Billionaire
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Interest of | • Charmian Gooch • Tax Justice Network |
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 confirmed 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]
Contents
Worth
The Ranks of Global Billionaires: Not All Billionaires Are Made Equal |
There is a question that is asked, and over and over again answered in the same way.[3] 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 Kings and emperors of yesteryear have on the surface been replaced by new overlords and some may again not be the nicest people.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.[4][5]
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.[6][7]
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.[8]
Influence
How billionaires benefit from "stealth politics" |
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.[9]
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.[10]
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.[11] Many billionaires for example overlap with ISGPs super-class index.[12]
Limits
The billionaire class: a threat to democracy? - DW |
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.[13]
After facing scrutiny for calling transgenders "some guys in dresses[14]"; 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[15]; 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[16], Bloomberg quit 4 months later.[17]
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.[18]
Examples
Page name | Description |
---|---|
Roman Abramovich | Got very rich in Russia during the 1990s, during which time he set up and liquidated at least 20 companies. |
Gautam Adani | billionaire WEF businessman, "Ecological Crossdresser", "one of India’s most ruthlessly adept billionaires" |
Sheldon Adelson | Multi-billionaire pro-Israel US sponsor of the US government |
Edoardo Agnelli | Heir to the huge Agnelli fortune who was "found dead under a bridge" after converting to Islam. |
Aziz Akhannouch | New Moroccan Prime Minister |
Mukesh Ambani | Asia's richest man living in the world's most expensive house. Selected a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum in 1994. By the 2010s, he sat on the board of the same World Economic Forum. Member of the Global Board of Advisors of the US Council on Foreign Relations. |
Johan Andresen | Second generation Bilderberger businessman billionaire. |
Jeff Arnold | Became a billionaire from webmd.com aged 29. Co-founded Sharecare with a friend from the GLT/2000 class, which was highly influential on shaping (and measuring) attitudes around COVID-19. |
Michael Ashcroft | Billionaire former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party |
Jaime Augusto Miranda Zóbel de Ayala | Filipino businessman from the prominent Zóbel de Ayala family and a WEF stalwart. |
Stéphane Bancel | French CEO of Moderna who struck it rich with its first product allowed on the market, a COVID-19 vaccine |
Sam Bankman-Fried | Youngest known visitor to the MSC, a US crypto-billionaire who fairly suddenly turned out not have any wealth at all |
Marc Benioff | US Internet billionaire, bought Time Magazine |
René Benko | Austrian billionaire businessman who attended the 2015-2017 Bilderbergs |
Nicolas Berggruen | Sponsor of influential think-tanks |
Silvio Berlusconi | Italian media magnate, three time Prime Minister of Italy, bunga bunga parties ... |
Liliane Bettencourt | One of the principal shareholders of L'Oréal. At the time of her death the richest woman in the world. |
Jeff Bezos | World's richest man. Founded Amazon, grandson of a DARPA co-founder |
Steve Bing | Clinton connected billionaire businessman who fell to his death in 2020. |
Michael Bloomberg | American deep politician billionaire. The 16th richest person in the world. Mayor of New York 2002-2013 |
Vincent Bolloré | French industrialist, businessman, media owner and billionaire. grandmother a spy. Started his career at the [Compagnie Financière Edmond de Rothschild |
Alan Bond | Australian billionaire |
Oleg Boyko | WEF/Global Leaders for Tomorrow/1995. Starting his career on the Soviet black market and as a "banker" in the chaotic 1990s Russia, Boyko became one of the privileged few to operate monopoly Russian state run lotteries. |
Richard Branson | UK billionaire spending a lot to keep up positive image. In Epstein's Black Book |
Warren Buffett | One of the world's richest men and a passionate proponent of population reduction. |
Hubert Burda | Multi-billionaire publisher. 7 Bilderbergs |
Michael Cannon-Brookes | Australian YGL billionaire |
Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken | Richest woman in the Netherlands, from the Bilderberger Heineken family. |
Robert Holmes à Court | Rhodesian-Australian businessman who became the country's first billionaire, before dying suddenly of a heart attack in 1990 at the age of 53 |
Simon Holmes à Court | Convenor of Climate 200. |
Daniel A. D'Aniello | Cofounder and chairman of the Carlyle Group. |
Olivier Dassault | French politician and billionaire. Killed in a freak helicopter crash. |
Michael Dell | Computer billionaire businessman, WEF AGM regular, WEF GLT 1993 |
Oleg Deripaska | Russian billionaire, WEF Global Leader for Tomorrow |
Paul Desmarais | One of Canada's richest and most influential men, with several prime minsters in his pocket. 3 Bilderbergs. |
John Deuss | "One of the most successful international wheeler-dealers of recent decades" who lived "a charmed life on the edge" with help from the UK and US deep states |
Barry Diller | Billionaire businessman and media executive |
Jamie Dimon | "The Most Admired Banker In The World", close to Epstein. Global Leaders for Tomorrow/1996. Since 2005 head of JPMorgan Chase |
