Billionaire
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| Someone who has amassed money and property worth over US $1,000,000,000. |
A billionaire has amassed money and property worth over US $1,000,000,000. The American oil magnate John D. Rockefeller became the world's first billionaire in 1916. During the 2010s, there were over 2000 billionaires worldwide, with a combined wealth of US$9.1 trillion.[1] Only 10% of them were female during the 2010s.[2] The United States has the largest number of billionaires of any country, with 536 as of 2015, while China, India and Russia are home to to half or even less than 20% of that.[3] A significant number of billionaires in the US have built their wealth with the help of contracts from the government.Template:Cn
Concerns
There is a question that is asked, and over and over again answered in the same way.[4] That if money can, or can not buy everything. But even if happiness and friendship can not be bought, this type of approach leads astray from a fundamental problem. Kings and emperors of yesteryear have on the surface been replaced by new overlords and some may again not be the nicest people. Excessive amounts of money in the hands of a very few is a problem and everything that can be bought, will be.[5][6]
List of Billionaires
Lists and reporting on the world's richest people by The Economist, Forbes and others obscures the fact, that old banking families, some aristocratic families and the catholic church do have much, much more money - hidden from public view and obscured through offshore secrecy jurisdictions and other means.[7][8]
The German Manager Magazine, since 1987, publishes a list with the 500 richest Germans,[9] but the richest families successfully sued to have their names be taken out.[10]
Premature death
- Full article: Billionaire/Premature death
- Full article: Billionaire/Premature death
Premature death of billionaires
Influence
Hedonic adaptation is the concept that explains how people - even billionaires - with increasing money get no satisfaction with the increased satisfaction because of the simultaneous rise in expectations.[11]
Princeton University researchers in 2010 released a study that argued happiness increased based on income up to around $75,000 and doesn't increase with income after that.[12]
Politics
Many billionaires use their wealth solely to increase it, by employing handlers and buying influence in party politics. Since the 2010s, the use non-profit to donate to politicians they want in power.[13] Many billionaires for example overlap with ISGPs super-class index.[14]
Limits
Trilateral Commission member and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg spend more than $1,100,000,000,000 in the primary elections of the Democratic party for the US 2020 election. In just 4 months, he spend more than Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and 3 times more than any other billionaire running.[15]
After facing scrutiny for calling transgenders "some guys in dresses[16]"; saying African Americans should be "thrown up against a wall and frisked" if "they don't have any long term focus"; saying he put police in all poor neighbourhoods with non-white majorities because "that's where all the crime is", Bloomberg received criticism for being out of touch and "racist by Donald Trump. Bloomberg went further with his 4 month list of shenanigans, with the The Intercept revealing female prison inmates calling California citizens on behalf of his campaign for $7,25 per hour[17]; his campaign leaders being suspended by Twitter for running "Sock puppets" and astroturfing with "multiple accounts from the same owner" and stealing posters and policy papers from NGOs and think tanks[18], Bloomberg quit 4 months later.[19]
After vowing to keep his campaign infrastructure running and offices around the country open through the general election to help defeat Trump, Bloomberg decided instead to transfer $18 million to the DNC through a transfer from his campaign, a move argued to be illegal and not adhering to the law on individual donations.[20]
Videos
References
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20161120052423/http://www.forbes.com/sites/carlodonnell/2014/07/11/the-rockefellers-the-legacy-of-historys-richest-man/
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20180726235455/https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/03/02/behind-the-numbers-in-forbes-billionaires-list
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20180726235455/https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/03/02/behind-the-numbers-in-forbes-billionaires-list
- ↑ https://www.researchgate.net/post/Can_everything_be_bought_for_money saved at Archive.is
- ↑ Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy
- ↑ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592714001595
- ↑ https://www.democracynow.org/2012/7/31/exhaustive_study_finds_global_elite_hiding saved at Archive.org saved at Archive.is
- ↑ https://blog.ted.com/further-reading-and-citations-on-global-corruptions-hidden-leaders/ saved at Archive.org saved at Archive.is
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manager_Magazin
- ↑ ca 00:09:45 Die geheime Welt der Superreichen: das Milliardenspiel
- ↑ https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hedonic-treadmill.asp
- ↑ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2944762
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlvuVgGe264
- ↑ https://isgp-studies.com/ngo-list-foundations-and-think-tanks-worldwide#tops
- ↑ https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/mike-bloomberg-spent-billion-month-presidential-campaign-filing/story?id=70252435
- ↑ https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/dominicholden/michael-bloomberg-2020-transgender-comments-video
- ↑ https://theintercept.com/2019/12/24/mike-bloomberg-2020-prison-labor/
- ↑ https://www.salon.com/2020/02/07/bloomberg-campaign-plagiarized-portions-of-its-policy-plans-report_partner/
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bloomberg_2020_presidential_campaign?oldformat=true
- ↑ https://tennesseestar.com/news/pro-trump-super-pac-files-fec-complaint-alleging-bloombergs-18-million-dnc-donation-was-illegal/admin/2020/03/31/