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The wealth of the 25 richest families in the world soared 43% in the last year
- schnebbau 3y ago[flagged]
- redleggedfrog 3y agoGet your popcorn, it's going to be a good one.
- monero-xmr 3y ago[flagged]
- misiti3780 3y agois this sarcasm ?
- ta1243 3y agoSatire perhaps
- lifestyleguru 3y agoThat's why some poor are given various reliefs and priviledes to protect the richest against the other poor. Occasionally they are allowed to beat and even kill the other poor. That's perfectly sufficient.
- deadbabe 3y agoThis title comes straight from the clickbait factory. You could make an even juicier title I bet if you calculate how much their wealth has increased in the last 5 years.
- itishappy 3y ago47% YoY growth is insane. 5 years of that rate would be a 7x increase in wealth over that period. I'd click on that.
- whateverman23 3y agoS&P 500 YTD is at 20% Vanguard growth fund (VIGAX) 42% AMZN 71% APPL 56% MSFT 55% GOOG 52% TSLA 124% Anyone with an aggressive but not insane portfolio could be at 47% growth in 2023.
- JackRumford 3y agoyes but the size of the portfolio is the issue here
- whateverman23 3y agoOkay, but that's not the framing of the argument I'm responding to in this thread. The title of the article and the people I'm responding to are framing the percentage growth as the problem.
- boringg 3y agoIt's called the AI boom/hype. I have doubts about the equity gains in the companies that have moved on AI speculation alone.
- _8j50 3y agoIt's nor insane if you have capital. The more money you have the nicer your loans are and the more people pay you to let them hold your money so they can leverage it to make more money and give you a cut. The deceptive thing about this "eat the rich" b.s. the media likes to spread is that they make it seem like there is a pie and the rich are eating a lot of it. In reality it's more like there is a cash river and they're drinking a lot but they won't drink any less if more people got in on it. Most USD only exists on paper and most of it is not owned by individuals or considered part of their wealth. This principle works in many other aspects of life. If google and microsoft want to hire you then so would 1000 other companies. If you can date 10 women ar once 1000 women want you. If you can defeat all your neighboring countries, you can probably give a superpower a very hard time if they invade you. Little x little = little Big x big = very very big
- helsinkiandrew 3y agohttps://archive.ph/WSpIl https://archive.ph/WSpIl
- troyvit 3y ago[flagged]
- e2le 3y agoArchiving is piracy!
- hedora 3y agoIt gets worse: > Pirate parties support civil rights, direct democracy (including e-democracy) or alternatively participation in government, reform of copyright and patent laws to make them more flexible and open to encourage innovation and creativity, use of free and open-source software, free sharing of knowledge (open content and open access), information privacy, transparency, freedom of information, free speech, anti-corruption, net neutrality and oppose mass surveillance, censorship and Big Tech.[2][3][4][5][6][7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party
- udev4096 3y agoHilarious
- lotsofpulp 3y agoWhy does Forbes have any credibility for being able to estimate the market value of Bloomberg’s assets? Is there any reason to believe they have access to the financials of Bloomberg?
- haunter 3y agoSurprised there is not a single chaebol on the list, Samsung or Hyundai at least
- bobthepanda 3y agoTheir whole deal is opaque complex financial structure, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they have access to such money but are not technically holding it or whatever.
- bushbaba 3y agoI wouldn’t use YTD as we had a market dip/recovery nearing that time. For example look at the stock market YTD vs over last 2-5 years
- rrsmtz 3y agoThat doesn't make nearly as good of a headline. During the pandemic there were very similar claims about the massive growth in wealth of the top 1%, where the graph conveniently started at the bottom of the 2020 stock market crash. See also: graphs that compare deaths from terrorist attacks vs. other causes, which start in 2002.
