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Angela Merkel isn't exactly rich (certainly no billionaire) and neither are many other European leaders. Even US presidents don't necessarily turn into billiona

• isleyaardvark 14y ago
  Congresspeople, too. I'm sure they're extremely comfortable, and you'd find some of the ultra-rich in Congress, but I get the feeling they make less money than you'd expect for someone with a direct influence on a budget of several trillion dollars.
• gojomo 14y ago
  I included enough qualifiers to prevent such simple falsification-by-trivial-example! Perhaps Germany isn't 'giant' enough. (It only has 80M people compared to China 1.3B, India 1.2B, USA 300M, Russia 141M.) Or maybe its real behind-the-scenes rulers are still billionaires (despite the particular figurehead officeholders). Or maybe the time required for the 'will be'/'will become' prediction hasn't passed yet. I realize this is a 'no-true-scotsman' dodge. It wasn't meant to be a rigorous theory, just a thought-provoker. In 'giant productive societies' those people/movements best at marshaling large numbers of workers/machinery/voters will have both political power, and billionaire-like financial assets. The same competencies can acquire both... and power and wealth can be converted both ways (via both corrupt and non-corrupt processes).