We should ban billionaires for the sake of our children. I mean how am I supposed to explain go my child that kind of perversion? A single human can own more than millions of others while they starve?!
The scion of the French beauty brand L’Oréal, Françoise Bettencourt Meyers saw the value of her stake in the company shoot up during the rush of cosmetics and luxury fashion spending that’s taken place in the last few years.
Billionaires have been minted at a dizzying pace in the last few decades — in 1987 Forbes counted 140, while in 2023 the tally was 2,640 — and we’ve now returned to the point in the cycle where enormous piles of wealth are passed on to the next generation.
“This is how wealth dynasties are formed,” says Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the left-leaning think tank Institute for Policy Studies.
Though there are a surprising number of proverbs about the “third-generation curse” in which grandchildren fritter away the family fortune, when you inherit billions with a B, the real challenge appears to be spending that largesse down.
There are a lot of reasons why ultrarich parents might be handing over some of their net worth — whether it’s via cash, stocks, a nice piece of property, a family business, or an art collection — sooner rather than later.
Some ultrarich are “fearful of what the next generation will do with it,” says Michael Kosnitzky, co-chair of the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman’s Private Client & Family Office practice group.
The original article contains 1,757 words, the summary contains 227 words. Saved 87%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
