@Neo-Tech Sure you are. Otherwise there would be no billionaires in this number and someone like Zuckerberg would surly not be one. His net worth is almost exclusively based on inflating the tech bubble. And if they were, they would not be as abundant, would they?

Besides you don't want us all to be trillionaires because that would mean very sick economy. You can go to Zimbabwe or somewhere like that if you want to be a trillionairer, or you can stay in USA and wait.

How many billionaires were there in United States in 1800's vs late 2000's? Hmm?

Hell, just 20-30 years ago, how many were there? So yes, you are talking about inflated dollars, and by the looks of trends, don't worry we will all be trillionaires. The only trouble is that eggs will be priced a hell of a lot more than they are now.

America's Oldest Billion-Dollar Family Fortunes

America's oldest billion-dollar family fortunes have weathered more than two centuries, adapting and expanding to maintain their ranks among the country's wealthiest.

The 15 oldest fortunes on FORBES' new list of America's 200 Richest Families took root during the 19th century, from Thomas Jefferson's election through the Civil War and the beginning of the Gilded Age. Many were founded by European immigrants who sought safety and success in the newly minted nation across the Atlantic Ocean. Seven of these clans have managed to retain their spots among the top 25 wealthiest families in the country today.

Here are the 15 oldest fortunes on FORBES' list of America’s 200 Richest Families, with the date the fortune was launched:

• 1802: Du Pont family, $14.5 billion
• 1841: Mellon family, $11.5 billion
• 1858: Rockefeller family, $11 billion
• 1864: Donnelley family, $1.6 billion
• 1865: Cargill /MacMillan family, $45 billion
• 1865: Milliken family, $4.4 billion
• 1865: De Young family, $2.5 billion
• 1870: Brown family, $12.8 billion
• 1873: Coors family, $4 billion
• 1873: Haas family, $3.7 billion
• 1876: Busch family, $13.5 billion (beer)
• 1878: E.W. Scripps family, $7.2 billion
• 1878: Pulitzer family, $1.6 billion
• 1881: Shea family, $2.5 billion
• 1882: Dorrance family, $13.6 billion

according to forbes: [forbes.com]

The net worth of the world's billionaires increased from less than US$1 trillion in 2000 to over $7 trillion in 2015.

In the 37th annual Forbes list of the world's billionaires, the list included 2,640 billionaires with a total net wealth of $12.2 trillion, down 28 members and $500 billion from 2022. Nearly half the list is poorer than the previous year, including Elon Musk, who fell from No. 1 to No. 2.[2] The list also marks for the first time a French citizen was in the top position as well as a non-American for the first time since 2013 when the Mexican Carlos Slim Helu was the world's richest person. The list, like in 2022, counted 15 under 30 billionaires with the richest of them being Red Bull heir Mark Mateschitz with a net worth of $34.7 billion. The youngest of the lot were Clemente Del Vecchio, heir to the Luxottica fortune shared with his six siblings and stepmother and Kim Jung-yang, whose fortune lies in Japanese-South Korean gaming giant Nexon, both under-20s.

When the "money printing" stopped so did the list change.

[en.wikipedia.org]

The Wealth Effect
How the Wealth Effect creates Wealth Disparity
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

The doctrine of the “Wealth Effect” has long formed the official foundation for the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve. The Wealth Effect has been described in numerous Fed papers, including by San Francisco Fed president Janet Yellen in 2005. She wrote, “As part of its analysis of demand in the economy, central bank models have long incorporated the wealth effect of house prices and other assets on spending.”

In November 2010, after inflating asset prices for two years through zero-percent interest rates and QE, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke explained the concept of the Wealth Effect to the American people via a Washington Post editorial.

The Fed’s “strong and creative measures” would inflate stock prices, which would lead those holding stocks to feel wealthier and more confident, and then they’d spend a little more, and some droplets of this might trickle down to the people that are working in the real economy.

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) did a study on the Wealth Effect, to quantify how much richer the rich have to become to have x% impact on the overall economy, and how long this boost lasts before it fades.

“The ‘wealth effect’ is the notion that when households become richer as a result of a rise in asset values, such as corporate stock prices or home values, they spend more and stimulate the broader economy,” the NBER said.

It makes 10% of the population a lot richer, producing immense concentration of wealth at the top 1%, and mind-boggling concentrations of wealth among the truly rich and at the billionaire level. After which there may be some muted trickle-down effects on the economy.

As a result, the already immense wealth disparity in the US between the top 1% and the bottom 50% blows out. Then there’s the billionaire class. They benefit more than anyone from the wealth effect.

The bottom 50% of Americans holds practically no stocks, no bonds, and very little real estate, according to the wealth distribution data from the Federal Reserve. Many live from paycheck to paycheck. They don’t make enough money to put anything aside. These folks cannot benefit from the wealth effect. For them, life (including housing costs, buying and renting) just gets more expensive as a result of the wealth effect.

Even the households between the top 10% and the bottom 50% — what the Fed calls the “next 40% (purple) have little compared to the 1% (red). And not shown separately in this chart are the truly rich (the 0.01%) and the billionaire class. This is the result of the Fed’s monetary policies:

[wolfstreet.com]

@Neo-Tech "I failed math on purpose, due to peer pressure."

That statement seems contradictory. Peer pressure suggests involuntary failure, not voluntary. So which is it?