What is a millionaire?

[retire@40]

22 billionaires.

That's why I'm a stickler for details.  You almost made a $21,978,000,000 error because you didn't specify billionaire in your original post. 

 

[MJ]

22 billionaires.

I am actually surprised with that large number unless it includes despots who owned large whole countries.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

At this point we're lucky I wasnt talking about free agent running backs. Our angelic sleeper gave us 2 hours last night for some unknown reason.

He's snoozing peacefully now though. I wanna go in there and waah at him until he wakes up. Except that would sort of be counter productive.

Remember, thats 22 in the whole world. I imagine a few did own what amounts to whole countries...

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

9 out of 22 were Railroad barons, a couple of department store chain owners, an iron magnate, a fur trader, etc.

Interesting stuff:

They became billionaires by...

* inheritance, plus a stock market boom.
* persuading the government to do your enterprise a truly massive favor.
* being at the right place at the right time: creating an enterprise of truly enormous social utility--and thereafter both retaining the market power to turn a large chunk of that extra social utility into firm profits, and retaining a sufficient ownership share and access to capital markets to turn capitalized firm profits into an enormous fortune.

Characteristics of the billionaire circa 1900...substantial differences in how and where they got their money, with the exceptions of the large # of railroad guys; brutally ruthless; abilities to financially manage the windfalls they received from their machinations; and complete and total corruption.

A great deal of the billionaires owed their wallets to bribes lobbying politicians. As Collis Huntington said:" If you have to pay money to a politician to have the right thing done, is is only just and fair to do it.... If a politician has the power to do great evil and won't do right unless he is bribed to do it, I think... it is a man's duty to go up and bribe"

I'm sure we can all draw some analog's to a number of todays situations...

 

[Nords]

He's snoozing peacefully now though.  I wanna go in there and waah at him until he wakes up.  Except that would sort of be counter productive.

Truly satisfying vengeance requires long-term thinking.

When your kid reaches teenagerhood, we'll send you our "Baby Think It Over" dolls.  Considering the way she was as a baby, we're buying our kid the "triplets" edition...

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Oh I've got it already. I dressed him in a little hooded sweatshirt and then put one of his little stuffed animals into the hood on his back. He can see it out of the corner of his eye and whips his head around, upon which of course it 'runs away'. This is producing the same effect as a cat chasing its tail.

I'm amused. He's amused yet perplexed. Everyones happy.

 

[dougdo]

22 billionaires.

Ah, ok, that makes more sense than 22 millionaires. Now I'm surprised on the other end. From that perspective all of those 22 were probably a hell of a lot wealthier than Bill G and his 50 Billion in today's dollars...

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

From that perspective all of those 22 were probably a hell of a lot wealthier than Bill G and his 50 Billion in today's dollars...

that's 22 total billionaires out of 1.5 billion world population circa 1900 compared to about 800 out of 6.5 billion population circa today. i'm not sure if that means they could buy more pie or if there was simply more pie to buy.