A denizen of an elite charity ball in New York found himself disoriented one night, not by the rapid fire of flashbulbs around Victoria Beckham or by the glittering night sky projected on the walls, but by the absence of his usual crowd.
“Who are these people?” he asked with more curiosity than disdain as he surveyed the room of more than a thousand guests, eager for an introduction.
As the ranks of the rich swell, moments such as these are increasingly common. The culture of the wealthy is disrupted once again.
The number of people with serious wealth across the globe is awesome at the moment, driven by the spread of capitalism and advances in technology. As norms are shattered, the rich gain new power to define their roles and responsibilities. In this competitive cohort, a new benchmark remains elusive.
Shall 10,000 roses festoon a ballroom? Perhaps, but the next night’s gala will dazzle guests with a tower of cereal boxes and a tornado of sneakers to be donated to the needy. The Astor 400 has long since been replaced by the Robin Hood 4,000: The New York-based poverty-fighting foundation builds its own ballroom within a cavernous convention center each year to accommodate its masses of untired affluent.
The trophy wife has been pushed aside for the alpha partner, an entrepreneur or best-selling author who can banter about the stock market or microbiology. A spouse or significant other takes an equal role in philanthropy, not merely planning parties but chairing prestigious nonprofit boards, even co-founding the company. Single-sex couples are part of the social fabric.
The wealthy no longer keep to their own clubs or countries. They count themselves members of a vast, global peer group who connect by text, social media, and even face-to-face at art fairs, Giving Pledge learning sessions, and annual conferences in Aspen, Beverly Hills, Sun Valley, and Davos. In this way, billionaires from developing countries quickly pick up the habits and concerns of those who’ve been steeped in wealth longer, though not necessarily that long. The hit novel-turned-movie Crazy Rich Asians depicts a newly wealthy family in Singapore living in rooms that imitate Versailles.
Old and new, tech and oil, African and Iowan: Globally, more than 2,100 billionaires collectively were worth $8.9 trillion in 2017—a jump of $1.4 trillion in just one year, the UBS/PWC Billionaires Report found. And that was just the wealth that could be detected. China has been minting them the fastest (recent setbacks notwithstanding) and more than half of new billionaires were from Asia-Pacific in 2017. The U.S. still has the most (for now)—about 585—plus lots of others who are quite well-off. Some 17.3 million Americans are millionaires, Credit Suisse data show.
By contrast, nearly 2 billion people worldwide lived on less than $3.20 a day as of 2015, according to the World Bank. About 736 million—close to one in 10 humans—lived on less than $1.90 a day. In the U.S. in 2017, nearly 40 million people lived in poverty, defined by the Census Bureau as income of less than $12,488 a year, or $34.21 a day.
Income inequality is just one force suppressing the materialistic proclivities of the wealthy in the richest nations. The financial crisis, climate change, and populist political movements have produced an aversion to the conspicuous consumption of the 1980s. The dripping jewels and puffed egos displayed on Dynasty or Dallas have been replaced by the moody hedge fund chief on Billions, wearing jeans and a hoodie, who grabs a slice at his old neighborhood pizza joint. (Of course, he also delivers the kids to their little league baseball game in a helicopter.)