I stumbled across this on the Face Place. I'm not smart enough to understand what, if anything, it means, but found it interesting.
I stumbled across this on the Face Place. I'm not smart enough to understand what, if anything, it means, but found it interesting.
Interesting. If that's correct, 7 out the current top 10 are Americans with a combined net worth of $783,400,000,000. If we were to somehow liquidate all their assets and distribute them evenly, we'd all get $2373.
If you just distributed it to households below the poverty level, they'd get $20,615.
Nice video.
Whenever folks start the "wealth inequality" stuff, I often wonder where families like Bezos, Gates, Ellison, Buffet, Zuckerburg, etc., were in 1975? For that matter, what about the families of Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Tiger Woods, Christian Renaldo, Lionel Messi, etc., were in 1975.
I thought it was common knowledge that Gates came from a relatively wealthy banker/lawyer family. Not billionaire rich but conservatively stated as "upper middle class". In fact most of the Silicon Valley "dropped out of college to found a garage startup" have similar backgrounds. It's a laudable accomplishment, yes. But it's a lot easier to do when you don't have to worry about being homeless if your venture fails.
None of the American billionaires have what could be called state-level wealth like e.g. Saudi oil or Russian oligarch money. I didn't watch the video but they may have covered the part where Gates could fund the city of Seattle (or maybe it was the state of Washington) for something like a year.
You're saying if Bill Gates hadn't created Microsoft, had his family just skipped a few lattes every now and then, while he wouldn't have ended up at number one on the list, but maybe they'd be in the Top 10?
There is a pretty substantial distance between "upper middle class" and billionaire.Not billionaire rich but conservatively stated as "upper middle class".
The point is, that Top 10 list changes pretty regularly. Heck, the whole list changes all the time. That's what capitalism gives you, the opportunity to move up, and down, the list. Speaking of which, I didn't see a Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, or Vanderbilt on that Top 10 list. In 40 years, there probably won't be a Bezos, Zuckerberg, Gates, or Buffett on that Top 10 list either. Somebody else will come up with some great idea and make a bunch of money on his/her great idea.
"Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations" is the old saying, and is fairly true.
The funny thing about wealth is that if you tried to seize it, it would pretty much all vanish immediately- even with the willing assistance of the people involved. None of those guys is sitting on a big bin filled with notes and coins like Scrooge McDuck.
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