth of households took home 6 percent of the nation’s income, up from 0.9 percent in 1977. It was the highest such level since at least 1913, the first year for which the I.R.S. has data.
The top 1 percent of earners took home 23.5 percent of income, up from 9 percent three decades earlier.
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