This year, however, the note is a little more cautious, even though the fortunes grew even faster-by just under 20 per cent. "Fast money in a changing world," is the 1999 headline. "Wealth on the Rich 200 has rocketed nearly 20 per cent to $57.09 billion in 12 months," it states.

The magazine's concern is that this hothouse climate cannot last. The wealth concentrated in the hands of the elite 200 is growing at a staggering pace. Their combined holdings have mushroomed by 60 per cent in just three years, or eight-fold since 1983.

The BRW is exhibiting some nervousness because these riches are almost entirely dependent on the extraordinary rise and rise of the share market.

Take, for example, Kerry Packer, whom the BRW classifies as Australia's richest man (only because RupertMurdoch, who is worth $A8.6 billion, is no longer an Australian citizen). Over the past year Packer's assets have jumped $1.2 billion to $6.4 billion, an average of $3.29 million a day. Yet this is almost entirely due to the rise in share price for his listed company, Publishing & Broadcasting Limited. PBL shares have soared as part of a feeding frenzy involving media and Internet stocks.

The newest billionaire, retailing entrepreneur Gerry Harvey, almost doubled his wealth -- from $560 million to $1 billion because of a run on shares in his Harvey Norman chain. (Nevertheless Harvey claims that he is simply a workaholic who amassed his fortune by being personally mean and miserly.)

On this year's Rich 200 list there are 16 new fortunes and three entrants returning from previous crashes, with an amazing combined worth of $2.8 billion. Of these people, 13 are regarded as "paper millionaires". Their wealth is purely the result of the scramble for Internet and telecommunications stock.

They are personifiedby the aptly named Jodie Rich. Aged just 39, Rich splashed his way back into the Rich 200 by suddenly expanding his worth to $775 million, largely through a single transaction -- the $709 million sale to the Murdoch and Packer families of 40 per cent of one of the country's few profitable telecommunications companies, One.Tel.

Rich last featured on the rich list in the late 1980s and early 1990s, before his previous corporate vehicle, a computer distribution company Imagineering, ran into debt problems. The son of a wealthy Bellevue Hill (Sydney) family, and graduate of the exclusive Cranbrook School, he was a share market hero in 1986 when, at 26, he became the youngest ever member of the Rich 200. Rich is just one of many high-flying young operators who have become overnight multi-millionaires from technology-based companies that did not even exist a decade ago. Much of the rest of the increase in private wealth came from property speculation, particularly in Sydney, where house prices at the top of themarket have nearly doubled in five years.

Most of this wealth accumulation is parasitic -- that is, it is not derived from actual production. Another parasitic enterprise, gambling, also features heavily in this year's Rich 200. The imbalance that this "new money" has produced in the economy can be seen in the ever-greater concentration of wealth in Sydney, which is now the unchallenged financial centre of Australian capitalism. Half of the aggregate wealth of the Rich 200 is based in the state of New South Wales, whose capital is Sydney, one-third is in Victoria (Melbourne), with only 9 per cent in Western Australia, 4.5 per cent in Queensland, 1.7 per cent in South Australia, 0.49 per cent in the Northern Territory and 0.32 per cent in Tasmania.

The economic distortions produced by the share bubble in Australia are dwarfed by those fuelled by Wall Street. BRW notes that the Australian market is "sedate" compared to the Internet stock frenzy on Wall Street, where Microsoft chief Bill Gates (worth $US 90billion) took just 12 years to become a billionaire, only to be outstripped by America's latest billionaire, Garry Winnick (now worth $US4.5 billion), who required a mere 18 months.

In order to not fall further behind, Australia's wealthy have had to increasingly invest and seek capital on Wall Street, thus tying their fortunes to the even more dizzy and unsustainable heights reached by that market.

There is an ever-more apparent disparity between the over-heated Internet and technology stocks and the rest of the economy. While share prices in these spheres have risen astronomically on the Australian market, those in mining, agriculture and manufacturing -- long the mainstays of Australian business -- have largely stagnated or declined.

Moreover, the latest survey of business investment plans shows that the outlook has slumped to a 15-year low. In the financial year 1999-2000, corporate investment could fall by 10 per cent. Mining companies are expected to slash investment by 42 per cent, manufacturersby 17 per cent and other industries by 13 per cent. Such falls will mean further cuts in output, employment and living standards.

Not only does this gap throw further doubt on the long-term viability of the share boom, it also points to the social gulf that increasingly exists between the privileged layers that have enriched themselves by riding the share market and the rest of society.

While a wealthy few have seized control of new technologies and profited enormously from the associated processes of globalisation, privatisation and corporate downsizing, the results for most people have been job losses, insecure low-paid work and poverty. In the same year that the Rich 200 added 20 per cent to their fortunes, homelessness increased by 12 per cent nationally, including many working families.

The BRW reports some troubled comments by opinion pollster Hugh Mackay. "Wealth has become a symbol of a very significant and regrettable fragmentation of Australian society," he said. "The rich now live in aneconomic stratosphere that causes people earning less than, say, $100,000 a year to look aghast and say `There is no conceivable bridge between their world and ours'."

In fact, as Mackay later acknowledges, most people earn far less than $100,000. Three-quarters of the population earn less than $70,000 and almost one-third of households have incomes of less than $20,000. Mackay described the latter statistic as "chilling".

Excerpted with permission from WSWS