RN to BG on Wealth Disparties

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

NADER SENDS PUBLIC LETTER TO BILLIONAIRE
BILL GATES ABOUT WEALTH DISPARITIES

CHALLENGES GATES TO JOIN WITH WARREN BUFFETT
TO LEAD A CONFERENCE OF BILLIONAIRES AND MULTI- BILLIONAIRES
 ON THE SUBJECT OF NATIONAL AND GLOBAL
 WEALTH  DISPARITIES AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: RALPH NADER 202-387-8030
------------------------------------------------------------

July 27, 1998

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

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 percent of Americans (106
million people).  That includes their home equity, pensions,
mutual funds and 401(k) plans, 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that may be outdated, given the most recent surge in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 labor.  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 one percent is
greater than that of the bottom ninety percent 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 Program, the assets of the world's 358
billionaires were greater than the combined incomes of
countries with 45 percent of the world's people (about 3
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 to 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
P.O. Box 19312
Washington, DC 20036