iandunn, back when he had a writeup here, was right to point out that individual people have little use for more than a handful of millions of dollars. Once you amass wealth greater than that you are pretty much falling into one of a few categories:
- Getting into position to buy a company personally, which since you are already wealthy is probably only for kicks or something to do
- Setting up a family
- Buying a small nation
- Not planning on using your money because it has become an end in itself, or
- Wondering what to do with the money.
The last is most common. A professional fund-raiser I know has had great successes with the wealthy, because people like to feel helpful. And Wealthy people are acutely aware of the degree to which they can be helpful. All she needs to do is approach those fortunate friends, once, in the right tone of voice, pointing out a way that they could help with a cause they believe in. And it does wonders. She asked for ten thousand dollars from one friend, and after most of a year got a million from the friend's community, each family pitching in something like my family's biannual income like it was small change. Why did they give? It was from a friend, who they trusted; everyone else was doing it; it wasn't forced or badgered out of them; there wasn't a trace of class warfare or making the wealthy wrong in it. Having a valid, reliable, and friendly channel by which to funnel wealth to a charitable cause is one of the big roadblocks in giving. Guilt-based giving is not stable because it polarizes.
That doesn't change that few ever give so much that it makes a major dent in their income.
Alex, my total is 1.3 trillion. Good point about wild claims. However, the concentration of wealth is still amazing. Possibly what happened was the person on tv started to say that 80% of the wealth is in the hands of 20% of the people (Pareto's Law), but then misspoke. On the other hand, TV is not a fountain of accuracy (remember US Election 2000?). Also, it doesn't take 20% of the people in the world to amass 80% of the riches, so if it was a misspeaking, then the person was especially confused. I wonder what the n with 1-n rule gives here?
Tobtoh, good point. However, these executives still have a hell of a lot of money. What I said applies to the upper class in general, certainly not only people with a billion or more.
I wonder what portion of my rep comes from Gates-smashing (since deleted) and what from the later more complicated parts of the node...