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State of Power 2013 Exposing the Davos Class
Publication date:
As the world's most powerful corporate leaders and richest individuals gather at the exclusive World Economic Forum in Davos, TNI offers a visual insight into who is dominating the planet at a time of systemic economic and ecological crisis.
| Corporate power and crisis
Susan George provides an introduction to the infographic series, exposing how the unprecedented concentration of corporate and elite power is at the root of our economic and ecological crisis. See also: The Davos Class |
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Planet Earth: A Corporate World Which are the biggest companies in the world? Which corporations control them? How does their power compare with states? |
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Just 11 million people, or 0.15%, control $42 trillion dollars or two thirds of world GDP. An even tinier group of people, 0.001%, control a third of that amount. Where are they based? What could this money pay for? How much wealth does that leave for the rest of us? |
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Just 25 people, almost all men, increased their known wealth to $827 billion in 2012. That could pay for the costs for every student in the US to go to university more than three times or pay for universal primary and secondary education throughout the developing world four times. |
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Banks and Oil not only make up the most wealthy corporations, they sit on each other's boards and their executives include some of the world's most powerful political and social institutions. An insight into one dimension of the 'Davos class' power. |
Sources
PLANET EARTH: A CORPORATE WORLD
- Country data from IMF
- Top banks and oil corporations from Forbes, April 2012
- Location of top 200 corporations from Forbes, April 2012
- List of 25 most connected companies from Vitali, Gattfelder, and Battiston, The Network of Global Corporate Control,
The GLOBAL 0.001%
- Wealth statistics: Bloomberg website, December 2012
- Geography of the rich: Capgemeni, 2012 World Wealth Report
- An unequal world: Isabel Ortiz and Matthew Cummins, Global inequality: Beyond the Bottom Billion, UNICEF April 2011
- What would $42 trillion pay for?
- US-Afghanistan War:$ 598,286,459,365 as of 2012 Dec, http://costofwar.com/
- US space programme: US White House website- Gulfstream Executive Jet: Business & Commercial Aviation's - 2010 Purchase Planning Handbook
- Universal primary and secondary education: Calculated from http://www.amacad.org/publications/cohen_intro.pdf, p.3,22
- Meeting UN Millennium Development Goal on Clean Water: UNESCO website
- Climate change adaptation: UNFCCC (2008). Estimate of $171 billion Investment and Financial Flows to Address Climate Change, p184. UNFCCC, Bonn
THE WORLD'S RICHEST 25
Wealth statistics
- Bloomberg website, December 2012, http://topics.bloomberg.com/bloomberg-billionaires-index/
- Capgemeni, 2012 World Wealth Report, http://www.capgemini.com/insights-and-resources/by-publication/world-wealth-report-2012/
Education statistics
- www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0288.pdf
- http://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=98
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/datablog/2010/nov/26/tuition-fees-students
- http://www.hesa.ac.uk/content/view/1675/161/
- http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/Education-complete.pdf
DIRTY MONEY: THE FINANCE AND FOSSIL FUEL WEB
Oil companies ranked by 2011 FY revenues, from company annual reports.
Banks ranked by year-end 2011 assets, from The Banker Database, July 2012, cited by http://www.cba.ca/contents/files/statistics/stat_bankranking_en.pdf
Board interlocks and shareholdings from company websites and documents; Full PDF of sources at http://endgame.org/fossilbanks.pdf
Coordinator: Nick Buxton
Research: George Draffan
Design: Ricardo Santos