Comment by lifestyleguru
3 months ago
Waiting for the first trillionaire, that's when all billionaires will unanimously say "we have enough, let's start paying people more".
3 months ago
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.