The role of inheritance in top incomes

Chinese, Hong Kong, Taiwanese and Japanese billionaires by source of wealth

Surprisingly few billionaires in any of the 4 countries obtained their wealth through political connections. Founding a company seems to be still the path of great wealth even in Japan these days. Hong Kong is a financial centre so the large number of billionaires in its financial sector is no surprise.

image

Source: Caroline Freund and Sarah Oliver, The Origins of the Superrich: The Billionaire Characteristics Database (2016).

60% of top U.S. tech companies founded by 1st/2nd gen immigrants

How did Pinoy billionaires make their money?

A surprisingly large number of Filipino billionaires are in the financial sector.

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Source: Caroline Freund and Sarah Oliver, The Origins of the Superrich: The Billionaire Characteristics Database (2016).

How did India’s billionaires make their fortunes

A decent number of India’s billionaires founded a company.

image

Source: Caroline Freund and Sarah Oliver, The Origins of the Superrich: The Billionaire Characteristics Database (2016).

How did British billionaires make their money

Inheriting wealth is not what it used to be in Britain. There are all these upstarts running businesses or working in the City.

image

Source: Caroline Freund and Sarah Oliver, The Origins of the Superrich: The Billionaire Characteristics Database (2016).

Milton Friedman on racism and sexism in Hollywood, today and yesterday

David Henderson reminded me of the superb discussion by Milton Friedman in Capitalism and Freedom of the way in which the marketplace erodes prejudice.

Source: Milton Friedman on Trumbo, David Henderson | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty.

@BernieSanders has serious problems with Uber because it is unregulated

How did the Chinese billionaires make their money?

image

Source: Caroline Freund and Sarah Oliver, The Origins of the Superrich: The Billionaire Characteristics Database (2016).

Percentage of billionaires who inherited their wealth

China has been capitalist for long enough for a billionaire to actually inherit his wealth.

image

Source: Caroline Freund and Sarah Oliver, The Origins of the Superrich: The Billionaire Characteristics Database (2016).

% billionaires who made their money through political connections or resource industries

The 1826 Billionaires in the Forbes 2015 list are classified as rich through political connections if they made their money through past political positions, close relatives or friends in government, or questionable licenses, privatisations or resource extraction industries.

Source: Caroline Freund and Sarah Oliver, The Origins of the Superrich: The Billionaire Characteristics Database (2016).

All privatizations were included in the politically-connected/resource-related category despite my data source acknowledging the possibility that the new owners may have transformed the company. Resource billionaires were all deemed to be lucky or cronies by my data source rather than diligent as some most certainly were. This is something of a slur by my data source given the industriousness of some resource billionaires some of whom were even geologists.

Political cronyism is a path to billionaire wealth mainly in the developing countries. Less than 10% of Chinese billionaires made their money through political connections, which is surprising.

Cmon aussie c’mon original

Lynne Kiesling discusses Joseph Schumpeter

Colour films were initially thought to be uncompetitive on cost grounds

How often does the human driver take over a self-driving car?

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