welcome to richistan (37.83568304468251 , -122.53240585327148)
The Wall Street Journal's "Wealth" reporter Robert Frank just completed an in-depth investigation of what he calls a new "country", Richistan.
Frank's book explores the world of the super-rich, a population of folks that's exploded since the early 1990s. Frank spends time with the super-rich uncovering their secret lives that are isolated and disconnected from the rest of America.
"This “parallel country of the rich was once just a village, he argues, but now it’s an entire nation.
The data bear Frank out. It was a huge deal when John D. Rockefeller became the country’s first billionaire. Adjusted for inflation, he had $14 billion — less than the net worth of each of Sam Walton’s five children today. There were an estimated 13 American billionaires in 1985. Now there are more than 1,000. In 2005, America minted 227,000 new financial millionaires, men and women with more than $1 million in investible assets. There are as many millionaires in North Carolina as there are in India. And so on.
Frank argues that the rich are “financial foreigners” within their own country. They have their own health care system, staffed by “concierge doctors.” They have their own travel network of timeshare (or private) jets and destination clubs. For her birthday, one 11-year-old “aristokid” pleads to fly commercial, “to ride on a big plane with other people. I want to see what an airport looks like on the inside.”
New York Times Book Review- June 10th
Richistan is proof positive of the existence of the new hyper elite moving in spheres that most of us can only imagine and consuming brands few of us have ever heard of.
