Where Have the Billionaires Gone?

merceradvisors.com

1 pointBreadmaker2 comments

(The article basically asks why there are so very few billionaires in the U.S. - when any family that got decently rich 50 or 100 years ago, then had enough brains to park their money in an index fund, would end up as billionaires today.)

My take: Billionaires are just pretty-bright, really-aggressive people who also got lucky for a while. Imagining that their families somehow inherit their smarts and luck is just plain delusional. If you read a bit of history - that sort of belief is the foundation of the whole "kings, princes, dukes, ..., gentlemen" social hierarchy of long-ago Europe. And history records just how reliably (and how badly) the "$Descendant of $Great with also be $Great" theory has proved itself wrong.

I think you’ve missed the real point of the article. Yes, of course it is suggesting that the wealthy should invest across a diverse set of asset classes, and within those asset classes they should have diverse investments: an index fund would be great for the part of their wealth put into stocks.

But the point is that if you want intergenerational wealth and you want it to grow essentially forever, your extremely wealthy families must be willing to drastically reduce spending when their portfolios are doing poorly. For decades at a time, if necessary. Sell the yacht, sell the mansion, all so that your great grandchildren (who you will never know) can be ludicrously rich. It’s no wonder few have done so.

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