Amazon boss Bezos, Tesla owner Musk and luxury entrepreneur Arnault are the richest people in the world. Getting rich is easier today, says researcher Druyen. But it works completely differently than it did decades ago.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is once again the richest person in the world. He has replaced Tesla boss Elon Musk, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index shows. In third place is Bernard Arnault, the founder of the luxury group LVMH, a European.
To be rich, however, you don’t have to be a billionaire like these founders and entrepreneurs. “In Germany, you are considered rich if you earn twice the median income. That would be 3,892 euros per person per month [brutto]”says sociologist Thomas Druyen, who researches wealth and assets at the Sigmund Freud Private University in Vienna, tagesschau.de.
No binding measure of wealth
However, it is not possible to say clearly when one is rich. “There is no binding size. But in Germany, with assets of 722,000 euros, you are in the top five percent.”
Assets include real estate, companies, securities, but also valuables such as cars, private jets and yachts. Debts such as mortgages or loans are deducted.
Differences in size are important
According to Druyen, someone who has at least 300 million euros is super rich. But it makes a difference whether you live in Zurich, Beijing or Dakar. But the magnitudes are even more important. “There are light years between five, 50, 500 million or 50 billion,” explains the expert.
According to the World Wealth Report from the consulting firm Capgemini, there were around 1.6 million millionaires in Germany in 2022. These are people with investable assets of more than a million dollars. In 2008 there were half as many. But by 2021 there will be a decline of a good 20,000 – a global trend.
Middle East, Africa, South America: Richer in crisis
“The reason was the geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainties,” says the report. The money invested had become less valuable due to price losses on the capital markets and rising inflation. But the opposite happened in the Middle East, Africa and South America in particular: there the very wealthy became even richer. They benefited from profits from oil and gas deals.
If you look at the number of billionaires, their number has been declining worldwide since 2021, but since the turn of the millennium their number has increased more than fivefold. Almost ten percent of them are younger than 50 years old. How did they achieve this?
Wealth mostly earned by oneself
In short: Most of them became rich as self-made entrepreneurs – i.e. through work. According to Wealth-X, 55.8 percent of billionaires under the age of 50 worldwide stated that they had created their wealth (self-made), and 18.5 percent had inherited it. The others earned at least some of their wealth themselves. In the older generation of 50- to 70-year-old billionaires, the ratio of earned and inherited wealth is even worse: 64.2 percent made this wealth themselves and 8.8 percent inherited it.
Expert Druyen confirms this after research in 120 countries: “The myth that you get rich primarily through heirs is not true.” Since the beginning of industrialization, entrepreneurship has been the “decisive factor” for wealth. However, the conditions have changed enormously.
Entrepreneurship often makes you rich
Before digitalization, the industrial revolution in the USA led to great wealth. Examples include oil and Rockefeller, steel and infrastructure with Andrew Carnegie or the automobile industry with Henry Ford. “Big entrepreneurial personalities were always involved and the state didn’t play a big role.”
It’s different in the Far East: “It was only after Mao that great wealth could be acquired in China.” In particular, the textile, real estate and construction industries have developed exponentially, as has the number of millionaires and billionaires. “The big secret was the achievement of building a huge middle class, i.e. freeing over 200 million people from poverty. That drove the market enormously. But everything was controlled by the state.” According to Wealth-X, there were recently 357 billionaires in China (as of 2022), many of them internet billionaires.
Making fortune as a family entrepreneur in Germany
There are 173 billionaires in Germany. “Here, family businesses stood for sustainable wealth production from an early stage,” sums up Druyen. These included the automobile industry with Daimler and Benz and BMW, companies like Siemens and Bosch, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering, as well as Bayer and BASF for chemicals and pharmaceuticals.
The opportunities and requirements for becoming rich have changed: For centuries, especially since the 19th century, shipping owners, mine owners and railway builders have needed an incredible network of employees, explains the researcher.
That has changed in the last 20 or 30 years with the Internet, digitalization and artificial intelligence: “Today it is easier to get rich. For the first time in human history, it is possible to develop an idea and spend a lot of money on it to get a sale.” One could say: “Digitalization has democratized getting rich.”
Idea, courage and discipline
But the idea alone is not enough: “Without the courage and discipline to implement it, it doesn’t work.” In 25 years of research, one thing has become obvious: “Most wealthy people were not primarily concerned with money, but rather had the will, the obsession to turn their ideas or visions into reality and the perseverance.”
The new generation of super-rich is characterized by the fact that they have greater insight into global connections and think globally. “This generation uses its capital to work and create and has the courage to try things out.”
“Satisfaction is important”
Whether you ultimately become really rich depends on many factors. Many of them cannot be influenced or can be influenced little, such as origin, religion, culture, family, character and personality.
But the research also showed: “Very few people want to become really rich in all dimensions. Satisfaction is important.” Studies show that people are most satisfied with incomes between $70,000 and $120,000. “This allows you to secure your old age, allows you to live in peace and is good for the soul and good for your health.”