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Public hostility toward billionaires is rising just as the way extreme fortunes are made appears to be improving. Drawing on a new analysis of about 7,000 billionaires over 25 years, The Economist argues that a growing share of billionaire wealth now comes from founders competing to sell useful goods and services, rather than from inheritance, political connections or protected industries. That shift does not erase concerns about concentrated power, but it changes which remedies make sense.

A rough test of how wealth was made

The analysis combines data from Forbes, the Hurun Report and Gapminder. It classifies wealth as “uncompetitive” when it was inherited or came mainly from sectors where success often depends on government access, scarce licences or weak competition, such as property, mining, gambling and defence. The category is an imperfect proxy rather than a moral verdict: heirs have not necessarily broken rules, and entrepreneurs in competitive industries can still wield excessive influence. Its purpose is to distinguish fortunes that plausibly reward productive enterprise from those rooted in privilege or political favour.

By this measure, the trend has changed sharply. From 2001 to 2014, the uncompetitive share of billionaire wealth edged upward. Over the past decade, however, wealth created by self-made entrepreneurs in competitive sectors rose to a record level. For the first time, roughly half of global billionaire wealth qualifies as reasonably earned under the study’s definition, while wealth from uncompetitive sources has declined since 2021.

Old sources of concentrated wealth have weakened. The combined fortunes of post-Soviet billionaires peaked near \$500bn in 2008 and now stand around \$400bn. Property billionaires have lost about a third of their wealth since 2018 as higher interest rates, China’s real-estate crash and weaker demand for offices took their toll. Inheritance remains important, but its share of billionaire wealth has fallen from nearly half in the early 2000s to about a quarter.

Why self-made fortunes are multiplying

The change is broader than the artificial-intelligence boom. Three forces have helped more founders cross the billion-dollar threshold. First, a long bull market delivered average annual global-equity returns above 13%, greatly enriching entrepreneurs whose fortunes remain tied to company shares. Low interest rates initially pushed capital toward risk, and enthusiasm for technology continued even after borrowing costs rose.

Second, China’s development reached a stage at which even slower growth could create many more billionaires. When a country is poor, rapid expansion may still leave most fortunes far below \$1bn. Once incomes and companies are larger, modest further growth can push many near-billionaires over the line. China’s billionaire count consequently rose from about 200 to roughly 800 during a decade in which its overall growth rate slowed.

Third, the mobile internet gave companies immediate access to enormous markets. Payments, messaging and constant consumer contact allowed businesses such as ByteDance, Spotify and Stripe, along with delivery and ride-hailing platforms, to scale with unusual speed. Similar gains occurred beyond software: founders in food, manufacturing, batteries, retail and luxury goods also built vast fortunes. The central story is therefore not simply that technology made a few familiar names richer, but that global markets became capable of rewarding successful founders across many industries more quickly and at greater scale.

A narrower case for wealth taxes

The findings do not answer every objection to billionaires. Democracies can still be distorted when a tiny group can buy political influence, regardless of whether its wealth was earned competitively. The article argues that campaign-finance and donation rules may address that problem more directly than a wealth tax.

What the shift does weaken is the claim that most billionaire fortunes are inherently unearned. Taxing inherited or politically protected wealth carries different economic consequences from taxing founders whose companies create jobs, products and productivity gains. If the latter respond by moving, investing less or working less, the cost extends beyond their personal fortunes.

The article’s conclusion is deliberately narrower than a defense of every billionaire. Extreme wealth can still create political risks, and its classification cannot capture every monopoly, subsidy or social cost. But if more fortunes arise from competitive enterprise and fewer from inheritance or patronage, policy should target the specific source of harm. Anger at concentrated wealth may be intensifying, even as a blanket remedy becomes harder to justify.