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Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

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Re: Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

#61

Post by suoduandao3 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #3
gumby wrote: post #2

Since this is paywalled, here's the start of the article: New members of the global super-rich gained more of their assets through inheritance than through wealth creation this year — the first time that this has been recorded by Swiss bank UBS in its nine years of surveying global billionaires.

Old billionaires are dying faster than new billionaires are being created (by things other than inheritance). Or more precisely, the total wealth of the billionaires who have died is bigger than the total wealth of billionaires who became billionaires by something other than inheritance. But this wasn't true a decade ago. So wealth creation (at billionaire scale) is slowing down?

Or a lot of billionaires are dying right now (Charlie Munger comes to mind)

Re: Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

#62

Post by itsoktocry »

raincom wrote: post #6

There are more secret billionaires, who don't appear on the billionaires list. I know of two such billionaires. One is super, super secretive, who passes off as a multi millionaire. There are special trusts that billionaires make use of. Treat a trust like a corporation, with its own independent existence. Such trusts can be set up for multiple generations: these trusts (corporations) are run by professionals, while…

>who passes off as a multi millionaire.

What does this look like?

Re: Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

#63

Post by hk__2 »

GreedClarifies wrote: post #30

Yet on the billionaire leaderboard the top-10 are: Musk, Arnault, Bezos, Ellison, Buffet, Gates, Zuckerberg, Balmer, Page, Bin. Not one of them through inheritance. Sure, you have the waltons a little lower on the list. As a person who started in the bottom decile of wealth I want to hate inheritance at least as much as the next person. But at first glance it sure doesn't look good for these "researchers".

> Yet on the billionaire leaderboard the top-10 are: Musk, Arnault, Bezos, Ellison, Buffet, Gates, Zuckerberg, Balmer, Page, Bin.

According to Forbes there are 2,6k+ billionaires, so the top 10 is 0.3% of that.

Re: Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

#64

Post by Zambyte »

WXLCKNO wrote: post #22
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming we're not talking "I have a retirement plan and a house so my net-worth is over a million" type of millionaire, isn't passing oneself off as a multi-millionaire instead of a billionaire a distinction without a difference? I guess I don't run in those circles, but it's still fabulous wealth either way.

Being worth 50 million puts you in the ultra high net worth category (>30M$) and you live an incredible lifestyle obviously. But your entire net worth is 5% yearly interest on a billion dollars. It's hard to imagine for regular people just how far a billion dollars is, you're essentially royalty at that point as far access to anything in life is concerned.

> It's hard to imagine for regular people just how far a billion dollars is

I heard it put this way once before and it really stuck with me: the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is a billion dollars. If that doesn't make sense, consider how that is proportionally the same as saying: the difference between one dollar and a thousand dollars is a thousand dollars. One dollar is literally nothing next to a thousand dollars.

If you bought something for $1k and you were overcharged $1, lots of people wouldn't even notice. Of course, someone greedy enough to be a billionaire would probably notice though :P

Re: Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

#65

Post by r00fus »

gumby wrote: post #2

Since this is paywalled, here's the start of the article: New members of the global super-rich gained more of their assets through inheritance than through wealth creation this year — the first time that this has been recorded by Swiss bank UBS in its nine years of surveying global billionaires.

A whole 9 years? Maybe this has more to do with the end of ZIRP monetary scheme than the already established fact that we live in an oligarchy.

Re: Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

#66

Post by lotsofpulp »

metabagel wrote: post #41
lotsofpulp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reads like something out of a tabloid in the checkout aisle of a grocery store. It links to a website called “celebritynetworth”, which just based on the URL, has no credibility.

It seems like you stopped after the first paragraph.

Why should I? It even claims the richest family member is worth $10B, which is nowhere near the top of the list these days. It says $1T in the headline, how big is this family?

More likely is that this is a garbage clickbait article with no credible source.

Re: Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

#67

Post by raincom »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #7
raincom wrote: post #6

There are more secret billionaires, who don't appear on the billionaires list. I know of two such billionaires. One is super, super secretive, who passes off as a multi millionaire. There are special trusts that billionaires make use of. Treat a trust like a corporation, with its own independent existence. Such trusts can be set up for multiple generations: these trusts (corporations) are run by professionals, while…

Assuming we're not talking "I have a retirement plan and a house so my net-worth is over a million" type of millionaire, isn't passing oneself off as a multi-millionaire instead of a billionaire a distinction without a difference? I guess I don't run in those circles, but it's still fabulous wealth either way.

Yes, there is a psychological difference. Super wealthy have hard time trusting people including their family, friends, etc. Some of them even suffer from paranoia. Just a couple of bad experiences are enough for them to become like that. For ordinary mortals like us, we just write off our bad experiences with other people as natural, not some extraordinary. Being lied to, being backstabbed, lying, backstabbing, colluding, etc are all part of human existence: either one directly experience it or heard through others' experience. That is a cost to pay to live among people.

In other words, the experience of one whose wealth is $2B is not same as the experience of one whose wealthy is $50M plus $1.955B. What one experiences in the world depends on how much weight one puts on everything one is involved in. Poor people give different weightage than rich people. Same event doesn't give the same experience to everyone.

Re: Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

#68

Post by justinsaccount »

GreedClarifies wrote: post #30

Yet on the billionaire leaderboard the top-10 are: Musk, Arnault, Bezos, Ellison, Buffet, Gates, Zuckerberg, Balmer, Page, Bin. Not one of them through inheritance. Sure, you have the waltons a little lower on the list. As a person who started in the bottom decile of wealth I want to hate inheritance at least as much as the next person. But at first glance it sure doesn't look good for these "researchers".

Musk: Rich father, emerald mine money?

Arnault: "In 1971, he graduated from the École Polytechnique, France's leading engineering school, and began work for his father's company. Three years later, after he convinced his father to shift the focus of the company to real estate"

Gates: "His father was a prominent lawyer" "At age 13, he enrolled in the private Lakeside prep school, where he wrote his first software program" "Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen first met as teenagers in the late 1960s at Lakeside School in Seattle"

Zuckerberg: "My dad, funny enough, right before each of us went to college offered us the options of going to college or like investing in a franchise and running it,” sister Randi Zuckerberg told CNN Business’ Laurie Segall of her dad’s offer to his son and each of his three daughters.

They may not have literally handed their kids a sack full of money, but you can't argue that people like Arnault, Gates, Zuckerberg are not largely where they are today due to their parents wealth.

Re: Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

#69

Post by kasey_junk »

IAmNotACellist wrote: post #33

And yet 70% of generational wealth is gone by the 2nd generation.

This is a stat that is never sourced and is mostly cited by the wealth planning industry that have an ulterior motive for making people believe it.

I’d love to see a rigorous backing of this stat.

Re: Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

#70

Post by mmanfrin »

mushufasa wrote: post #17

This is the conclusion of Thomas Picketty's 2013 book, "Capital in the 21st Century." Due to the historical averages of the rate of return on capital, he concluded empirically that wealth will continue to concentrate to the point to inheritors, to the extent that individuals become increasingly unable through labor to achieve parity to the inheritors. The book was very provocative in economist circles, but even the c…

It feels like we're slowly slipping back to palace economies but instead of violence it's through capital (which some might still call violence).
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