There were 104 billionaires in Britain in 2014. What could you buy with £1 billion? You could pick up 50 luxury mansions at £20 million each. A private jet? The Gulfstream G550 range of jets are priced at £28–£44 million each, so you could buy not just one but a fleet. You could spend over £100 million on a supersized luxury yacht, or have your own IMAX theatre for £1.18 million. Like Formula 1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, you could spend £30 million on your daughter’s wedding. And you could blow a few million on hiring a leading pop star to sing at your birthday party. Then there are small luxuries: the Bornrich website advertised a £437,000, jewel-studded iPad case, a £3.5 million diamond-encrusted dress and shoes for £312,000. Or you could treat yourself to the most expensive cocktail ever, at £35,000 a throw; indeed, you could have one a day for 78 years. Like US presidential candidate Mitt Romney, you could have a car elevator installed in your house for a mere $55,000. You could stay at the best hotels, perhaps the iconic Burj Al Arab in Dubai at £1,188–£2,716 per night. It sounds a ruinous price, but if you were a sterling billionaire you could afford to stay in one of its most expensive suites every night for nearly 1,000 years.

So the super-rich are faced with a problem: what can they buy that they can actually use? As H.L. Hunt, the Texan millionaire, once said, ‘You can only sleep in one bed at a time. You can only wear one suit at a time. You can only drive one automobile at a time. And you can only eat one meal at a time.’ How many times a year might they use a luxury yacht? Even if they decided just to buy, say, four luxury mansions, one yacht and one jet, a billionaire would still have over £700 million left to spend. What sense would there be in spending on things they would scarcely use, except to make a statement to the world of their disproportionate wealth? No wonder they recycle most of their money into financial investment that will store and add to their mostly unspendable income. They could go in for symbolic profits, through philanthropy; though less wasteful, this still means that the wealth they have extracted is put beyond democratic control.