- makomk 3y agoYeah, but if the media did that rather than cherry-picking then it wouldn't be possible to create an endless stream of headlines like this which make it seem like the richest people always win and this must be somehow at the expense of the rest of us. I remember there were a bunch of headlines about the wealth of the richest increasing during the pandemic that pulled the same trick too, measuring from around the bottom of the huge pandemic-induced dip in the markets. I think there's another layer of cherry-picking too, in that the list is the 25 richest families in the world now, so it excludes families whose investments have done poorly. Not sure how much of an effect that has, but entry number one and number five weren't on the list last year and they're both owners of big state oil companies which is a sector that's done unusually well compared to the rest of the economy and to how it was performing a couple of years ago.
- tester756 3y agoSo the money is in UAE after all?
- lifestyleguru 3y agoLooking how they showed a fierce middle finger to the western world by welcoming Putin like a tsar, yes it seem that almost all money is in UAE. Alternatively it might turn into a double plot twist trap but I doubt it.
- walexander 3y agoAnd QQQ rose 47% this year. This does not seem surprising at all. The entire market went up in 2023.
- thinkingtoilet 3y agoDid the wealth of the poorest people rise proportionally as well? I would bet not. We are an era of extreme wealth inequality and it's clearly horrible for society.
- yieldcrv 3y agono, they didn’t have any savings to begin with and everything they bought depreciates in value it was actually very cumbersome for me to find people that knew anything else, when I was younger everyone I was around only prided themselves in buying depreciating material things. I’m aware of how pervasive that mentality can be, could be considered a distinct culture.
- lacrimacida 3y agoNo, it actually dropped proportionally.
- toenail 3y agoThe inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom of the wealth redistribution from the bottom to the top.
- TheCaptain4815 3y agoThis list is strange because their methodology excludes :"The ranking excludes first-generation fortunes and those fortunes controlled by a single heir."
- minitoar 3y agoI think they’re trying to limit it to “families” being more than 1 generation and more than 1 person.
- TheCaptain4815 3y agoYeah I guess they're trying for a more "old money vibe", but still doesn't make sense given the title.
- bilbo0s 3y agoOf course, "fortunes controlled by a single heir" is almost the epitome of old money. But I understand if that person is single then maybe that's not a family. At the same time, his/her money came from, well, family. So it's just a little confusing.
- paulddraper 3y agoNo if actually "old" then it's multiple people
- bcrosby95 3y agoThe exact opposite. There's over 70 heirs to the Rockefeller fortune. One of them was in my World of Warcraft guild. You've never heard of her.
- tasuki 3y agoWhat was she like?
- doubt_me 3y ago[dead]
- amelius 3y agoPecunia non olet. But at some point it does.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- larsiusprime 3y agoI wonder if there's a breakdown of what their current wealth consists of. Sure, they made their initial money through their businesses, but what is it mostly invested in now? Stocks, bonds, real estate, etc?
- mikeyouse 3y agoIt's interesting when extremely wealthy people enter politics, since we get ~exactly that. E.g. when Betsey Devos was education secretary, she made between $225M - $415M in income from her investments while in office. Her portfolio is both as narrow and as broad as you'd expect from someone with extreme family wealth -- with huge stakes in Amway likely worth billions paying millions of dollars/year in distributions and then just all matter of other stuff; the Orlando Magic basketball team, car dealerships, fitness clubs, real estate developments, international resorts, that Boxed Water company, distilleries, closet system manufacturers, pharma manufacturers, auto suppliers. https://www.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/DeVos-Betsy-2021-Termination-278e-Agency-Certified.pdf https://www.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03...
- grumple 3y agoThe estimated wealth of the House of Saud is as high as 3 trillion. Maybe that's too big to be considered a "family", but either way it's an insane amount of wealth in relatively few hands.
- jedberg 3y agoThat number is highly suspect though, because it is driven by their ownership of Saudi Aramco, which trades a single digit percent of its stock on a stock exchange that they own and control (and has a big lack of transparency). So basically they can make their wealth anything they want by controlling the price of the stock. It would be the same thing as me asking my friend to invest $1 in my business, giving them 1 share out of 10 billion shares, and then claiming my net worth was 10 billion dollars.
