If upward mobility to achieve great wealth is your concern, surely this means we're heading in the right direction. I don't think the system is rigged towards benefiting those with already great wealth, but markets have expanded and entrepreneurship has a bigger upside than it has in the past. You don't have to take the analysis I quoted at face value, but just take a look at the richest Americans. No Vanderbilts, Rockefellers or Carnegies.
My opinion may not be popular, but I find it encouraging to think that so few can create such great wealth in today's society, even if the odds are against me creating such wealth. In many cases, that means that a product or service one person creates can benefit a large number of people and make you very wealthy. And I personally benefit from many of the products and services that were created by this generation of the wealthy individuals.
[0] http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2014/10/02/the-new...
No, "upward mobility to achieve great wealth" is not my concern -- I think I made that clear in the comment.
Upward mobility to middle class, middle class stability (to going back to poverty), and upward mobility from middle class to upper middle class are my concerns.
To which "upward mobility to achieve great wealth" could even be working against -- while itself concerning a very tiny majority.
>I don't think the system is rigged towards benefiting those with already great wealth, but markets have expanded and entrepreneurship has a bigger upside than it has in the past. You don't have to take the analysis I quoted at face value, but just take a look at the richest Americans. No Vanderbilts, Rockefellers or Carnegies.
What I'm trying to get at is that there's a difference though between:
"we could only make 10 non-rich people ultra-rich in 1950, whereas we have 1000 non-rich made ultra-rich today".
Which might be all well and good, but this "upward mobility" only concerns a tiny minority, and having a healthy "upward mobility" and social stability for the large masses.
A, thanks. Missed that, thought 1191 was the total given.
I think the rest of the argument remains unaffected though, so wont change it.
>I don't follow this logic at all. Does number of billionaires created affect anything else?
Yes, I don't see the two things as "unrelated" events, but as the difference between a society set up to sustain and grow a strong middle class, and one that caters to a tiny majority of rich (regardless how they got there, by inheritance or bootstrapping) to the detriment of the middle class.
That is, this outcome is not just the effect of random people going about their life more or less independently and succeeding or not, but of a society (laws, education, etc) that has been rigged towards sustaining and growing (but always to a negligible percentage of the total) the upper classes, and milking the middle class and the poor to oblivion.