The world is witnessing a new 'Gilded Age' as billionaires' wealth grows to $6 trillion

[LongTomH]

From the Guardian: World's witnessing a new Gilded Age as billionaires’ wealth swells to $6tn:

The world’s super-rich hold the greatest concentration of wealth since the US Gilded Age at the turn of the 20th century, when families like the Carnegies, Rockefellers and Vanderbilts controlled vast fortunes.

Billionaires increased their combined global wealth by almost a fifth last year to a record $6tn (£4.5tn) – more than twice the GDP of the UK. There are now 1,542 dollar billionaires across the world, after 145 multi-millionaires saw their wealth tick over into nine-zero fortunes last year, according to the UBS / PwC Billionaires report.

Josef Stadler, the lead author of the report and UBS’s head of global ultra high net worth, said his billionaire clients were concerned that growing inequality between rich and poor could lead to a “strike back”.

“We’re at an inflection point,” Stadler said. “Wealth concentration is as high as in 1905, this is something billionaires are concerned about. The problem is the power of interest on interest – that makes big money bigger and, the question is to what extent is that sustainable and at what point will society intervene and strike back?”

Stadler added: “We are now two years into the peak of the second Gilded Age.”

He said the “$1bn question” was how society would react to the concentration of so much money in the hands of so few.

[Turbineguy]

1. Time for a new invention.

A new type of guillotine or something.

Of course, there are a number of rich people trying to warn against this trend.

[Not Ruth]

2. One of those arrested Saudis made 3 trillion this year

Billionaires are like cockroaches these days

[world wide wally]

3. But we can never afford things that benefit the middle class and we need to give

these billionaires another tax cut.
Sound about right, deplorables?

[Kablooie]

4. Just wait till the Republican tax bill passes.

We will make the 1905 seem penny-ante.
Hooray! We are so awesome when Republicans run the country.