World's third-richest man gaining wealth

[lovuian]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/1310AP_Mexico_Third_Richest_Man.html?source=rss

MEXICO CITY -- The world's third-richest man, Carlos Slim, is gaining rapidly on Bill Gates and Warren Buffett with a fortune that grew $19 billion last year - the largest wealth gain in the past decade tracked by Forbes magazine.

It's also a sign of the wealth gap in Mexico's monopoly-laden economy.

Since Slim bought the telephone monopoly in a 1991 privatization, he's used Telmex as a cash cow to build an empire that includes Latin America's largest mobile phone company; provides banking, brokerage and Internet services; sells insurance and oil industry equipment; and operates retail stores and restaurants.

To many Mexicans, who make Slim richer with nearly every phone call or trip to the mall, his rise shows their businessmen can run world-class companies. He's widely praised for turning Telmex - once notorious for taking months or years to install a phone line - into a modern, professional operation
more...

Monopolies are wonderful things
for One Man
versus 25 million people

Is the world screwed up or what

[Selatius]

1. Tax him and the top 1 percent of Mexico's population.

Use the proceeds to fund infrastructure upgrade/repairs, job training programs, public education, health care, poverty relief programs, enforcement of labor standards/environmental standards, crime fighting, etc.

Mexico certainly has the wealth to do all these things. The only problem is many of the ultra-rich families also have a stranglehold on the Mexican congress and senate. Mexico is essentially ruled by an oligopoly of industrialists and corporate-types. They don't believe in social spending, as evidenced by Mexico dumping its poverty problem on America.

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. These rich guys are the subject of endless fawning by reporters.

No matter how much money the idiot has he can't buy his way out of having to take a dump & eventually dropping dead like everybody else. Who cares about them?

[lovuian]

3. Its easy to be a Great Businessman when you have a

MONOPOLY

[lovuian]

4. kick

:kick: