Swammerdami
Squadron Leader
I perused the Forbes List of Billionaires for 2022; and will report on some names that caught my eye.
In 1901 Andrew Carnegie scoffed when J.P. Morgan showed up at his home saying a consortium wanted to buy the Carnegie Steel Company. Andrew was only 65 years old and not ready to retire. But he changed his mind when he looked at the check Morgan presented to him for almost half a billion dollars. Becoming the very richest man in all the world (excepting autocrats like the Czar of Russia) probably fulfilled his adolescent dream!
Allowing for inflation, that $400+ million represents less than $8 billion in today's money, and would be barely enough to put Carnegie in today's Top 300.
Missing from the 2022 list is the surname Carnegie of course but there are also ZERO Rockefellers, zero Vanderbilts, nor any of the fabled wealthy families of yore. There was only one Rothschild, but that was Jeff Rothschild co-founder of Facebook who descends from a completely different family than the famous banking family that Controls the World™. No Hiltons, but Paris Hilton's old buddy Kim Kardashian is a billionaire as is her beau Kanye West.
Only one of the billionaires is a teenager; that would be Kevin David Lehmann who inherited from his father. (Germany's tax laws may be different from the U.S.'s as Kevin's father is still living.)
There are two self-made men in their 30's worth $50 billion or more. These are Zuckerberg, and Zhang Yiming who founded Tiktok. But Sam Bankman-Fried, a crypto-currency king aged only 30 has $24 billion so may be poised to overtake the other young multi-billionaires.
Fortunes get split up when the founder leaves two or more children, of course. The Waltons have to make due with $66 billion each but would blow Elon Musk out of the #1 slot if they pooled their wealth. Similarly Charles Koch would be in the #5 slot if his wealth were combined with that of his brother's widow Julia. (Julia met David on a blind date about which she told a friend "I'm glad I met that man because now I know I never want to go out with him." Evidently something changed her mind.)
Eight of the world's ten richest men are Americans, all except Warren Buffett being tech kings. The two non-Americans are France's Bernard Arnault (LVMH) and Mukesh Ambani.
Mukesh Ambani (#10) is the richest Indian with $91 billion, but barely nosed out his countryman Gautam Adani (#11, $90 billion). Ambani has a younger brother Anil who was MUCH richer than Mukesh for a while but lost a supposed $140 billion in the biggest riches-to-rags story ever. He was a flamboyant playboy while Mukesh is more conservative. But "conservative" might not be the word that comes to mind when you hear about Mukesh's $2.6 billion home, Antilia (building)
Collectively the billionaires were worth over $13 trillion in 2021, but several rich Russians have suffered recently and the billionaires' club is worth just $12.7 trillion now. The median billionaire has about $2.3 billion while the mean is about $4.8 billion. Stratification continues even at this level: the richest 10% of the billionaires have 50% of total billionaire wealth.
Bezos' ex-wife MacKenzie Scott is at #30 with $44 billion; that's only enough to make her 4th-richest woman. (Ahead of her are Françoise Bettencourt Meyers of L'Oréal, Sam Walton's daughter Alice, and afore-mentioned Julia Koch. Bloomberg shows Françoise Bettencourt as worth $95 billion, but Forbes thinks she's making do with just $75 billion.)
Forbes shows 27 billionaires in Thailand but omits His Majesty, whose personal wealth is surely in 11 digits. Vladimir Putin has been called "the richest man in the world" but is also missing from Forbes' list.
For me the most interesting billionaire was a man I'd never heard of: Joshua Kushner, a "venture capitalist" (and son of a billionaire) worth $2 billion (though missing from Forbes' 2021 list). Kushner's first company collapsed under allegations of fraud and piracy; and his sweetheart Covid contract from his brother Jared, Trump's Czar of the Pandemic, fell through when The Atlantic did an expose. Despite these setbacks he somehow clawed his way to $2 billion. Wikipedia gives an idea of his money-making genius:
Are billionaires rich enough yet?
In 1901 Andrew Carnegie scoffed when J.P. Morgan showed up at his home saying a consortium wanted to buy the Carnegie Steel Company. Andrew was only 65 years old and not ready to retire. But he changed his mind when he looked at the check Morgan presented to him for almost half a billion dollars. Becoming the very richest man in all the world (excepting autocrats like the Czar of Russia) probably fulfilled his adolescent dream!
