billionaire class Concepts

Earth Wars: The Battle for Global Resources

by Geoff Hiscock · 23 Apr 2012 · 363pp · 101,082 words

stake in BYD, which was set up by Wang and Lu in 1995. They both hold stakes in BYD that put them in the paper billionaire class. Like the wind sector, solar power—both thermal and PV—faces a shakeout in the years ahead as consolidation follows the first rush of enthusiasts

American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World's Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History

by Casey Michel · 23 Nov 2021 · 466pp · 116,165 words

reason for Teodorin’s insecurity. With his dark skin and charcoal eyes, Teodorin, born in 1968, came of age when the only members of the billionaire class were Europeans or North Americans—when wealth was, in essence, white. Sure, there were members of the monied class who were non-white. But they

The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning With the Myth of the Good Billionaire

by Tim Schwab · 13 Nov 2023 · 618pp · 179,407 words

them. They form monopolies that asphyxiate competition. They cause social problems to make a profit…,” Giridharadas noted, hammering on the serial misdeeds of the the billionaire class. “And they use philanthropy, some of the spoils of dubiously gotten wealth, to whitewash not just their reputations but to actually create the ability to

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… several million lives, perhaps more than any other living person today.” Variations on this winning argument have long played counterpoint to any criticism of the billionaire class. As high-profile political figures in U.S. politics—from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders—challenge the very existence

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sidestep these rules speaks to the ways that extreme wealth is so destructive to democracy. The problem is bigger than the Gates family, as the billionaire class today readily engages in a seamless mix of philanthropy and political coercion to advance its ideas, interests, and ideologies. In 2022, Politico profiled how Google

Billionaires' Row: Tycoons, High Rollers, and the Epic Race to Build the World's Most Exclusive Skyscrapers

by Katherine Clarke · 13 Jun 2023 · 454pp · 127,319 words

. In fact, Steve Roth was firmly the judge and the jury when it came to design, programming, and buyers. As an established member of the billionaire class in New York, he could speak peer to peer with prospective buyers, and much like Harry Macklowe, he made decisions based not on the advice

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in New York real estate. But the prominence of 432 Park and the grandeur of the apartments, coupled with the secrecy and mystique surrounding the billionaire class of owners, made the suit catnip for the media, which salivated over each allegation. First there was the noise. The board complained of “horrible and

Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World

by Anupreeta Das · 12 Aug 2024 · 315pp · 115,894 words

this 99% pledge.”16 Small-dollar donations are mostly a reflection of pure generosity by individuals. It’s therefore not surprising that philanthropy by the billionaire class is also seen as unadulterated generosity, except that it is supercharged. In 2022, very large gifts by individuals represented 5 percent of the nearly $500

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wealth to charitable causes during their lifetimes or in their wills. The highly publicized pressure campaign, called the Giving Pledge, was meant to get the billionaire class thinking more deeply about philanthropy. The idea had come about after a small group dinner for about seven couples in 2009 hosted by David Rockefeller

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world’s 2,600 billionaires. A large number are from the United States, but there is a growing contingent from other countries with an emerging billionaire class, including India and China. There were a couple of years when the pledgers numbered more than two dozen, but on average, there have been 15

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practicing Catholic, during Sunday mass, kids in tow. As children who grew up in inconceivable luxury, whose lives could only be truly understood by the billionaire class, they indulged their passions, and continue to do so. Jennifer is a pediatrician, having graduated from the Icahn School of Medicine at New York’s

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can do because of the Indian government’s restrictions on foreign funding for domestic nonprofits. Gates is also a role model for India’s emerging billionaire class, whose wealth has spurred their philanthropic ambitions. Indian billionaires like Nandan Nilekani, a cofounder of the IT giant Infosys who helped the government build a

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is the sprawl of the Gates family life, and the range of services and the efforts that go into lifestyle upkeep. Like many in the billionaire class, Gates owns multiple homes around the United States. Those alone add up to about $300 million. During their 27-year marriage, the primary home of

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State University’s Fisher College of Business, decided to study the apparent contradiction between people’s love of individual billionaires and their dislike of the billionaire class. As a doctoral student, he and his thesis advisor, both lifelong tennis fans, got to talking about Roger Federer and how “it seemed weird that

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, people put it down to benefits they have had as a group. Similarly, Walker found, when you lump people into a class, such as a billionaire class, people are more likely to believe that there is something wrong with the system that allows so much wealth accumulation for a few.3 Their

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as a group. That, Walker said, is an important policy takeaway for any politician advocating for higher taxes.4 People’s growing distrust of the billionaire class comes from two interrelated occurrences: Not only has their wealth ballooned in the past decade, but it has increased at a rate well beyond what

Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

by Douglas Rushkoff · 7 Sep 2022 · 205pp · 61,903 words

, and larger common areas with pools, games, movies, and dining. Ultra-elite shelters like the Oppidum in the Czech Republic claim to cater to the billionaire class, and pay more attention to the long-term psychological health of residents. They provide imitation of natural light, such as a pool with a simulated

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service to their genetic programs. They are primates subject to biases and blind spots. It’s a sociopathic perspective that makes science valuable to the billionaire class because it helps justify their most shameful behaviors—from trafficking young women to exploiting an entire underclass of workers and consumers. These fans of science

Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley

by Jacob Silverman · 9 Oct 2025 · 312pp · 103,645 words

them, just as he had done with Trump, on the value of TikTok. Yass checked many of the boxes expected of the post-Citizens United billionaire class. He was passionate about “school choice” and less passionate about paying taxes.18 19 He was financially and ideologically invested in the charter school movement

The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India's New Gilded Age

by James Crabtree · 2 Jul 2018 · 442pp · 130,526 words

minerals like coal, bauxite, and iron ore—kicked off a dash for natural resources across India too. Stock markets roared ahead, creating a bulging new billionaire class. It is hard to pick an exact date, but at some point between the time of Manmohan Singh’s election victory in 2004 and Mallya

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he explained the scale of Adani’s achievements and the various ways in which he had pushed his way to the top of India’s billionaire class. After building Mundra, Guha Thakurta explained, Adani went on to buy or build half a dozen other ports around India, making him the country’s

Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles

by Ruchir Sharma · 8 Apr 2012 · 411pp · 114,717 words

establishment to appear over time in a developed country. Still, even when compared to emerging nations, the United States is not generating a disproportionately powerful billionaire class. In the United States, where the average fortune of the top-ten richest is $31 billion, far larger than in any emerging nation, the overall

Cancelling Billionaires Before They Cancel Us: The Urgent Case for a Wealth Tax

by Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks · 3 Mar 2026 · 291pp · 83,422 words

have been deeply slashed so that top earners pay tax at a lower rate than the working class.9 (Indeed, taxes today barely touch the billionaire class, whose wealth largely escapes taxation.) This striking portrait of the rich pulling so far ahead — made worse by the massive 2017 tax cut during the

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. Furthermore, most of them are obsessive in their desire to shred any tax that could touch them. And yet, despite the immense power of the billionaire class, a tiny group of thinkers and activists with effectively no resources has made inroads towards getting a wealth tax onto the agenda of the world

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about the wishes or well-being of the broader public. The tech billionaires could perhaps be seen as shock troops for the rest of the billionaire class. While there are undoubtedly individual exceptions, billionaires, as a group, are out to advance their own interests with little concern for others or the damage

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Elon Musk, while typically lumped in with American billionaires, holds Canadian citizenship as well.) It’s also true that the political power of America’s billionaire class has been greatly enhanced by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 “Citizens United” decision, which opened the floodgates to wealthy donors contributing unlimited amounts

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is not available to ordinary Canadians. Later in the book, we will have more to say about this, and about how the acolytes of the billionaire class go to great lengths to keep the public in the dark about it. The key point here is that while Canadians at almost every income

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the difficulties of imposing a wealth tax. We certainly don’t mean to understate the political challenge of overcoming the resistance of the super-empowered billionaire class. But, as mentioned, the political dynamics could change. Certainly, taxing the super-rich is a very popular idea. The idea is so intuitively appealing that

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out of a fair share of the rewards. * * * Every good story has a hero and a villain. Our story about the rise of today’s billionaire class clearly has a lot of villains; we’ve already pointed to some of them, and we’ll be highlighting many more throughout the book. But

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, a wealth tax would address the root of the problem that is responsible for so many of today’s detrimental policies: the overempowerment of the billionaire class. Strangely, one often hears the concern, even in progressive circles, that taxes aren’t a good place to focus since they amount to after-the

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savings worth billions of dollars. The “Giving Pledge” might well be renamed the “Giving (to myself) Pledge.” No wonder it’s so popular with the billionaire class. * * * As the scope of the Covid-19 crisis came into view in February 2020, there was a brief moment when it looked like the world

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quite radical — as it should be — in that it would make significant strides towards rebalancing Canada’s power structure by reducing the dominance of the billionaire class and transferring some of its power to the broader Canadian public. This could make an enormous difference; indeed, it is the only thing that would

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capturing most of the new wealth for themselves and leaving ordinary citizens feeling discouraged and powerless. Only by reducing the overwhelming dominance of today’s billionaire class will we have a chance to push back against its environmentally, politically, and socially destructive ways. The wealth tax would have the effect of shifting

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only by their absolute level of income but also by how their incomes rank against the incomes of others.34 Therefore, the presence of a billionaire class tends to diminish feelings of self-worth in the broader public. It can invoke feelings of injustice, as well as anger and despair if there