Consider: "There were 469 US billionaires, worth a combined $1.6 trillion, while
the 656 billionaires who live outside the United States are worth $2.8
trillion." That is the upshot of the latest Forbes billionaire list. Leave
aside the thought that US troops probably kill more Iraqis every week than are
on that list. I just wondered if it was possible to calculate how many man
hours of labour produced the $4.4 trillion of wealth that is enjoyed by this
very small number of individuals. Obviously, we could pretend that the
canniness of these investors was itself the key magical ingredient that
produced all this wealth, and then the problem would no longer exist. That
claim has the grave disadvantage of being insusceptible to proof or disproof,
of course, like most forms of magical thinking. On the other hand, if the value
embodied in that wealth was principally produced by labour, then surely it would
be possible to produce aggregate figures for all the man hours of labour that
went into producing it.

Let's say, hypothetically, the average value produced by a single man hour of
labour across the globe was $40. That would be 11 billion man hours of labour.
I have no idea what the actual figure, supposing it was obtainable, might be,
but I'm just trying to get a sense of scale here. For this 1,125 people to live
in the manner to which they are accustomed, it really must take billions of man
hours. Well, obviously they didn't do all that work between themselves. Let's
put it another way. Warren Buffet increased his wealth by $10bn last year. That
would be 250 million man hours right there. And say the average worker does
2,500 hours of work a year (that would be a 48 hour week every week), this
would mean that Buffet's increase in income over twelve months was supplied by
100,000 people all working long hours without holidays - workers in Fruit of
the Loom, Dairy Queen, Ginsu and other firms owned or co-owned by Buffet.

Bill
Gates got a $2bn increase over last year. At fifty million man hours of labour,
that would be 20,000 workers going flat out to produce just his 2007 bonus.
Again, these figures are entirely speculative, for the purposes of constructing
some scalar conception of this wealth in relation to the work that made it. A
grand don't come for free. $4.4 trillion took a mammoth exertion across many
sectors of the international labour force to produce. In practically every
newspaper and television report, the tone of the response to this annual Oscars
ceremony for the uber-rich is laudatory, of course, and viewers are encouraged
to admire the go-getters and dynamic wealth-creators who have locked up so much
of the booty. Where, the commentariat gushes, did all this wealth come from?
It's amazing. It's the touch of Midas. It's the Sage of Omaha. It must be
magic. These men rule because of their godly prowess among mortals. It is the
only explanation. All hail.

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2008/03/grand-dont-come-for-free.html