Having a super rich class isn't anything new.
JD Rockefeller was worth an estimated $1.5 Billion in the early 1900s. The whole country's GDP was less than 90 Billion. Today's GDP is about $16 TRILLION.
Andrew Carnegie was worth about $480 million in 1901.
JP Morgan died in 1913, worth about $118 million.
Cornelius Vanderbilt died in 1877, worth about $100 million.
John Reeves Ellerman was a British shipping magnate who died in 1933 with a net worth of £36,684,000.
Factor in inflation of roughly 40 times in the past 125 years and they would all be multi billionaires.
All these people created their wealth by creating companies that were successful, and yes, sometime by somewhat ruthless means. But you don't create an oil empire, a railroad empire, an electric grid or a banking system by being stupid! It takes work, thought and action.
People complain about Elon Musk, worth about $1 Trillion. But he's not sitting that money in a vault and playing with it. He built Tesla Motors, SpaceX, StarLink, Boring Company, Neuralink, xAI, and other businesses, and worked to make them successful. When he builds a successful business and it goes public, his wealth is tied up in stock, which can go up or down. He uses that as collateral to move to a new business. If SpaceX were to go bankrupt (a possiblity early on before it went public), he could have lost that investment.
Jeff Bezos started selling books out of a garage in 1995. He got a $300,000 investment from his parents, but said there was a 70% chance it would fail. It became Amazon, the behemoth that sells everything and anything. He started Blue Origin and bought the Washington Post. Amazon bought Whole Foods. He's worth $380 billion, and plans to give most of that away before he dies.
Sam Walton bought a Ben Franklin store in 1946 with a loan from his father in law, plus money he had saved from his time in the army. He was forced out, but took that money to open another store. By 1962 he had 16 Ben Franklin 5&10 Cent stores. He opened the first Walmart store, modeled after Meijer's. By the time he died in 1992, he was worth $23 Billion. Today the family is worth over $400 Billion.
People that build things successfully can reap handsome rewards.
It doesn't always work out that way.
Elizabeth Holmes was worth about $4.5 Billion from her stake in Theranos. It was a fraud, and she lost it.
Sam Bankman-Fried started a major crypto exchange called FTX, and was worth $26 billion. It ran into liquidity issues and went bankrupt. He got 25 years in prison.
Eric Batista had oil and mining companies and was worth and estimated $30 billion. Brazil's economic downturn and missed production goals killed the business. He went bankrupt in 2013 and got 30 years on bribery charges.
Jocelyn Wildenstein won between $2.5 to $3.8 billion in a divorce in 1999. She didn't create anything, but spent lavishly. By 2018 she was bankrupt and it is said that later she living on $900/month social security!
Pablo Escobar was worth about $30 billion at his peak, selling mostly cocaine.
If you want to make a Billion dollars, go out and build a successful business. Just try not to do it by fraud, bribery or criminal means.
Eating ice cream was the absolute LAST thing on my mind!!! A bonfire on the beach would have been better. I just never expected things to be that cool in August. We're lucky if we hit 20C for a low! 
