Millions and Billions

Despite our current economic volatility, billionaires are in no danger of winding up on the endangered species list. For all the world’s problems, they are cropping up everywhere – even in once impoverished nations.

From an article in today’s Times under the headline "A New Breed of Billionaire,"

The global wealth boom has created a new breed of billionaire in once-destitute countries like Turkey, India, Mexico and Russia. Propelled by their rising economies, robust currencies and globally competitive companies, they have ridden a surge in local stock markets that have reached previously untouchable heights in a short five-year time frame. Now, a number of them are using their wealth to bolster their standing and push for social changes.

In 1963, the Times marveled at a similar development – the rapidly growing fraternity of millionaires. But these new rich weren’t international so much as invisible. It seems people have been complaining for 44 years that being a millionaire isn’t what it used to be.

September 15, 1963
OUR 398 MILLIONAIRES – A NEW BREED

BY ALVIN SHUSTER

WASHINGTON—It was easy in the old days to tell the millionaire from the rest of us.

He had that private railroad car, courted Lillian Russell and assorted French actresses, imported chefs from Paris to prepare 20-course meals to be served on gold plates, swam in pools of white Venetian tile or Carrara marble, built “cottages” with 110 rooms and 45 baths and owned a Nile steamer just in case he went to Egypt.

Not so of the millionaires of today. They live well, but for the most part, quietly, without the flamboyance of their predecessors. A few even live in the house with the 100-foot lot they bought 15 years ago before they hit it big. With a few exceptions, most are a little shy about it all. And even though one of their kind reached the White House by popular demand, many still feel ill at ease when publicly identified as “a millionaire.”

The article goes on to note that many of the nation's 398 millionaires somehow manage to pay zero taxes, but they do pay an average alimony of $24,000 a year. Like the international billionaires in today’s story, many are philanthropic – giving 15 percent of their incomes to charity, however some gave fewer than $100.

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