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Here's a fun exercise: Take a look at the Forbes Rich List for 2020-2021, and find me a billionare who lost wealth. What we did over those years will be record

Here's a fun exercise: Take a look at the Forbes Rich List for 2020-2021, and find me a billionare who lost wealth. What we did over those years will be recorded as one of the single biggest wealth transfers in history.

throw123123123 3y ago
Why not creation of wealth?
lifestyleguru 3y ago
The wealth finally trickled. The rest is an adverb.
- TrackerFF 3y ago
  Evaporated straight up to the top.
arrowsmith 3y ago
Only "one of the" biggest? What are the other contenders?
dtnewman 3y ago
Sam Bankman Fried? Possibly wasn’t a billionaire at that point yet, but either, it’s the exception that proves the rule.
zpeti 3y ago
Here's a fun exercise: start at January 2022. Massive amounts of wealth were "lost" Of course they weren't actually lost, it's just that the fed started increasing interest rates and the stock market tanked. Did wealth transfer to the poor? No. So did these people "transfer wealth" from the poor from 2020 to 2022?
- makomk 3y ago
  Yeah, the big headline claim of Forbes' billionaires list from 2023 at https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/ https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/ is that half the billionaires on the list lost wealth over the previous year and that in total they were worth less than a year ago. I don't think that's adjusted for inflation either, unlike claims about workers' pay getting worse. There was also a drop off in billionaires' wealth in 2020, which coincidentally is where a lot of claims about the rich getting richer from organisations like Oxfam and publications like the Guardian start measuring from.
ryzvonusef 3y ago
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-30/elon-musk-becomes-first-person-ever-to-lose-200-billion https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-30/elon-musk... paper gains paper losses
ankit219 3y ago
Easy - just compare the size of the list from 2020-21 to 2023. > 2,640 billionaires with a total net wealth of $12.2 trillion in 2023 > 2,668 billionaires with a total net wealth of $12.7 trillion in 2022 > 2,755 billionaires with a total net wealth of $13.1 trillion in 2021 That makes it what atleast 115 billionaires who lost wealth from 2021-23. There would be more with newer entrants. A word about how Forbes calculate billionaires[1]. If a person is a brand and makes $100M or so a year, they are counted as a billionaire too.[2][3](from the same article). [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-11-09/adam-neumann-is-so-good-at-this https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-11-09/adam-n... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-30/two-sigma-had-a-rogue-calibrator?srnd=undefined&sref=1kJVNqnU https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-30/two-si... [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-10-26/musk-will-buy-twitter-at-the-last-minute?sref=1kJVNqnU https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-10-26/musk-w... If the stock goes up due to low interest rates, how does it makes it a wealth transfer? Snowflake was valued at 100x revenue at one point. Then market corrected and brought it down to say 10x. Whoever was holding it saw their wealth reduced by 10x. Do you think this wealth was transfered to someone else? To who?
- itchycoo-park 3y ago
  Not quite my original point - to test that, you could do your comparision but comparing the number and total value of billionaires in 2020/2021, compared to 2019.

throw123123123 3y ago

Why not creation of wealth?

lifestyleguru 3y ago

The wealth finally trickled. The rest is an adverb.

TrackerFF 3y ago
Evaporated straight up to the top.

arrowsmith 3y ago

Only "one of the" biggest? What are the other contenders?

dtnewman 3y ago

Sam Bankman Fried? Possibly wasn’t a billionaire at that point yet, but either, it’s the exception that proves the rule.

zpeti 3y ago

Here's a fun exercise: start at January 2022. Massive amounts of wealth were "lost" Of course they weren't actually lost, it's just that the fed started increasing interest rates and the stock market tanked. Did wealth transfer to the poor? No. So did these people "transfer wealth" from the poor from 2020 to 2022?

makomk 3y ago
Yeah, the big headline claim of Forbes' billionaires list from 2023 at https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/ https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/ is that half the billionaires on the list lost wealth over the previous year and that in total they were worth less than a year ago. I don't think that's adjusted for inflation either, unlike claims about workers' pay getting worse. There was also a drop off in billionaires' wealth in 2020, which coincidentally is where a lot of claims about the rich getting richer from organisations like Oxfam and publications like the Guardian start measuring from.

ryzvonusef 3y ago

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-30/elon-musk-becomes-first-person-ever-to-lose-200-billion https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-30/elon-musk... paper gains paper losses

ankit219 3y ago

Easy - just compare the size of the list from 2020-21 to 2023. > 2,640 billionaires with a total net wealth of $12.2 trillion in 2023 > 2,668 billionaires with a total net wealth of $12.7 trillion in 2022 > 2,755 billionaires with a total net wealth of $13.1 trillion in 2021 That makes it what atleast 115 billionaires who lost wealth from 2021-23. There would be more with newer entrants. A word about how Forbes calculate billionaires[1]. If a person is a brand and makes $100M or so a year, they are counted as a billionaire too.[2][3](from the same article). [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-11-09/adam-neumann-is-so-good-at-this https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-11-09/adam-n... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-30/two-sigma-had-a-rogue-calibrator?srnd=undefined&sref=1kJVNqnU https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-30/two-si... [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-10-26/musk-will-buy-twitter-at-the-last-minute?sref=1kJVNqnU https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-10-26/musk-w... If the stock goes up due to low interest rates, how does it makes it a wealth transfer? Snowflake was valued at 100x revenue at one point. Then market corrected and brought it down to say 10x. Whoever was holding it saw their wealth reduced by 10x. Do you think this wealth was transfered to someone else? To who?

itchycoo-park 3y ago
Not quite my original point - to test that, you could do your comparision but comparing the number and total value of billionaires in 2020/2021, compared to 2019.