Why are there so many billionaires nowadays?

2 hours ago7 min read2 comments

The proliferation of billionaires in the contemporary era is not a spontaneous economic phenomenon but a deliberate policy outcome, a modern parallel to the Gilded Age's stark inequalities. Today, there are more than 3,000 billionaires globally, a figure that has soared from a mere 66 in the United States in 1990 to nearly a thousand today.This expansion is underscored by the ascent of the 'centibillionaire,' a class that did not exist a decade ago, with individuals like Elon Musk seeing their fortunes catapult from around $20 billion to approximately $400 billion. The fundamental driver of this concentration is a systematic restructuring of the tax code over the past half-century, which has effectively halved the average tax rate for the top 400 richest Americans while leaving the tax burden on the bottom 90 percent largely unchanged.This has facilitated an unprecedented transfer of wealth, where the share controlled by the top 0. 1 percent has ballooned from 7 percent to 18 percent of the nation's total wealth.The political ramifications are profound, echoing historical tensions where vast economic power translates directly into political influence. The inauguration of the second Trump presidency served as a stark tableau of this fusion, with the stage crowded with billionaire supporters, a visual testament to an administration subsequently staffed with at least a dozen of the world's wealthiest individuals.This has fueled a growing anti-billionaire sentiment, crystallized in movements like Zohran Mamdani's successful New York City mayoral campaign and reflected in polling that shows 67 percent of Americans now believe billionaires make society less fair. The public display of extreme wealth—from Jeff Bezos's Venetian wedding to the commissioning of private pop star performances and the construction of ephemeral, 3D-printed restaurants—only sharpens the public's sense of a fractured social contract.The ideological push to 'abolish billionaires,' once a fringe notion, has entered the mainstream political discourse, championed by figures like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who argue that every billionaire represents a policy failure. This sentiment is rooted in the erosion of the American Dream's foundational myth; where a child born in 1940 had a 90 percent chance of out-earning their parents, a child today faces odds of less than half that.As the historian Ramsay MacMullen observed in his analysis of Rome's decline, the core dynamic was 'fewer had more. ' The current American moment, with its palpable frustration and the looming question of democratic sustainability, suggests that the pendulum of public tolerance for such extreme inequality is beginning its long, historical swing back.

#billionaires

#wealth inequality

#tax policy

#protests

#featured

#Zohran Mamdani

#political sentiment

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