The headline from the Sunday Times Rich List 2019 concerns the likelihood of the super-rich leaving the UK en masse (if that isn’t a contradiction in terms) if ever Corbyn, ‘an ardent Marxist’, were to be elected PM. Its editorial too defines this possible migration as constituting a significant ‘loss’ to the UK. Apparently the super-rich are the key wealth creators, notwithstanding the fact, pace Marx, that they create, that is ‘produce’, remarkably little apart from bankable profit (which is often clandestinely removed to tax havens).
But I am maybe getting ahead of myself. My brief here is to offer a summary of the attempt by journalists at the Sunday Times to calculate the extent of the wealth of the wealthiest and to deliver a rank order. (As Piketty affirms, such attempts inevitably under-estimate wealth accumulation.)
The good news is that Sir Philip Green is portrayed as the key loser (he’s down to 156=). Reflecting the general travails of the British high street in the face of the continuing surge in online shopping, his Arcadia Group is apparently now ‘practically worthless’. He is no longer a billionaire, being only worth as estimated £950 million, his lowest evaluation since 2001.
More generally, the combined worth of the ‘top 1000’ is now – wait for it – £771.13 billion, up £47,776 billion from 2018. There are now 151 billionaires, up from six in 2018.
Today’s 151 billionaires account for 68% of the wealth of the richest 1000 people in the UK.
London has more sterling billionaires than any other city (95), with San Fransisco second on 73 and New York third on 71). Nationally, the UK comes third (on 151) to the USA (on 463) and China (on 294).
Top of the UK Rich List for 2019 are Sri and Gopi Hinduja (and family), ‘industry and finance’, now worth £22 billion, up from £1.356 billion in 2018. Together wirth their brothers, Prakesh and Ashok, they own 50 companies with a turnover of £40 billion in 2018. Their business ‘empire’ was founded by their father Parmanand in Mumbai in 1914. Remember Piketty: it’s beyond helpful now to inherit capital (in fact it is becoming increasingly necessary for the accomplishment even of secure, affluent home-ownership).
How did the ‘top 10’ get their wealth? 1 – industry and finance; 2 – property and internet (David and Simon Reuben); 3 – chemicals (Sir Jim Ratcliffe); 4 – investment, music and media (Sir Len Blavatnik); 5 – household goods and technology (Sir James Dyson and family); 6 – inheritance and investment (Kirsten and Jorn Rausing); 7 – inheritance, brewing and banking (Charlene De Carvalho-Heineken and Michael De Carvalho); 8 – mining and investment (Alisher Usmanov); 9 – oil and industry (Roman Abramovich); and 10 – industry (Mikhail Fridman).
More generally, the sources of wealth for those in the 1000 Rich List are as follows: property (163); finance and investment (120); construction (60); hedge funds (49); food and drink (48); internet, telecoms and computers (44); fashion (43); transport (43); entertainment (42); hotels and hospitality (39); industry and mining (37); land and art (30); business services (26); media (26); pharmaceuticals (26); retailing (25); inheritance and divorce (19); insurance (16); car sales (16); and gambling (12). It’s not just that the super-rich are not themselves producers, their wealth has remarkably little to do with production per se.
Inheritance is rather more important than the statistics and ‘admissions’ so far allow for. The most obvious exemplar is the 14th placed Duke of Westminster and the Grosvenor family who own property worth £10.1 billion (up from a mere £136 million in 2018). ‘Hughie’ Grosvenor at 28 is Britain’s youngest billionaire. He inherited his title of 7th Duke in 2016 together with a family empire that encompasses 300nacres in Mayfair and Belgravia, plus land and property in Oxford, Cheshire, Scotland and Spain. The group has investments in 60 cities worldwide and half its assets are held outside of Britain, including a ‘chunk’ of Silicon Valley. By the way, the 10th placed ‘aristocrat’ is worth an estimated £824 million, so breeding still counts for a lot.
Just pause for a moment. People born inheriting debt rather than capital face a constant ‘moral imperative to work’ and are subject to censure as ‘skivers’ as well as sanctions and punishment if they fail to find and embrace a crap job, often under a zero-hours contract. But it is okay for a ‘Duke’ to be born a billionaire and to please himself!
By the way, you would need £120 million to get onto the bottom rung of the Rich List for 2019, up from £115 million in 2018.
Political donorship is as revealing as it is unsurprising. The top 50 donors – ranging from donations of £1,573,200 to £25,000 in 2018 – are to the Conservative Party, with the exceptions of Nos. 13 and 46= (Liberal Democrats) and No. 46= (Women’s Equality Party). Nothing there for the ‘Marxist’ Corbyn! I can’t resist a quick passing reference to my class/command dynamic (capital buys power to make policy in the interests of its further accumulation).
The estimates worldwide provide some kind of context. Only the Kamprad family, recorded as Sweden/UK (18th), the Hindujas (41st =) and David and Simon Reuben (49th) come in the top 50. Of the top 10, eight are from the USA, with the Walton family (£132 billion) in first place; Charles and David Koch (£79.5 billion) second; Jeff Bezos (£78.1 billion) third; Bill Gates (£76 billion) fourth; and Warren Buffett (£65 billion) fifth. It should be noted once more that these are estimates – much wealth is secreted away out of sight – and rival lists (Forbes for example) vary in their assessments, and all are effectively ‘best guesses’ (Piketty).
But the super-rich are clearly getting richer year-on-year, even as the lot of the vulnerable poor is diminishing (now in absolute rather than just in relative terms). For some, including some senior figures in sociology, this trend is a symptom of the impending implosion – by mid-century – of our current global and financialised version capitalism.