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Genes of the superrich

Posted September. 19, 2014 03:38,   

한국어

Globally, there are some 2,325 billionaires. Some 151 since last year have joined the list and their aggregate total of assets increased by 11.9%. Their average age is 63, and mostly, they did not make the club until the second half of their 40s. Cities where the superrich are the most concentrated were shown to be New York, Moscow, Hong Kong, London, and Beijing, in that order. This is contained in the Swiss asset information provider Wealth-X and UBS Billionaire Census 2014.

Among the billionaires, some 35% had no university diploma. Eight out of ten were self-made billionaires. According to the Chaebul.com announcement in August, there were 35 superrich people in Korea. Among them, 25 had inherited their wealth.

Another characteristic was that they are big donators. Their total donations amount to 100 million dollars. Although their individual effort in the course of amassing their wealth was important, given they received the support of the community, it is natural for them to shoulder relevant social responsibility. When the U.S. government came up with repealing the Wealth Tax in 2006, Bill Gates, etc organized the Responsible Wealth organization and protested against it. Warren Buffet said on the plan that it would be a terrible mistake, the equivalent of ``choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics.``

Journalist Richard Conniff calls the superrich homo sapiens pecuniosus. It means that as humans and chimpanzees share much of their genetic makeup but are different, the superrich are a completely different species from ordinary people, like aliens. Billionaires jump into adventures where their lives are at stake or snap up art works that cost astronomical amounts of money in order to differentiate themselves. Conniff’s list of ten traits of the rich are relevant to the ordinary person. They include “always look confident, always put family first, when giving, give early and often, and more than you are able.”