Three and one-half TRILLION dollars….That is the net worth of the 1,011 billionaires in the world today! The wealth of these 1,011 capitalists is probably enough to feed, house and clothe all the billions who live in poverty. But that’s not the way capitalism works.

These blood-sucking bosses accumulated that wealth on the backs of all those who are ill-fed, ill-housed and ill-clothed. It could take care of all the so-called “deficits” afflicting hundreds of millions of workers today.

But again, these bosses’ drive for maximum profits — the cornerstone of the capitalist system — is what puts tens of millions out of work, cuts budgets for schools, forecloses houses, all growing out of the nature of the profit system. When every president, finance minister, governor and mayor says “we” have to “share the sacrifice” of the crisis of capitalism, they represent the interests of these rapacious billionaires. And in cases of politicians like NYC’s billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg, they are one and the same person, cutting budgets for schools, mass transit and all social services.

A recent Forbes Magazine reports all these gory details: the average net worth of these 1,011 is $3.5 billion (multiplying those two figures produces the above $3.5 trillion). The richest is Mexico’s Carlos Slim, with $53.5 billion, slightly ahead of Bill Gates. The U.S. has 403 on that list; China has 64; Russia has 62.

A system that produces such exploitation of the world’s working class is begging to be destroyed, to be replaced by a system — communism — where our class which produces all that wealth will share it according to need.