Wealth

The wait for tables is getting longer at Buck's, a popular breakfast spot for the tech elite and a weather vane for the Silicon Valley economy. Here, like everywhere else, Facebook is the talk of the town. "Charles Schwab was in the restaurant the other day, and I asked him to hook me up with some Facebook shares," said Jamis MacNiven, owner of Buck's, in the wealthy suburban enclave of Woodside. "He told me even he can't get Facebook shares. " The new tech boom officially gets underway Friday when Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg rings Nasdaq's opening bell remotely from the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, launching the largest initial public offering of stock in Silicon Valley history.

During the election cycle we tend to ask: What does America mean; where are we going? And then someone decides to check on the Indians to find out the answer, as though Indians represent America's soul hidden in the attic. And of course politicians have long stood next to their "souls" and posed for pictures on the campaign trail. Within the last year, Diane Sawyer and "20/20" did a special on the sorry conditions at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, and the New Yorker featured a grim photo essay on Pine Ridge too. The New York Times published a piece on brutal crime at the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming and another on the deep financial problems at Foxwoods, the Pequot-owned "world's largest" casino in Connecticut.

In the world of presidential candidates, Mitt Romney and John Kerry rank among the richest. Romney could be worth as much as $250 million, and Kerry -- whose 2004 bid against President George W. Bush failed at least in part because he was seen as an out-of-touch rich guy -- could be worth slightly more: $282 million. So it's curious why Romney decided, when he took the stage at a 2004 meeting of the Republican Governors Assn. , to mock Kerry for his wealth. "There's a senator from my state, you may have heard, that wants to get elected president," Romney said, according to a videotape unearthed by Buzzfeed's Andrew Kaczynski.

Mark Zuckerberg's personal fortune bounced around the $20-billion mark all day Friday as Facebook Inc. shares slid up and down before finally settling at $38.23 at close of day. When Facebook's shares were priced Thursday at $38, Zuckerberg was worth a cool $19.14 billion. That number went up a couple billion when Facebook stocks finally started trading at 11:30 a.m. Eastern. The shares began selling at $42.05, valuing Zuckerberg at about $21.18 billion.

We hear a great deal these days about the top 1% and the bottom 99% in the American economic pyramid. But we also need to consider the 11%. From 1776 to the present, the bottom 60% of the American population, as USC historian Carole Shammas has documented, has never had more than 11% of the country's wealth. We may embrace the American dream of broad prosperity and wealth equity, but we have never been close to achieving it. There has been an explosion of studies examining inequality in the United States recently.

At his farewell dinner, Sen. George Mitchell noted that holding public office doesn't guarantee wealth. In today's political climate it seems the question should be: Does wealth guarantee holding public office? JOAN MILKE FLORES San Pedro

Driving around Los Angeles, particularly around the UCLA campus, it's hard not to notice the hospitals and research centers that bear their name. The father-and-son team of Leslie and Louis Gonda made a fortune from the sale of their aircraft leasing business, and they weren't shy about spreading their wealth around, giving to charities and medical research throughout the city. "For years, they've given away a great deal of money," said Bob Safai of Madison Partners, a Los Angeles commercial real estate firm.

On this day 226 years ago — July 26, 1784 — Benjamin Franklin considered whether society was in need of a "remedy for luxury" in a letter to his trusted advisor, Benjamin Vaughn. In it, Franklin methodically argued against such a need. The current growing clamor for the regulation of wealth makes Franklin's thoughts on the matter relevant today. Consider President Obama's now infamous off-script muttering that "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money." Many have argued that this statement is emblematic of larger anti-wealth, anti-luxury tendencies in the administration's agenda.

Hilary Rosen is a Democratic "operative," as they like to say in the District of Columbia, but she's not likely to be hired anytime soon by President Obama's reelection campaign. Her snarky critique of Ann Romney's fitness to advise her husband about women's economic issues -- saying on CNN that the stay-at-home mother of five has "never worked a day in her life" -- has drawn denunciations from top Obama campaign advisors and a subtle remonstration from Michelle Obama, who tweeted , "Every mother works hard, and every woman deserves to be respected.

  Israel's hottest new TV show may be making many viewers feel guilty. But they can't stop watching it. It's a "Real Housewives" reality-based knockoff about six rich, materialistic women bouncing from personal training sessions in their mansions to Botox appointments to champagne-fueled shopping binges, dishing dirt about one another and generally reveling in their own fabulousness. Hardly scandalous stuff to American TV viewers. But in the land of the kibbutz - a nation founded on egalitarian ideals, where lawmakers still wear jeans in the Knesset, or parliament, and the flaunting of wealth was once considered taboo - this unapologetic celebration of the lifestyles of the rich and Israeli is hitting a raw nerve.

