What is the total wealth ?

[Charles Brown <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I don't have the next thought wellformed, but don't the wealthiest people
have to guarantee that they own a certain portion of the total wealth/social
capital in order that it be "capital" with "capital power" ? If the bottom
6.28 billion people had a larger portion of the total, they could live
comfortably and not depend on the richest to survive and live.  Isn't the
value of hedge fund wealth dependent in part on it being part of hedge fund
owners and other finance capitalists owning a certain portion of total
wealth ?

Of the different forms of wealth, what is the significance of fictitous
capital ( if I use that term correctly)being so attenuated from a result of
a labor process and from use-values ? Isn't owning it a way of indirectly
owning and controlling a major portion of wealth that is in the form of
non-fictitious capital ?

What proportion of total wealth is far attentuated from attachment to any
use-value ?

By defining wealth as capital, isn't the value of that capital defined based
on its ability to generate more capital ?

What proportion of total wealth is in a form that is of use to the vast
majority of the people ?

Charles



Julio Huato wrote:



        Say, the labor force will grow at 4% per year in the future and
per-capita
        income at 1%.  Then, the next best alternative is expanding global
net
        income at a rate of 5% per year.  This growth rate is assumed
constant
        (since there's no risk, no volatility).  So that's the global
discount rate
        we should use to price our annuity.  Thus, the discounted present
value of
        global capital is:

        K = 30 trillion USD/0.05 = 600 trillion USD


Another approach. According to the BEA, the value of fixed
reproducible tangible wealth (including consumer durables) in the
U.S. was $32.8 trillion in 2002. (Note that the rate of return on
those assets implied by GDP is a lot higher than Julio's estimate -
around 30%.) That year, according to World Bank stats, the U.S. had
32% of world GDP. So, scaling up based on that income share, we can
estimate that the global capital stock is worth $102.1 trillion - or
roughly $16,000 per capita.

Doug