1. The first is a difference in degree. Millionaires (even in 1990s) money do not necessarily have cultural access to the kind of elite circles discussed in the article. Now, you might be right--I'm not going to no-true-scotsman the entire claim, as I have no way of deriving a particular asset value that makes access likely--but it does seem unlikely to me that "millionaire" has substantial overlap with the multiple-vacation-homes types of people attending the gathering in the article. Similarly, mobility fluctuates; the '90s were a time of both elevated economic prosperity and elevated opportunities to transition upward in economic class. Now not so much.
2. I think we can refute the statistical claim, that mobility is less scarce than I stated. That one we can verify with data--as others in this thread have pointed out, anecdotes are insufficient. Numerous analyses indicate that "upward mobility" (which, fair enough, is often a flawed measure) has decreased or remained stagnant since the '70s. Additionally, elite classes have widened the asset-value gap that needs to be crossed by someone looking to join those classes via wealth alone.
In short: zip to millionaire might not be relevant to the claim; even if so, it happens less frequently (per capita if not absolutely) now; when it does happen it is less likely to imbue the kind of cultural status/class change that I mentioned due to the increased economic "distance" that the people in that status/class have accumulated in the last decades.
How many of the people born in the first quintile of wealth in the 80s are still in the first quintile? How many people born in the last quintile are now in the first quintile?
If the answer is 20% to both, great, you have no predetermination of wealth at all. if you have 50%/10%, you have what is expected in a country with correct social mobility (Most western countries post WW2 until the 70s). If its 95%/2%, or less, you have an almost non-existant wealth mobility.
> correct social mobility
a meaningless term
But picking Microsoft as an example or any of the faangs feels wrong, because they are the outliers. Millions of companies don't get that big and millions more fail.
The fact that a very small percentage of people do move between wealth classes and possibly social classes doesn't actually negate the original statement.
What? I personally know lots of people who went from zip to millionaire.
Even in the 1990s, it was estimated that Microsoft had minted over 10,000 millionaires, not including the value of their homes. And that's just Microsoft.