Comment by ta1243
2 months ago
The reason there are so many people worth $1b instead of a poor $100m is because of the tax cuts diverting money from crucial jobs.
2 months ago
The reason there are so many people worth $1b instead of a poor $100m is because of the tax cuts diverting money from crucial jobs.
Waiting for the first trillionaire, that's when all billionaires will unanimously say "we have enough, let's start paying people more".
In the 1880s, Vanderbilt was worth $230m, or $7b today
1910s Rockerfeller peaked at nearly $1b. That's $33b today, or chump change. He, like Gates after him, gave away a lot of wealth.
Come 1995, Bill Gates took the mantle with a net worth of $15b, or $31b today.
So from 1910 to 1995 there was very little inflation in the super rich.
By 2000 Gates reached $60b ($110b). By 2010 he'd dropped to $56b ($81b today), still nearly 3 times richer than Rockerfeller
By 2015 he'd recovered to $105b in today's money, despite giving away lots of money.
In 2018 Bezos took over with $140b, a 40% real-terms increase on the "richest person" in just 3 years.
2022 Musk took over with $236b, but lost out to Arnault in 2024 when Musk was worth a mere $210b, but today he's nearly doubled his wealth. Maybe Musk is a special case due to the excessive corruption, but Bezos has increased 30% in 12 months.
in the last 30 years, the inflation rate of super-rich-wealth has increased on average 10% a year even ignoring the Musk outlier. Inflation meanwhile was 2.5%
At those rates, in the next 30 years the super-rich will be worth $4.2 trillion, but someone more normal with a net worth of $1m will be worth $2m.