{"id":121082,"date":"2018-10-29T12:01:35","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T12:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=121082"},"modified":"2018-10-28T11:38:36","modified_gmt":"2018-10-28T11:38:36","slug":"billionaires-made-more-money-in-2017-than-any-year-in-recorded-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/10\/billionaires-made-more-money-in-2017-than-any-year-in-recorded-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Billionaires Made More Money in 2017 than Any Year in Recorded History"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

26 Oct 2018 – <\/em>As most of the world spirals into apocalypse, billionaires are still doing just fine. In fact, they\u2019re doing much, much better than fine. According to a new report<\/a> by Swiss bank UBS, last year was the best year in recorded history for billionaires, who gained 20 percent more wealth in 2017. The amount that the world\u2019s 2,158 billionaires gained last year alone\u2014$1.4 trillion\u2014is greater than the GDP of nations including Spain and Australia. Billionaires now collectively possess $8.9 trillion dollars, according to The Guardian<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to the UBS Billionaires 2018 report, this rate of wealth accumulation is far faster than it was during the Gilded Age\u2014the time at the turn of the 20th century when families like the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers amassed huge sums.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe past 30 years have seen far greater wealth creation than the Gilded Age,\u201d the report said. \u201cThat period bred generations of families in the U.S. and Europe who went on to influence business, banking, politics, philanthropy and the arts for more than 100 years. With wealth set to pass from entrepreneurs to their heirs in the coming years, the 21st century multi-generational families are being created.\u201d Cool!<\/p>\n

The UBS report characterized today\u2019s billionaires as \u201chighly motivated, committed to their chosen careers, the family business and\/or doing social good.\u201d If posting anime on Twitter all day counts as social good, then sure.<\/p>\n

im actually cat girl here\u2019s selfie rn pic.twitter.com\/2h4WeuwepE<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2018<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cI think that my generation wants to achieve a more holistic life and shed some of the hypocrisies of previous generations. We want to have a return but with impact. Our investments should reflect who we are and what we believe,\u201d said one 30-year-old anonymous billionaire in the report. (He\u2019s identified as the \u201cson of a German family that sold its business 10 years ago,\u201d but I strongly suspect he might actually be Kendall Roy<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

For everyone but the super-wealthy, the Gilded Age, as historian Jack Beatty told <\/a>The Atlantic<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>back\u00a0<\/em>in 2007, was experienced through \u201cthe grinding poverty, the bloody racial hatred, the violent labor strikes, and the corrupt politics.\u201d Much of that already sounds pretty familiar today, and as the impacts of climate change hit<\/a>, it\u2019s likely to get even worse.<\/p>\n

In his Atlantic <\/em>interview, given right before the 2008 economic crash, Beatty outlines some of the backlash that followed the Gilded Age excesses: \u201cOutrage over business rule and the un-American concentration of wealth and power spurred the early twentieth-century reform movement known as Progressivism. Corporate contributions to political campaigns were outlawed. Monopolies were broken up. Progressive income and inheritance taxes were passed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGilded Age Americans lived before equality. We live after equality,\u201d he added. \u201cMemory is a radical organ in today\u2019\u2019s America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 splinternews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

26 Oct 2018 – As most of the world spirals into apocalypse, billionaires are doing much, much better than fine. According to a new report by Swiss bank UBS, 2017 was the best year in recorded history for billionaires, who gained 20 percent more wealth. The amount that the world\u2019s 2,158 billionaires gained last year alone\u2014$1.4 trillion\u2014is greater than the GDP of Spain, Australia, and many other countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":102270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-capitalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}