Heck, the title could have been "For the first time in recent history, billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation." That would perhaps have been more accurate, but that's also a "stronger draw" in my opinion than the actual title. It doesn't make sense to call something "clickbait" that is less intended to incite than a more detailed headline.
The report comes from the Union Bank of Switzerland. https://www.ubs.com/global/en/media/display-page-ndp/en-2023...
"UBS manages the largest amount of private wealth in the world, counting approximately half of the world's billionaires among its clients." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBS
Also keep in mind that some of the world's wealthiest people are getting older. Inheritance of their wealth is inevitable. Warren Buffett is 93, and Charlie Munger just died. Bill Gates is 68, Steve Balmer 67, and Paul Allen already died. Larry Ellison is 79. Bernard Arnault is 74. Michael Bloomberg is 81. Carlos Slim is 83. I suspect the share of inherited wealth is only going to accelerate in the near future.
What I see from the billionaires is a desire to undermine democratically elected governments, starving them of funding by cutting taxes, and making them dysfunctional by financing the campaigns of dysfunctional politicians. When the masses lose faith in democratically elected governments, the so-called "charitable" foundations swoop in to become the trusted providers of social services to the masses. The ultimate result is the elimination of democracy and the restoration of hereditary aristocracy, with the foundations ruling the world as undemocratic governments.
I would be more impressed if billionaires gave away 99% of their wealth to somewhere that is completely out of the control of themselves and their families.
The world's wealthiest people aren't looking to buy more stuff. There are only so many mansions and yachts you can buy before you'd had enough with that and get bored. For the purposes of buying stuff, wealth has diminishing returns. What they're looking for in accumulating unlimited wealth is to increase their power relative to everyone else, to perpetuate social inequality. Power is a kind of zero sum game, because if we all accumulate the same amount, we're still all equal.
Warren Buffett has already given away stock worth more than his current net worth, and the main beneficiary has been the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. His will gives more than 99% of his remaining net worth to philanthropy.
In other words, a billionaire-controlled foundation.
But also: "Warren Buffett is donating about $870 million to four family-run foundations" "the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, which is named after his wife" "three charities run by his children" "Last year, he donated about $750 million to the same foundations. He’s been making the same donations yearly since 2006." https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/22/business/warren-buffett-thank...
If you're going to give most of your wealth away to charity, and by that I mean to actual people who need the money, not to a "foundation", then give it away now, before you die. I do not trust Bill Gates one bit, not even one tiny bit. I don't even trust the foundations to do good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundat...
So you can say that my conspiracy theory is the most cynical interpretation of the situation, due to my cynicism about the billionaires themselves.
Did I make up the theory? Yes, of course, by definition. All theories are made up.
Am I cynical about the motives of billionaires? Yes.
Was my theory inspired by my cynicism? Yes.
Did my theory "confirm" anything? No, I don't know what it would confirm.
The purpose of the theory is to explain the existence of all these family-run "charitable" foundations that every ultra-wealthy person seems to be setting up nowadays, regardless of how terrible that person might have been in the past or continues to be in the present. Don't you think that's a bit suspicious?
Honestly, I have a hard time believing that these foundations could do any more good than simply writing $10k checks to millions of poor people. That would immediately and dramatically improve their lives.
The subtitle is "A survey of the global elite shows the ‘great transfer’ between generations has overtaken entrepreneurship", and the first sentence of the article is "New members of the global super-rich gained more of their assets through inheritance than through wealth creation this year — the first time that this has been recorded by Swiss bank UBS in its nine years of surveying global billionaires."
Nobody is getting misled.