Thursday, March 8, 2007

The Power Rankings that matter

From Forbes.com, here are the 20 richest people in the world. You can click on any of the people to get to the Forbes piece.

To put things in perpective, imagine having a net worth of $100,000. You'd probably be happy with that, right? Well, Bill Gates has 56,000 times that much money.

Further perspective. If Bill Gates lost $250,000 on a hand of blackjack at the casino, that would be like you losing $5. A million, to Bill Gates, is like $20 to the man worth $100,000.

F***. That's rich.

Rank Name Citizenship Age Net Worth ($bil)
1 William Gates III United States 51 56.0
2 Warren Buffett United States 76 52.0
3 Carlos Slim Helu Mexico 67 49.0
4 Ingvar Kamprad & family Sweden 80 33.0
5 Lakshmi Mittal India 56 32.0
6 Sheldon Adelson United States 73 26.5
7 Bernard Arnault France 58 26.0
8 Amancio Ortega Spain 71 24.0
9 Li Ka-shing Hong Kong 78 23.0
10 David Thomson & family Canada 49 22.0
11 Lawrence Ellison United States 62 21.5
12 Liliane Bettencourt France 84 20.7
13 Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud Saudi Arabia 50 20.3
14 Mukesh Ambani India 49 20.1
15 Karl Albrecht Germany 87 20.0
16 Roman Abramovich Russia 40 18.7
17 Stefan Persson Sweden 59 18.4
18 Anil Ambani India 47 18.2
19 Paul Allen United States 54 18.0
20 Theo Albrecht Germany 84 17.5

3 comments:

Dave said...

I would love to pull a Robin Hood and just take all of these guys' money and give it to people who actually need it. Rich people piss me off.

Anonymous said...

Not to depress you even further, but your math is off a bit. Bill is actually woth 560,000 times as much as a guy worth $100K.

Anonymous said...

Come on, now, dplunk ... there's nothign wrong with being rich. Most people are working to be rich, too.

A guy like Gates literally reinvented the way the world works. He deserves his wealth.

Plus, at least in the States, rich people pay the bulks of the taxes and fund the bulk of the good in the world. Most are also heavily involved in charitable endeavors. Without individual wealth, there'd be nobody to pay for much needed programs for those less fortunate.

There are rich d-bags. But rich people are generally a good thing for everybody else.

And I'm not rich ...