World's Billionaires Became 20% Richer In 2017, Report Reveals

[appalachiablue]

Source: The Guardian

By Rupert Neate, 1:01 EDT. UBS report shows billionaires increased fortunes by $1.4tn, more than the GDP of Spain.

Billionaires made more money in 2017 than in any year in recorded history. The richest people on Earth increased their wealth by a fifth to $8.9tn (£6.9tn), according to a report by Swiss bank UBS.

The fortunes of today’s super-wealthy have risen at a far greater rate than at the turn of the 20th century, when families such as the Rothschilds, Rockefellers and Vanderbilts controlled vast wealth. The report by UBS and accountants PwC said there was so much money in the hands of the ultra-rich that a new wave of rich and powerful multi-generational families was being created.

“The past 30 years have seen far greater wealth creation than the Gilded Age” the UBS Billionaires 2018 report said. “That period bred generations of families in the US and Europe who went on to influence business, banking, politics, philanthropy and the arts for more than 100 years. With wealth set to pass from entrepreneurs to their heirs in the coming years, the 21st century multi-generational families are being created.”

The world’s 2,158 billionaires grew their combined wealth by $1.4tn last year, more than the GDP of Spain or Australia, as booming stock markets helped the already very wealthy to achieve the “greatest absolute growth ever”. -More...


Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/oct/26/worlds-billionaires-became-20-richer-in-2017-report-reveals

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The world’s richest person, Jeff Bezos, has an estimated net worth of $146bn, more than any one person in history.

[JCanete]

1. Luckily for Bezos, a lot of people are happy to justify this kind of weatlh accumulation and explain

how he is a self-made man and how his 33 million dollar charities make him a philanthropist. I guess 33 million dollars buys you PR that has some long coat-tails.

[Woodycall]

2. Franklin Roosevelt On The Subject

...... For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital—all undreamed of by the fathers—the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.

There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small business men and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.

It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man......

........For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor—other people’s lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.......

.........These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the Flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the Flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike........

[appalachiablue]

6. Thanks for posting this wisdom, FDR was correct.

[appalachiablue]

9. "The past 30 years have seen far greater wealth creation than the Gilded Age."

"A major wealth transition has begun. Over the past five years (2012–2017), the sum passed by deceased billionaires to beneficiaries has grown by an average of 17 percent each year," the UBS report concludes. "Over the next two decades we expect a wealth transition of $3.4 trillion worldwide—almost 40 percent of current total billionaire wealth."





https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/10/26/while-rest-world-burned-billionaires-made-more-money-2017-any-other-year-history

[appalachiablue]

12. China 'Creates 2 Billionaires A week,' BBC Oct. 26, 2018.

China produced billionaires at the rate of two a week in 2017, says a report by Swiss bank UBS and auditors PwC.

The number of billionaires in the country saw a net increase from 318 to 373, with a joint wealth of $1.12 trillion (£874bn), said the survey. The report said China was currently the leading country for entrepreneurs to create wealth.

But the report also cautioned that China's billionaires have a high turnover. It said 106 people became billionaires but 51 dropped off the list, illustrating the risks of doing business in China.

"Over the last decade, Chinese billionaires have created some of the world's largest and most successful companies, raising living standards," said Josef Stadler, head of ultra-high net worth at UBS Global Management.

"But this is just the beginning. China's vast population, technology innovation and productivity growth combined with government support, are providing unprecedented opportunities for individuals not only to build businesses but also to change people's lives for the better."

There were only 16 Chinese billionaires as recently as 2016, the report said, but now nearly one in five billionaires worldwide was Chinese. It said 97% of the Chinese billionaires were self-made, many of them in sectors such as technology and retail.

The report said the Americas region was still home to the largest concentration of billionaire wealth, but wealth creation was slowing. In 2017, the US created 53 new billionaires, compared with 87 five years ago. In western Europe, the number of billionaires went up by 17 to 414 in 2017. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45989908

[JCanete]

11. excellent, thanks! nt

[callous taoboy]

3. Meanwhile, this teacher is sucking wind economically.

I had no raise year before last, and this year we got a 1% raise and will get a $500 bonus at x-mas, both of which are already erased by rising property taxes and health care costs. I had been working a weekend job for 10 years until I found myself too wiped out from the week to carry on with that.

[Sherman A1]

4. Thank Goodness

I have been spending many a sleepless night worrying about their ability to carry on in these troubled times.

[IronLionZion]

5. World's deplorables got 20% dumber

and blamed the immigrants and transgender people and whoever else while getting fleeced by billionaires.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

7. October 11: Jeff Bezos Just Lost Over $10 Billion in the Last 24 Hours

It's not a one-way street.

EVERYDAY MONEY BILLIONAIRES

Jeff Bezos Just Lost Over $10 Billion in the Last 24 Hours

By JENNIFER CALFAS October 11, 2018

The richest man in the world just lost billions of dollars.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos saw his net worth fall by more than $10 billion over the last 24 hours due to a global market plunge that hit tech giants particularly hard and sent Amazon shares falling to their lowest point in months. As of Thursday morning, Bezos has $142.3 billion to his name — about $11 billion less than he had at the beginning of Wednesday, according to estimates from Forbes.

Bezos’s enormous net worth, in large part, hinges on his 16% stake in Amazon. The retail giant opened at $1,724 per share Tuesday. Despite a monumental year for the company, Amazon shares have fallen by hundreds of dollars since Oct. 1 when it closed at $2,004 per share. Despite the fall in his net worth, Bezos is still far and away the world’s richest person, with Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates behind him with a net worth of about $96 billion, according to Forbes.

This morning, the numbers for Amazon are:

Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN)

1,655.00 -127.17 (-7.14%)
As of 9:55AM EDT. Market open.

So he's 7 percent "poorer" this morning than he was yesterday at 4:00 p.m. EDT. That's assuming that he gets the odd notion that he should sell his shares this morning. If he doesn't sell them, then he hasn't really lost anything.

Full disclosure: I do not own any AMZN other than through an index fund.

[MissMillie]

8. All of this makes me exhausted

TAX THE $*#& out of him and give 1,000 people health insurance.

[RussBLib]

10. and this is why

the financial channels all say that this is a goldilocks economy. They crow endlessly about how awesome the economy is, and much of it is simply due to a massive tax cut for the wealthy that most people will not even feel. But the rubes keep on parroting the bullshit, thinking they might be rich some day too.