right opinions they want to express d.w. on facebook and twitter up to date and in touch follow us. birds of a feather flock together and especially rich ones. a millionaire is in amsterdam this is where europe's super rich meet. their becoming richer and richer and more numerous than. the rest of the population envious of. rightfully so there's a wealth of myths out there about being rich money doesn't make you happy. germany is ignorant about wealth to be honest. the unequal distribution of wealth causes

problems that's well known scientists have now discovered the rich as a group to be studying. a trillion euros one thousand and twelve zeros that's how much the world's rich spend every year on luxury items such as a rump of fifteen thousand euros with diamond buttons. what's the point of this superfluous luxury because the diamonds are now based on the diamonds and the. home and the people yes it's very special. this wealth seeing what you can buy in the world is a sight to behold for you to develop the sparkle yeah i like both also have pearls there's just yes something about it it's it looks beautiful. academics haven't really looked much. the topic of wealth to date for more than

thirty years social scientists looked mainly at poverty but now the distribution of wealth is being seen in the round. this is how we perceive the rich in the media work a foreign concept tax is why they've got their money in the bahamas. but is that a cliche for the reality it's hard to find out the rich isolate themselves they stick together. thomas durian is a plutonic just he studies wealth he knows many super rich people personally. i'd say that great wealth one hundred million three hundred million an arc is an attack on your character of the cocktails you have to have an extremely strong character to avoid falling for a to the temptations that come with it it for britain is

a need to provide those few it's your distance from the everyday problems suffered by others. and when you watch the news it feels like you're watching a science fiction show from another planet. thomas dewey and is visiting company heiress cast in shubert today thanks to his research he has access to a world that's normally closed to outsiders. thomas has interviewed several hundred multi millionaires and billionaires already he set up the world's only academic chair in wealth psychology in vienna. and you're ok with us recording the conversation. it's kind of mean when you were a little girl when was the first time you became aware that you'd like these rich. possibly because we went on a holiday more often than other children at school but otherwise we grew up in

a very grounded fashion and it wasn't evident to me from. justin schubert inherited a business with an annual turnover of one hundred twenty million euros then she sold it for a lot of money the millionaire heiress has written a book about her experiences she likes talking about the downsides of her inheritance darwinii missions i think very closely about whom to being greater contact with. whom i tell what i'm doing and who might invite to my home. or and. i think very closely about what advisors i can trust in my life it happens that our closest adviser our tax advisor and executor and bad intention is for a lifetime but often does not relate to these or worries and fears some of us would like to have the rich prefer it if nobody really knows just how rich they really

are. almost a million has discovered that in germany many super rich people hide their wealth and present a modest face to the outside world. of which you can sense this guilty conscience there's a certain fear of society what would they say about me going to do it or feel that is if you're not willing which is all too easy far i know many who think very closely about what car to drive and how they should present their homes and whether it wouldn't be better to have a regular flat here and maybe something bigger on the law currall more riches. the strategy of the german millionaires and billionaires to stay grounded and to lead a normal middle class life the opposite is true in russia or in the united states these cultures like showing off austria has a different mindset to. these cultures celebrated

they celebrate the characters in the title still play a role that family membership the aristocracy belonging to those groups comes with a certain value it's a different mentality and. it's more emotional that. in germany it's more rational and in switzerland it's why it's on the high for sheens so we have three different types of wealth mentality that it . does wealth actually means. in its report on wealth and poverty the german government defines people with assets of more than five hundred thousand euros as rich regardless of whether that money's in a bank or tied up in a house. many international academics say that's not enough they say someone is rich if they have more than

a million dollars freely available that means owner occupied housing doesn't count . after thirty million dollars someone is considered super rich. there are more than a million millionaires and more than one hundred and twenty billionaires in germany . three quarters of rich people are male and their average age is fifty nine. it's hard to get rich by working for someone else entrepreneurs and self employed people stand a better chance. than half of rich people cite self employment as the foundation for their wealth. and more than three quarters of them have already inherited. these figures come from marcus got up he's

a distribution scientist and gathers data about wealth and income in germany. and. even though the german welfare state often catches those in need wealth in this country one of the richest. in the world is also distributed unequally. half of the population possesses just one percent of the entire wealth in the country. a tenth of all germans meanwhile possess seventy percent of the wealth. these figures are estimates only there are no official statistics about wealth anymore since the wealth tax was abolished in one nine hundred ninety seven but there are tax data on the subject of income they reveal that those who already have given more. busy in some of them or worse in the fund we can see that those at the top edge of the top tax bracket are seeing particularly big increases in their

income that's a phenomenon we're witnessing internationally indorsement that's confirmed in germany by bonuses paid to board members on companies listed with the german stock exchange and in doing oxy go ya know can it find on fire in the eighty's the ratio was about eighty to one compared to an average employee. today it's at two hundred to one hundred. the big gap in incomes is one of the reasons why the distribution of wealth is becoming increasingly unequal. according to the german institute for economic research germany and austria have the greatest wealth inequality of any countries in the eurozone. marcus copter also studies wealth mobility. how difficult is it to climb the wealth ladder. here. the result here is that the top earners have

