The Influence of Affluence By Marc Faber

The Influence of Affluence
By Marc Faber
Excerpted from the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report for April 2017

“For as wealth is power, so all power will infallibly draw wealth to itself by some means or other.”
– Edmund Burke (1780)

“Of great riches there is no real use, except it be in the distribution.”
– Francis Bacon (De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum, 1623)

“That mankind as a whole shall become richer does not, of necessity involve an increase in human welfare.”
– John Bates Clark

“Riches: The saving of many in the hands of one.”
– Eugene V. Debs

Those persons who comprise the independent classes are dependent upon two things: the industry of their fellow creatures; and injustice, which enables them to command it.
– Based on John Gray (A Lecture on Human Happiness, 1825)

“No rich man is ugly.”
– Zsa Zsa Gabor

Introduction
The other day, I was interviewed
 by CNBC. One of the participants on their panel asked me whether I believed I was providing a service
to investors by warning them that stocks could decline by between 20% and 40%, or even more. He further questioned my morality in dissuading investors from buying stocks that were being touted as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make money following their March 2009 lows. Aside from
the inaccuracy of the interviewer’s statement that I had been keeping investors out of the market, I was taken aback by the notion of a CNBC employee talking about morality. Every year, I attend several conferences and Hillary Clinton about ethical behaviour, Trump about modesty and unpretentiousness, Bernanke and Yellen about “honest money”, and mobster Whitey Bulger about mercy. (Federal prosecutors indicted Bulger for 19 murders.) Still, the question prompted me subsequently to contemplate whether periods of high monetary inflation (printing money) make people wealthier in real terms. Last month, I explained that it is an irrefutable fact that inflation-adjusted millennials earn less, and have less wealth, than the baby boomers had
at the same age. (See Table 1 for easy reference.)

Also, it is true that US household wealth is at an all-time high – certainly in nominal terms (see Figure 1). (As an aside, Ed Yardeni publishes very useful figures about US and global “Flow of Funds”.)

But, as I have explained in the past, the distribution of wealth has become more unequal, with the 0.1% (the super-wealthy) doing extremely well, while the median household’s or asset owner’s wealth has declined by close to 40% in real terms (adjusted by the CPI) from its peak in 2007
(see Figure 2). I now wish to make some further observations about the increase in household wealth, in both nominal and real terms, of the 0.1%.


Marc Faber is an international investor known for his uncanny predictions of the stock market and futures markets around the world.Dr. Doom also trades currencies and commodity futures like Gold and Oil.