Generation Deluxe

Book excerpt: Iris Nowell identifies a worldwide class of multi-millionaires and billionaires emerging from the early 1990s - Generation Deluxe. Dot-com survivors, self-made entrepreneurs, celebrities, athletes, financiers, real estate moguls, media titans - their wealth starts at $100 million and ascends to the stratospheric affluence of Bill Gates, at $46 billion. The super-rich will spend $50 and $100 million just to build a house, and similar amounts for private jets, boats, and fleets of vehicles. The small change goes for a $25,000 wedding cake, a $1.2 millon watch, a $33,000 night in a Geneva hotel. Iris Nowell's exploration of consumerism reveals that lavish living imposes huge costs on the environment and endangers many forms of life. To clean up the damage, increasing numbers of the new super-rich, along with old-money inheritors, are redirecting their philanthropy to fund environmental protections - and, as never before, are helping to alleviate the global problems of poverty, hunger, illiteracy, and disease.