World billionaires' net worth as percent of the gross world product (GWP) has been on a fast ride since 1996, as highlighted by the trend (red regression line) for the period 1996-2016. In 1996 the whole world should have to work 8 solid days to produce an output equal to the total net worth of the then existing billionaires. In 2016 the world would have to contribute an additional 10 workdays, bringing these to 18 days, to match the wealth of the current 1,810 billionaires.

Some highlights:

• Billionaires have a knack for grabbing growing shares of the world's wealth. The relative weight of billionaire net worth in constant US$ follows an upward path from 3.5% of GWP in 1996 to 7.9% in 2016, corresponding to an annual average growth rate of 4.2% — considerably faster than the 3.3% annual average growth of real (inflation discounted) GWP. To put it plainly, billionaires have been deflecting to their balance sheets a growing share of the world's output — indeed their cut increases annually about one percent point faster than the world product, crises or no crises.
• More bluntly, the whole working world have been prodigally letting go, year after year, of a bigger chunk of their output to fatten the wallets of a handful of highly privileged individuals. If this transfer to the richest were instead directed to the extremely poor — the portion of the 700 million extremely poor people that fall in the poverty gap — a major step towards eliminating extreme poverty would have been accomplished. Unfortunately, regular people, contrary to the billionaire breed, tend to forget that charity begins at home.
• Billionaires form a very exclusive club. A group of 1,810 people or 0.000024% (24 per hundred million) of the 7.405 billion world population own 7.9% of the world's annual output. They numbered 423 or 7 per hundred million in 1996, which means that the club membership has been growing at an average rate of 7.5% per year, doubling in size every 9 years. By contrast, the world population grew only by 1.2% per year during the same period.
• The billionaire club includes some heavyweights and numerous comparatively lightweights. The average fortune is 3.3 billion real US$, but 50% of the members have assets below the median 1.9 billion. The top 5% own 30% of the total net worth, thus mimicking the worldwide inequality pattern of which they astutely reap the benefits.
• Crises exist indeed, and they are a veritable affliction for common people. For billionaires, however, they are a mere flash in the pan, if not an helpful lever to push their fortunes further up. Both the 2001 dot.com burst and the 2008 global financial meltdown have been quickly outdistanced. From 2008 to 2009 the billionaires' total net worth plunged -2 trillion or -46% in real US dollars, but from 2009 to 2015 it regained its previous upwards trend, growing by 4 trillion or 67%.
• The 2015 depression has caused murderous commotion among world billionaires, to an extent unparalleled since 2009. In 2016, 221 billionaires got wiped out of the billionaire list, of which 42 from China, 25 from the United States, 23 from Brazil, 19 from Russia and 15 from India — a sure sign that the crisis is global, spreading over the once-vaunted "BRIC" (Brazil, Russia, India, China) economies. Most of the 221 slots, however, were immediately filled in by new entrants with the result that, after consolidation of ousters and new entrants, the 2016 list is shorter than the 2015 one by only 16 slots.

In hindsight, the 2008 crisis looks like the initial tumor of a metastatic cancer that has been spreading alarmingly thereafter. Nothing seems to work properly in the world economy anymore. Global economic uncertainty is peaking in this present time, opening the way to the ominous sluggishness of both consumption and investment. The skies become the more menacing as the monetary policies of zero or negative interest rates, and of the germane increases of the money supply, courtesy of the central banks, keep flooding financial institutions with inexpensive capital that ends up overwhelmingly in profits for the already wealthiest. The profligacy of government spending, especially sterile defense spending, adds to the turbulence.

Symptoms of the metastasis are ubiquitous. The instability of international currencies. The equity-market pandemonium. The commodities debacle (oil at the top of the list). The creeping unemployment. The standstill of labor income. The climbing indebtedness of both public and private economic agents. The shrinking redistribution by the state. All of the above impact the poor as well as the wealthy. But they come harder on the regular consumer and the regular taxpayer, rendering their lives more difficult and more precarious. Billionaires, as a caste, have demonstrated their power to stand the test virtually unscathed.

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Sources: Forbes List of World Billionaires, International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook Database, and CIA World Factbook.

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