- ta1243 3y ago> It would be the same thing as me asking my friend to invest $1 in my business, giving them 1 share out of 10 billion shares, and then claiming my net worth was 10 billion dollars. Or selling one share for £50, be richer than Elon Musk, and then get accused of fraud https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHfJRON3b-w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHfJRON3b-w
- short_sells_poo 3y agoThe funny thing is, this was the usual course of action for SV startups over the previous 15 years :)
- KerrAvon 3y agoBut this is the case to some extent for all of the extremely wealthy. Musk doesn't have billions lying around in a Scrooge McDuck vault somewhere; it's mostly on paper.
- bdw5204 3y agoThis would explain why 99% or so of the US population's lived experience is that we're currently in a recession yet the economic statistics make it look like the economy is booming. Indicators that the economy is extremely bad right now include the current state of the job market and that Toys for Tots is seeing a massive decline in donations along with a simultaneous increase in need for toy donations[0]. That's not something that would be happening if we had 5% growth and 0% inflation like the president claims[1], at least if that looks remotely like it did back in the 1980s and 1990s during the Reagan and Clinton booms when the American economy was actually booming for everybody. [0]: https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/our-bins-are-empty-philly-area-toys-for-tots-in-need-of-donations/3709281/ https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/our-bins-are-empt... [1]: https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1730949376904688046 https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1730949376904688046
- chiefalchemist 3y agoTo your point, every month we hear about the low unemployment rate, or the number of new jobs, etc. But we never hear about the average pay rate of the employed, or the pay and benefits of the new jobs created, or how many jobs someone has to work to afford a 2 BR place to live. Yes, sometimes these' things are mentioned in passing. But they're rarely is every used to make the case for "the economy is great..." Zoom out far enough, use aggregate data, and avoid details, and you can make property on the moon as sexy a beachfront property in Miami.
- lifestyleguru 3y agoIsn't number of Americans with two full time jobs at all time high currently?
- akavi 3y agoNo[0]. As a percent of population, number of Americans with multiple jobs is well south of where it was from 1994-2009. [0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1cpAm https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1cpAm
- 2devnull 3y agoBiden has gotten a lot of bad press but you can’t deny the economy is doing much better than most people were predicting a year ago. Even perma bull Jamie Dimon said “a storm was coming” (sic) but here we are with unemployment at 3.7%. The best time for American workers since last decade.
- llsf 3y agoSurprised to not see Arnault (LVMH, US$240.7 billion in April 2023, according to Forbes) and Bettencourt (L'Oréal, Bettencourt Meyers is worth $94.9 billion, Bloomberg estimates) in the list.
- skirge 3y agowealth measured in fiat money, which is worthless in long term
- passion__desire 3y agoyou are right and wrong. in the long term, a stone at the bottom of sea was considered wealth. the only thing that changed was to whose name the stone was attached in the village records.
- hk__2 3y ago> wealth measured in fiat money, which is worthless in long term It’s measured in fiat money *at a given point in history.
- npoc 3y agoWell it's often measured at two given points in history and compared without taking into account the devaluation of the thing used to measure value (supply inflation is approx 100% per decade)
- quickthrowman 3y agoI’m assuming that the wealthiest families on earth mostly hold assets instead of cash, so what’s your point exactly? Are assets that generate cashflows worth something?
- tiku 3y agoSo that is why we need to print extra money...
- npoc 3y agoMoney printing is one of the main causes of the increasing disparity. Look up the Cantillon effect.
- sampa 3y agomoney printer go brrrr
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Simon_ORourke 3y agoThere's absolutely no reason at all for anyone to possess more than a couple of million bucks. Anything over that should be taxed at 95%.