increased their ability to remain in the top income brackets in recent years at the same time we see the same tendency at the bottom of the scale and. those who come from a basic income situation in germany have had a reduced chance over the past ten years of elevating themselves to a middle class income. let alone a top level income for the. from dishwasher to millionaire hardly anyone can make this dream a reality anymore the gap between the middle class and the rich is widening. in addition to those who are already at the top of wealth distribution are very likely to inherit a lot of money during their lifetime and in turn they'll pass on their wealth to their children. family in westphalia now they christina austin mine is

among the lucky ones who will inherit a substantial fortune one day in the form of a company. her great grandparents founded a wholesale food business it turns over around seventy five million euros a year. mary christina. has run the business with her father for around ten years now the business is handed on from generation to generation in her family and the family fortune grows . many i don't any more than when i speak out in public as an entrepreneur i get a lot of pushback from a lot of people who have different views some of them are a bit envious that i'm a business woman and that i was born into a family business and our decision to name of and been going on to name i've been accused of having been born with a silver spoon in my mouth and that i have not achieved things through personal

effort. mallory christina the man is aware how lucky she's been that's why it matters to her that her family fortune isn't tied up in bank accounts or big mansions. people often imagine that a business has a lot of money they think you are like scrooge mcduck sitting on a huge pile of money but the wealth of business people is tied up in their business . in the premises in the machines it's needed for the. vestments in the so that you can secure jobs in the long term so can. you. in twenty fifteen almost a hundred and two billion euros changed hands by way of requests and gifts the state only got six point three billion euros in taxes from that.

according to predictions even more wealth will be inherited in the future. the generation of the economic miracle is dying leaving its fortune behind over the next ten years an estimated two to four trillion euros will be passed on inheritances but not everyone will benefit. around half of all germans won't inherit anything only debts. happy eight percent of all lands will get more than forty percent of germany's wealth. stephanie vienna university of economics and business studies how social inequality is passed on across the generations. inheriting is

a big issue in austria in two thousand and eight the inheritance tax was abolished even though more and more wealth is being passed on in be quest here. for a woman here we can see the volume of wealth that will be inherited in the coming fifty years currently estimating a value of around fifteen billion and this value will more than double by the year twenty fifty. stefan is convinced that although inheriting doesn't cause inequality it in trenches it it's not fair he says that high taxes have to be paid on money earned from work but none for wealth and inheritances that's why home is in favor of reintroducing the inheritance tax as an equalizer an element. of. the current. we could use this inheritance tax to reduce the tax burden on work and we could support several other things of social value. because if.

we could increase the equality of opportunity and intergenerational fairness fane then this think you we want to prevent households from drifting further and further apart if we want to put the brakes on wealth inequality claims. the company heiress mary christina or someone wants to reach young people from all social classes with her start up teens initiative she wants to inspire them to start their own companies. business people like her who don't agree with wealth and inheritance taxes. she believes the inheritance tax on business assets should be as low as possible. this should add fuel says how debating the m.v. people who say that and contribute nothing of their own and that they should therefore pay

a lot of taxes because that fan but i think it's incredibly unfair because the money in question has already been taxed several times impact so why should it be taxed yet again and the second thing is this money isn't at the free disposal of business people it's tied up in the companies because it urgently needed. jeff on him and knows this argument but he still says sparing company as is wrong because they're particularly privileged. the reason is that i play him in that interview we can see very clearly in the darter on wealth distribution business ownership and wealth are concentrated at the top of the distribution as a venue for moving syria if you go easy on company wealth you have to bear in mind that you're favoring those households that are situated at the top of the wealth distribution that begins to go on the bits of the family was fertile

and significant. not everyone at the top wants to spend all their money or leave it to them as. some want to give back to society and make use of tax advantages quite by the by with a foundation. the donor makes a certain amount of money available. the foundation capital isn't touched. all the activities of the foundation are paid for through interest from the capital alone. most foundations are set up for eternity there are some curious foundation purposes a church in hamburg hands out fifteen sets of underwear to women in need that's

what the donor decreed in the year seventy and sixty two. over the past fifteen years the number of foundations has gone up dramatically the register of german foundations contains around twenty three thousand entries. sociologist thank god love has been studying foundations for decades he says it's not fair that foundations enjoy so many tax advantages while ordinary clubs and societies don't he also criticizes the eternal nature of and asians. to fill in the special feature of foundations is that the donor's wishes remain valid even after their death over the decades and centuries that this foundation is active in a charitable sense the foundation has tax advantages now you're stuck with this india synchro see and this strong tie to the donors wishes without giving society

a say at all and you can criticize that from the perspective of democratic theory too. the rich can save on taxes via their foundation and assert their own views of what is good for society they alone determine what to support what constitutes a good cause not society not the government. like i'd love demands more social control over foundations being able to make decisions about charity means power. and for lifting you leave behind the neurosis fear of business and you turn to other.