Jack Dorsey | The former CEO of Twitter. |
Hamish Douglass | WEF billionaire who in March 2020 predicted "a near total shutdown of the world's economy" |
Mathias Döpfner | CEO of mightiest media group in Germany and Europe, Axel Springer SE, member of the Bilderberg Steering Committee and other transatlantic networks, most notably Atlantik-Brücke. Became billionaire after receiving gift from elderly widow. |
Murray Edwards | Tar sands billionaire, where he has more at stake than possibly any other individual. Attended the 2008 Bilderberg meeting. |
Daniel Ek | Swedish billionaire, founded Spotify and Neko Health, went to his first Bilderberg in 2024. |
John Elkann | Italian/US billionaire businessman with heavy Bilderberg habit. 21st Century Council, European Round Table of Industrialists |
Eduardo Elsztain | Businessman close to Edgar Bronfman and George Soros. The prime Argentine supporter of and fundraiser for the World Jewish Congress. Annual conferee at the World Economic Forum, which selected him a Young Global Leader in 2000. |
André Esteves | Brazilian billionaire, WEF YGL 2008, WEF AGMs |
Michael Federmann | |
Larry Fink | CEO of the largest money-management firm in the world |
Steve Forbes | Billionaire editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine. |
Majid Al Futtaim | Emirati billionaire. One of the many World Economic Forum/Strategic Partners. |
... further results |
Related Quotations
Page | Quote | Author | Date |
---|---|---|---|
Warren Buffett | “There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning.” | Warren Buffett | 2006 |
Andrei Fursov | “Attali analyzes history and present-day events in the light of the change of Merchant orders. The contemporary one — the ninth — is going through an extremely acute crisis, which will end with the demise of Pax Americana. Then a furcation will occur. In Attali’s view, either world government will be established at once or it will emerge as a result of a three-move process of the 2020-2060s: hyperempire (market without democracy), hyperconflict and hyperdemocracy with a supranational government at its head. The analysis of Attali’s works shows that he expresses the interests of the top of the world capitalist class that adheres to ultra-globalist positions and works for the subversion of the sovereignty of nation-states. The terminology used by Attali, particularly “sustainable development” / “sustainable growth” (in reality, it is the combination of deindustrialization, depopulation and ecologism), indicates his neo-Malthusian and neo-colonialist preferences. “Sustainable development” is a metaphor of the new world order (à la Orwell’s Newspeak), which is nothing more than control over resources (including information ones) and human behaviour (psychosphere). The main thing in this order is the preservation of power, property and privileges of the world’s elite whose ideological representative Attali is.” | Andrei Fursov | 2014 |
Karl Marx | “So long as things go well, competition effects an operating fraternity of the capitalist class, as we have seen in the case of the equalisation of the general rate of profit, so that each shares in the common loot in proportion to the size of his respective investment. But as soon as it no longer is a question of sharing profits, but of sharing losses, everyone tries to reduce his own share to a minimum and to shove it off upon another. The class, as such, must inevitably lose. How much the individual capitalist must bear of the loss, i.e., to what extent he must share in it at all, is decided by strength and cunning, and competition then becomes a fight among hostile brothers. The antagonism between each individual capitalist's interests and those of the capitalist class as a whole, then comes to the surface, just as previously the identity of these interests operated in practice through competition.” | Karl Marx | |
Peter Thiel | “I'm looking into parabiosis stuff, which I think is really interesting. This is where they did the young blood into older mice and they found that had a massive rejuvenating effect,” he said. “And so that’s... that is one that... again, it’s one of these very odd things where people had done these studies in the 1950s and then it got dropped altogether. I think there are a lot of these things that have been strangely under-explored.” | Peter Thiel | |
Transhumanism | “I'm looking into parabiosis stuff, which I think is really interesting. This is where they did the young blood into older mice and they found that had a massive rejuvenating effect,” he said. “And so that’s . . . that is one that . . . again, it’s one of these very odd things where people had done these studies in the 1950s and then it got dropped altogether. I think there are a lot of these things that have been strangely under-explored.” | Peter Thiel |
Related Documents
Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
---|---|---|---|---|
Document:Pierre Omidyar: giving until it hurts | article | 7 December 2013 | David Carr | "No billionaire media mogul is ever going to be in the service of working people, no matter how much rhetoric about freedom of speech is deployed in the promotion of his or her product..." |
File:THE PRICE OF OFFSHORE REVISITED.pdf | paper | July 2012 | James S. Henry | Study on the "offshore" private banking market. |
File:The Network of Global Corporate Control.pdf | paper | 26 October 2011 | Stefania Vitali James B. Glattfelder Stefano Battiston | Network analysis of the structure of global corporate interleaved ownerships and revenues. |
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://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://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.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/