Doing the numbers on the super rich
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Doing the numbers on the super rich
The collective wealth of the world’s 80 richest people matches the wealth of the poorest 50 percent of the population. That’s according to new data from Oxfam, which says the super-rich are getting much richer. In 2010, it took 388 of the richest people to match half of the global wealth.
It is a powerful comparison but can also be abstract. Indeed. Oxfam has been criticized for the way it calculates global wealth. What does all this money actually look like? We pulled the top names off Forbes’ billionaire list to see if we could come up with equivalents that could help you picture their net worth.
The Walton Family: $160.2 billion
The heirs to Wal-Mart founders Sam and Bud Walton are four of the 15 richest people in the world, with more than $160 billion split between Christy, Rob, Alice and Jim Walton. That’s as much as Apple’s notoriously large cash reserves.
Bill Gates: $80.6 billion
The Microsoft founder has donated much of his personal wealth via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He could still buy Uber twice, but just barely.
Warren Buffet and Carlos Slim: About $73 billion apiece
They’re neck-and-neck for second place on Forbe’s rich list. If they joined forces, they could level out the hit Russia’s economy took this fall from sanctions and dropping oil prices.
Another fun fact: Buffet earned $13.5 billion in 2013 alone, meaning it took him just two minutes to earn $51,900, the median household income in the U.S. This tool from Penny Stocks Lab calculates how long it took Buffet to earn your wage:
Amancio Ortega: $61.4 billion
The fashion tycoon hails from Spain, but his net worth is equal to the GDP of the Dominican Republic.
Koch Brothers: $41 billion each
Charles and David Koch are known for running Koch Inudstries, one of the largest privately held companies in the world, as well as for their political activism and charitable donations. With their personal fortunes, the brothers could both cover the costs of every major national election from 1998 to 2014 and still have several billion left over.
Larry Elison: $54.5 billion
His daughter is producing Oscar-winning movies, but with his personal wealth, Larry Elison could buy every team in the NFL plus half of the teams in the MLB.
Liliane Bettencourt: $38 billion
If the 92-year-old L’Oreal heiress wanted, she could fund the European Space Agency for about a decade, or NASA for two years.
Michael Bloomberg: $35 billion
The media mogul was mayor of New York, but his personal fortune almost exactly matches the Gross Metropolitan Product of Tuscon, Arizona.
And that’s just the start: there are 67 more billionaires in that top 80, adding up to a net worth of $1.9 trillion.
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