- hk__2 3y agoWe’re talking about wealth, not money. If you buy a house $1M and a few years later it’s worth $1.4M, your wealth went up by $400k but it’s hardly taxeable unless you sell the house.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Reubachi 3y agoHa. Maybe not a problem for rich people who have the ability to obfuscate local laws, mandatory appraisals, and inspections until they sell their property. Me? A person who actually lives in the property and NEEDS to comply? MY home certainly is a tax burden on me when every single year it's taxable value is reassessed by the county for 20 percent more, requiring immediate and prompt payment before it's lien'd. Such a joke.
- Guvante 3y agoI feel like you are overselling a bit. Property tax needs to be very delinquent to trigger a foreclosure and a lien doesn't matter unless you sell the property. Also in my experience there has been a relatively painless path to challenge the assessment. Although I have never seen an example where the $400 appraisal is worth paying to do so.
- Reubachi 3y agoNeither of your statements make me feel better about the problem that greatly affects my life. Sure, I need to be marked as a deliquent debtor (somehow) for my property to be taken away from me. And sure, every year, I can pay the department of revenue an appraisal fee to undo the arbitrary decision to increase my tax responsibility. How about though, we force municipalities and departments of revenues to actually examine the assessment, reassessments, and economic impact? The idea that my home, the land it sits on, an the unconscious value associated with it is worth 40 percent more to other homebuyers is absolutely laughable Very shortly ,my town will have population 0 with the only commercial land being the giant paper factory owned by a chinese paper congolomerate with a stranglehold over shipping products.
- Eumenes 3y agoThe CEO of my local non-profit hospital (~ 500 beds) makes $1.6 million per year with a $500k bonus. The general council makes $950k with a $250k bonus. CFO is up there too. They milk the hell out of Medicare/Medicaid + state insurance programs. They routinely have junkies spending 30-90 days in beds because "they have nowhere to go" - wonder what they're billing the government.
- everfree 3y agoMaybe this is controversial but I'm not even worried about the people making $2 million per year. At the end of the day that's the salary equivalent to about 27 average employees, a small office worth. I'm more worried about the people making (net worth increasing) $100 million per year, 1351 times the average income, or as much as an entire town. Or $2 billion per year, which would take twenty seven thousand years for someone to earn at a median wage. If you're earning as much every year as the average person earns in 27000 years of working, perhaps we should raise taxes on that a bit and not allow reduced-rate capital gains and tax-free loans.
- Eumenes 3y agoSundar Pichai's total comp is like $220 million but $2 million of that is in salary and the rest is in stock. I agree that capital gains should be taxed more - its strange how income (work) is taxed higher than money sitting in accounts, doing nothing.
- gottorf 3y agoCapital gains are taxed like ordinary income, except long-term capital gains, which have lower rates because we as a society decided that it's overall beneficial to encourage investment into productive capacity. You could argue that maybe that's wrong, but plenty of thought did go into it through the legislative process. > income (work) is taxed higher than money sitting in accounts, doing nothing It's not money just sitting in accounts. It's just the paper value of the stock that Pichai or whoever owns, which ultimately is a fractional share of Google the company, which presumably is engaging in productive enterprise[0]. And stock grants are taxed; you definitely can't dodge the tax man that easily. [0]: Now, you could definitely argue that the value that Google provides to the world is less than what its market capitalization would indicate, and I certainly have a sympathetic view to that. But it's individual market participants that decide what that value is.
- firebirdn99 3y agoWealth begets wealth. Capital compounds with no effort. A reminder for myself to revisit Capital by Thomas Piketty from 2013(!) "When inequality gets too extreme, then it becomes useless for growth, and it can even become bad because it tends to lead to high perpetuation of inequality over time and low mobility." -Thomas Piketty
- brap 3y agoMy wealth soared by an even greater %, and I’m not even rich. All of Nasdaq went up 40%. What a dumb title.
- hackerfooze 3y agoThis is great. Their hard work is paying off. Not to mention that many of them are BIPOC unlike in past generations in which all of the richest families were white.
- Obscurity4340 3y ago> And YOU can too! —Billionaire/oligarch cultural brainwashing