The rich and the wealthy, part 1

I decided to break this topic into two parts because the problem of concentration of wealth in the United States I now realize is a two-headed monster. This first part deals with the less-recognized type of wealth.  Part two will get into the really juicy stuff.

Too many people confuse rich people with being wealthy people, and vice versa.  RICH means that you have alot of money.  WEALTH means that you CONTROL the means by which money can be made.  A person can make himself rich in one of the following ways:

1. Inherit alot of money
2. Win alot of money
3. Receive a high income for having a VERY rare talent that is in high demand (i.e., athlete in a major sport, an entertainer, and yes, even a CEO of a large corporation)
4. sell your valuables for alot of money

A person becomes wealthy by CONTROLING the means by which money can be made.  Money lasts until you spend it.  Wealth is permanant, it can generate money, but more than it also transcends money.  Wealth always has value.  A person can become wealthy in the following ways:

1. inherit wealth
2. use money to invest in items of wealth (land, stocks/business).  Oprah Winfrey at one time was a highly paid talk show host.  But one day she decided to use her money to buy the show's production company.  Her company, Harpo Productions, is what enabled Oprah to transform herself from being rich, into being wealthy.
3. Own land.  Own as in you don't have a mortgage note.  Even a "poor" farmer has wealth if he owns the land.  He can at least feed himself, and the seed from the crop enables next year's crop to be planted.  Hopefully he can sell some of his crop.  And if the land has gold or crude oil under it, that's all the better. 
4. have the majority of -- or a monopoly of -- something which dominates our way of life.  Examples are water, land, energy, ... and knowledge.  Knowledge is Power.

Thru the middle of the 20th century, the control of media -- newspapers, radio, television -- in the United States was spread out over many dozens of owners.  In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. By about 1992, fewer than two dozen corporations owned and operated 90% of the mass media -- controlling almost all of America's newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, records, movies, videos, wire services and photo agencies. By the beginning of the 21st century, the number had fallen to six. The graph is not my idea, but comes from http://www.corporations.org/media/.

Six corporations -- Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, Viacom (formerly CBS) , and General Electric's NBC -- now control most of the media industry in the U.S.  You can do your own search, but a good place to start is at Facts on Media in America. Your knowledge base, your values, your thought processes, your sense of fair and unfair, American and un-American, is generally dictated to you by this small group of large corporations.  Now, please understand, the media has ALWAYS been in a position to shape and create public opinion.  But when there were hundreds of different owners, influence was local or regional, at worst.  Today, the national thinking can be influenced by a handful of people. 

There were once 20 daily newspapers in New York city, by 1940 there were eight, and since 1990 and in that year 25 cities in the United States with a population of more than 100,000 found themselves with only one daily newspaper. Moreover, increasing numbers of the newspapers that survived were owned not by local citizens but by large national newspaper chains. (Source: History of Newspapers).

To support increased military spending at the expense of the public it is charged to protect, it is often argued, "what price freedom?" Because your freedom -- including freedom of speech, and by extension, freedom of thought -- has no price.  So, to be able to control how people think is priceless. It's an influence that transcends money.  Those people have incredible wealth.