Is citizenship a commodity, to be bought and sold when the price is right? Eduardo Saverin, co-founder of Facebook, thinks so. After becoming an American 14 years ago, he has traded his citizenship in the country that helped make him rich for the low-cost Singapore product. According to the New York Times, he denies making the switch for pecuniary reasons, but it's hard to believe. He stands to gain $4 billion from Facebook's imminent public offering, which has to make Singapore tax laws enticing.

Hilary Rosen is a Democratic "operative," as they like to say in the District of Columbia, but she's not likely to be hired anytime soon by President Obama's reelection campaign. Her snarky critique of Ann Romney's fitness to advise her husband about women's economic issues -- saying on CNN that the stay-at-home mother of five has "never worked a day in her life" -- has drawn denunciations from top Obama campaign advisors and a subtle remonstration from Michelle Obama, who tweeted , "Every mother works hard, and every woman deserves to be respected.

For now, many aging baby boomers still are in the wealth-accumulation phase of life. Here's how some Wall Street pros see boomers focusing their portfolios in the next few years: Safety first: Millions of investors have favored high-quality bonds over stocks since the 2008 market crash, seeking income and security. Robert Arnott, head of money manager Research Affiliates in Newport Beach, thinks that trend won't fizzle soon - even if stocks keep rebounding. "We're at the sweet spot for bonds now," he said.

TRIPOLI, Libya - Ahmed Mostafa and his friends paid thousands of dollars among them to get to Libya recently, traveling with gangs of smugglers through Western Africa. It was to be their escape from the sprawling slums of Ghana's capital city, Accra. Mostafa had heard rumors of arbitrary arrests and Libyan lynch mobs during the war last year in which longtime Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi was ousted and killed. But he was counting on luck: "It was not something I really thought about," he said.

Most mornings, when the slanted dawn light hits the nearby Tower Palace luxury high-rises, Cho Su-ja can't help but stare, struck by their grandeur. The 72-year-old grandmother lives in a two-room shack with plastic flooring, sandwiched between other shacks built from planks of wood, corrugated tin, castoff door frames and bamboo screens, like a jumble of shipwrecks. But Cho doesn't envy her wealthy neighbors, not one bit. She's proud to be one of the original inhabitants of Guyrong village, a ramshackle shantytown sprawling alongside the exclusive Gangnam area, the highest-priced real estate in South Korea.

Dear Liz: My husband and I are nearing 60. The company where we both have worked for over 30 years recently merged with another firm. The money in our retirement accounts, which totals several hundred thousand dollars, will be distributed to us, and we need to figure out how to manage it. We took your advice to interview several fee-only financial planners, and all of them are pushing for wealth management. They would manage the money in exchange for a percentage of the assets.

Jim Hightower (Commentary, Sept. 5) is the first commentator I have read that seems to understand the seriousness of the concentration of wealth on our economy. Simply put, the problem is this: Money that goes to the rich is money that does not go to the workers. The workers are the consumers and after 12 years of making the rich richer and the workers poorer, the poor no longer have the money to buy what is produced. Supply-side economics has had its chance and failed. Now demand-side economics must be given a chance.

It seems curious that when private lawyers are earning as much as $350 per hour from the state that an hourly charge of $150 from a physician is often arbitrarily considered above the "usual and customary" by the health insurers, private or governmental. Since our education system demands far more hours to qualify one to practice medicine than law, and most of the legal issues end up merely as financial bickerings, is our society saying that wealth is more vital than health? JOHN T. CHIU, MD Corona del Mar

In the world of presidential candidates, Mitt Romney and John Kerry rank among the richest. Romney could be worth as much as $250 million, and Kerry -- whose 2004 bid against President George W. Bush failed at least in part because he was seen as an out-of-touch rich guy -- could be worth slightly more: $282 million. So it's curious why Romney decided, when he took the stage at a 2004 meeting of the Republican Governors Assn. , to mock Kerry for his wealth. "There's a senator from my state, you may have heard, that wants to get elected president," Romney said, according to a videotape unearthed by Buzzfeed's Andrew Kaczynski.

Richard Milanovich, who as chairman of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians helped to usher in a new age of wealth and political muscle for many Native Americans through the expansion of tribal casinos in California, died Sunday at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage. He was 69 and had cancer. During Milanovich's nearly three decades as chairman, the Agua Caliente tribe rose from a harsh desert existence to the glitz and riches that accompany casino-fed wealth. The transformation coincided with the rebirth of Palm Springs, home to one of the tribe's two posh casino resorts and large swaths of tribal land, and economic gains across the checkerboard reservations in the Coachella Valley.