Britain's richest 1,000 have accumulated fortunes that are collectively worth £250bn more than a decade ago.
Yeung claimed he had made serious money as a hairdresser to Hong Kong's rich and famous, then accumulated fortunes in share-trading and high-stakes gambling in Macau.
Lack of decisiveness "Analysis of several hundred people who had accumulated fortunes well beyond the million-dollar mark disclosed the fact that every one of them had the habit of reaching decisions promptly," Hill writes.
Indeed, it has barely budged in the few past decades.The elites in the early years of the 20th century were living off the income generated by their accumulated fortunes.
"The evidence suggests that top income earners today are not 'rentiers' deriving their incomes from past wealth, but rather are 'working rich,' highly paid employees or new entrepreneurs who have not yet accumulated fortunes comparable to those accumulated during the Gilded Age," Mr. Saez writes.
Whatever happened, you may ask, to the brazen Texas of old, where real Democratic men (and some women) ate 4lb T-bone steaks, drove pink Cadillacs with cow horns nailed to the bumpers and accumulated fortunes simply by staring at their gently nodding oil wells?
Remember, these are often very talented people, with large social networks and often with access to lots of money, through previously accumulated fortunes or through the business connections they have developed in office.
Clooney's fellow actor and campaigner Don Cheadle said: "The Sentry has found evidence that these top officials responsible for mass atrocities in South Sudan have managed to accumulate fortunes and have been involved in illegal transactions, insider deals and outright fraud.
The national tolerance of corruption -- bribes, after all, were sometimes the only way to accomplish anything under Soviet rule -- allowed bureaucrats to ignore Moscow's dictates and to accumulate fortunes at the same time.
There were calls for government action to break up the trusts, but there was also a fascination with the men who stood astride the world of finance, accumulating fortunes beyond most readers' imagining.
