Not that I, personally, am getting stomped on—but my needs are modest. I managed to get born in an in-between moment when it was looking good for a middle class, when the rich weren't especially filthy. My husband worked a good job, and we managed to save up some.
But what about the various Gens—X, Millennial, Z, Alpha, and now Beta: I see a lot of worrying about their futures. Justifiably, maybe. I don't know how you can actually make a career out of being an "influencer." But some seem to manage it. And hopefully real jobs will stay around.
Though the poor—there's never been a time without destitution. No matter the generation. Capitalism makes it hard to get anywhere. You've got to have serious breaks. Heaven forbid the government could help individuals find a decent life.
As of March 2026, so Google AI tells me, there are 3,428 billionaires in the world, 989 in the U.S., followed next by China and India. There's a new billionaire every day, apparently. Altogether, these people (481 of whom are women) have a combined wealth of $20.1 trillion.
As Google AI again tells me, "a trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) is visually represented as a massive, 100-level-high structure of $100-note pallets covering a football field twice, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty. It is 10,000 stacks of $100 million crates, enough to dwarf a human, making them look like an ant."
A mere billions dollars, meanwhile, "is best visualized as a 34-foot high cube of $100 bills, or in $1 bills would reach 67 miles high . . . and would take 274 years to spend at a rate of $10,000 per day."
And here I'm feeling extravagant for booking a $250-a-night hotel for a week in Berlin in June? (And yeah, it does feel extravagant.)
You can find the top ten industries for billionaires, and the richest individuals in each, here. (Though that article is from two years ago, so who knows what the shake-down is now.)
Meanwhile, I get incensed by footballers and actors and musicians getting paid tens of millions of dollars for their—I want to put "work" in quotation marks, but sure, they are working. It might not be improving the future of humanity, but it's work. And in the case of movie actors and musicians, I eat it up, so what I am complaining about?
I also know actors who make nothing, but who do the work because they love it. I have many musician friends who go out every week and perform at a local venue, with a dedicated coterie of fans, and still they are struggling to make ends meet.
Some actors and musicians and footballers get lucky, and good for them.
But these billionaires? Who seem to be taking over the U.S. government? What are they actually doing?
I don't have a particular point here. Except that the world has shifted dramatically from what I grew up expecting. And I don't like it.
And a big part of me says I should stop listening to/reading the news. Wouldn't that be nice?
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