I think there has actually been something of a cultural shift on this topic in the last ±decade or so. The word billionaire used to have more baked-in positive cultural energy, something laudable in-itself.
Nowadays though it feels like the label has a negative tinge; not quite a bad thing, but not something that feels like a universal benefit either. This change probably tracks with the rise of populism.
It's weird to me as a German because growing up in the 90s exorbitant wealth was not seen as inherently good, if i had to guesstimate the general feeling - it was generally seen as inherently a-little-bit-worse-than-neutral (the saying "Reichtum stinkt" - meaning rich people stink, was quite common). However, and probably due to way too much cultural influence of US media (and tech) this general feeling changed a little bit more to the positive side (00s/2010s). But now that everything goes to shit, the feeling shifts again to more negative.
At least that's my nonscientific interpretation of the historical feeling in Germany since the 90s. But would love studies about it, in general.
>as a German because growing up in the 90s exorbitant wealth was not seen as inherently good
That perception didn't prevent anyone in Germany from amassing obscene wealth, often due to their political connections during and post WW2. They're just very discreet and hidden and don't flaunt it publicly.
What's needed to prevent wealth inequality is laws and enforcement, not relying on the perception of the masses since billionaires don't care what people think about them.
From 1993 to 2000 (with some attempts of later revivals) there was a TV game show in some German commercial television channel (RTL) named "Die 100.000 Mark Show" ("The 100.000 Mark Show" - (100.000 mark is a little bit more than 50.000 Euro using the conversion factor of 1.95583)) where the winners could win 100.00 mark.
This was the first game show in German TV that offered such a huge amount of prize money and was initially criticized for this.
In 1999, in Germany "Wer wird Millionär" (basically the German version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?") - initially with 1 million mark (2002 it was even changed to EUR 1 million) - started.
I can also remember that at this time the show was criticized for this large possible prize money, but got more accepted over time, in particular because the host of this show (Günther Jauch) was very popular (he was basically the reason why "Wer wird Millionär" was very popular in Germany, but many other similar quiz shows were not).
In 2000 another TV channel (Sat.1) made a heavily marketed experiment with "Die Chance deines Lebens" (The chance of your life)
where you could even win up to 10 million mark. While this was again criticized by the media, the show was a failure because it was too slow-paced, and nobody won the 10.000.000 mark in any of the broadcasted episodes (which would have caused media headlines and thus popularity).
On the other hand, from 2006 to 2015, there was a game show "Schlag den Raab" (Beat the Raab)
where you had to win against the (at that time very popular, but incredibly narcissistic) TV host Stefan Raab in a lot of games. There were also variants of this TV show in other countries, but only in the German version the winning sum was very large (at least EUR 500.000, with the money going into a jackpot if Stefan Raab won in the episode, so (see Wikipedia article) winning sums up to EUR 3.5 million were achieved).
Basically the fact that the winning sum was very large (in opposite to the versions in other countries), and the fact that this winning sum was "fair" because winning against the (very narcissistic) TV host Stefan Raab is a huge achievement (this was marketed very aggressively by Stefan Raab himself) made this show highly popular in Germany, but to my knowledge the versions in other countries were not popular. Relevant is here that because Stefan Raab was so controversial and narcissistic, most people who watched the show really wanted the candidate to win (and get the "deserved" money) - if only for the fact that this made Stefan Raab look stupid.
> Nowadays though it feels like the label has a negative tinge; not quite a bad thing, but not something that feels like a universal benefit either. This change probably tracks with the rise of populism.
I feel like it is specifically income disparity and like most things, the ever presence of information. When you're working as hard as you can just to scrape by paycheck to paycheck, you're often told it's just because everyone is hurting. That message is undercut however, by the ever presence of people who have more than they know what to do with amassing more and more without even trying.
Populism is rising precisely because the billionaires are fracking society any way they can to squeeze out as much cash as possible and move it offshore.
Nowadays though it feels like the label has a negative tinge; not quite a bad thing, but not something that feels like a universal benefit either. This change probably tracks with the rise of populism.