7 ms·

This title is pure clickbait. The article says that out of the last 9 years, the statement has been true for 1 and false for 8. Flagged.

• DennisP 3y ago
  Hah, I've seen this title all over. Pretty easy to miss that it was just this past year, contrary to the prior eight years.
  • hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    I don't find that to be clickbait at all. It wasn't just any one year in the past nine, it was the most recent. Heck, the title could have been "For the first time in recent history, billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation." That would perhaps have been more accurate, but that's also a "stronger draw" in my opinion than the actual title. It doesn't make sense to call something "clickbait" that is less intended to incite than a more detailed headline.
    • DennisP 3y ago
      I wasn't the one who called it clickbait but I do think it's misleading. The one year could easily be an outlier. It might be by accident, or it could be that the writer was more interested in pushing a political view than getting clicks.
      • lapcat 3y ago
        > it could be that the writer was more interested in pushing a political view than getting clicks. The report comes from the Union Bank of Switzerland. https://www.ubs.com/global/en/media/display-page-ndp/en-20231130-the-great-wealth-transfer.html https://www.ubs.com/global/en/media/display-page-ndp/en-2023... "UBS manages the largest amount of private wealth in the world, counting approximately half of the world's billionaires among its clients." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBS Also keep in mind that some of the world's wealthiest people are getting older. Inheritance of their wealth is inevitable. Warren Buffett is 93, and Charlie Munger just died. Bill Gates is 68, Steve Balmer 67, and Paul Allen already died. Larry Ellison is 79. Bernard Arnault is 74. Michael Bloomberg is 81. Carlos Slim is 83. I suspect the share of inherited wealth is only going to accelerate in the near future.
        • rufus_foreman 3y ago
          Buffet has said he is giving most of his money away. Same with Gates, Ellison and Bloomberg. Carlos Slim has also been donating huge amounts to philanthropies.
          • lapcat 3y ago
            We'll see what happens when they actually die. In any case, they're giving their money "away" to "foundations" controlled by billionaire families. The money is still inherited, and these foundations can be seen as tax shelters.
            • DennisP 3y ago
              I've spent some time googling how foundations work and while there are various structures, a common theme is that it's not that cushy. The bulk of the money has to actually go to charity, otherwise you pay the normal taxes. And they keep an eye out for tricks like having the foundation pay absurd salaries to your relatives.
              • lapcat 3y ago
                The foundation doesn't have to be cushy in itself. The family members already inherit enough money to satisfy all of their material desires. You don't even need to be a billionaire to satisfy all of your material desires. Beyond a certain point, wealth is simply power, and the foundations give power to the families. What I see from the billionaires is a desire to undermine democratically elected governments, starving them of funding by cutting taxes, and making them dysfunctional by financing the campaigns of dysfunctional politicians. When the masses lose faith in democratically elected governments, the so-called "charitable" foundations swoop in to become the trusted providers of social services to the masses. The ultimate result is the elimination of democracy and the restoration of hereditary aristocracy, with the foundations ruling the world as undemocratic governments. I would be more impressed if billionaires gave away 99% of their wealth to somewhere that is completely out of the control of themselves and their families. The world's wealthiest people aren't looking to buy more stuff. There are only so many mansions and yachts you can buy before you'd had enough with that and get bored. For the purposes of buying stuff, wealth has diminishing returns. What they're looking for in accumulating unlimited wealth is to increase their power relative to everyone else, to perpetuate social inequality. Power is a kind of zero sum game, because if we all accumulate the same amount, we're still all equal.
• somenameforme 3y ago
  It's also an extremely misleading, if not stupid, measurement of what they are claiming. They take the earnings of new self-made billionaires, and contrast that against the amount passed down to heirs, in a given year. You're looking at the earnings of brand new billionaires, contrasted against the lifetime earnings of recently deceased billionaires, and seeing which is bigger. There is no way that this will not trend towards always favoring the lifetime earnings, especially as the ratio of total_billionaires : new_billionaires continues to increase.
• gumby 3y ago
  The whole point is that this year is different, pehaps due to the changes in interest rates.