Allowing for inflation, that $400+ million represents less than $8 billion in today's money, and would be barely enough to put Carnegie in today's Top 300.
Missing from the 2022 list is the surname Carnegie of course but there are also ZERO Rockefellers, zero Vanderbilts, nor any of the fabled wealthy families of yore. There was only one Rothschild, but that was Jeff Rothschild co-founder of Facebook who descends from a completely different family than the famous banking family that Controls the World™. No Hiltons, but Paris Hilton's old buddy Kim Kardashian is a billionaire as is her beau Kanye West.
Only one of the billionaires is a teenager; that would be Kevin David Lehmann who inherited from his father. (Germany's tax laws may be different from the U.S.'s as Kevin's father is still living.)
There are two self-made men in their 30's worth $50 billion or more. These are Zuckerberg, and Zhang Yiming who founded Tiktok. But Sam Bankman-Fried, a crypto-currency king aged only 30 has $24 billion so may be poised to overtake the other young multi-billionaires.
Fortunes get split up when the founder leaves two or more children, of course. The Waltons have to make due with $66 billion each but would blow Elon Musk out of the #1 slot if they pooled their wealth. Similarly Charles Koch would be in the #5 slot if his wealth were combined with that of his brother's widow Julia. (Julia met David on a blind date about which she told a friend "I'm glad I met that man because now I know I never want to go out with him." Evidently something changed her mind.)
Eight of the world's ten richest men are Americans, all except Warren Buffett being tech kings. The two non-Americans are France's Bernard Arnault (LVMH) and Mukesh Ambani.
Mukesh Ambani (#10) is the richest Indian with $91 billion, but barely nosed out his countryman Gautam Adani (#11, $90 billion). Ambani has a younger brother Anil who was MUCH richer than Mukesh for a while but lost a supposed $140 billion in the biggest riches-to-rags story ever. He was a flamboyant playboy while Mukesh is more conservative. But "conservative" might not be the word that comes to mind when you hear about Mukesh's $2.6 billion home, Antilia (building)
Antilia is a private residence in the billionaires row of Mumbai, India, named after the mythical island Antillia. It is the residence of the Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani and his family, who moved into it in 2012. The skyscraper-mansion is one of the world's largest and most elaborate private homes, at 27 stories, 173 metres (568 ft) tall, over 37,000 square metres (400,000 sq ft), and with amenities such as three helipads, a 168-car garage, a ballroom, 9 high speed elevators, a 50-seat theatre, terrace gardens, swimming pool, spa, health centre, a temple, and a snow room that spits out snowflakes from the walls.
Collectively the billionaires were worth over $13 trillion in 2021, but several rich Russians have suffered recently and the billionaires' club is worth just $12.7 trillion now. The median billionaire has about $2.3 billion while the mean is about $4.8 billion. Stratification continues even at this level: the richest 10% of the billionaires have 50% of total billionaire wealth.
Bezos' ex-wife MacKenzie Scott is at #30 with $44 billion; that's only enough to make her 4th-richest woman. (Ahead of her are Françoise Bettencourt Meyers of L'Oréal, Sam Walton's daughter Alice, and afore-mentioned Julia Koch. Bloomberg shows Françoise Bettencourt as worth $95 billion, but Forbes thinks she's making do with just $75 billion.)
Forbes shows 27 billionaires in Thailand but omits His Majesty, whose personal wealth is surely in 11 digits. Vladimir Putin has been called "the richest man in the world" but is also missing from Forbes' list.
For me the most interesting billionaire was a man I'd never heard of: Joshua Kushner, a "venture capitalist" (and son of a billionaire) worth $2 billion (though missing from Forbes' 2021 list). Kushner's first company collapsed under allegations of fraud and piracy; and his sweetheart Covid contract from his brother Jared, Trump's Czar of the Pandemic, fell through when The Atlantic did an expose. Despite these setbacks he somehow clawed his way to $2 billion. Wikipedia gives an idea of his money-making genius:
Kushner's JK2 [Westminster Management, owned 50% each by Josh and his brother Jared] was also featured in an episode of Netflix's Dirty Money series titled "Slumlord Millionaire." The episode was based on an exposé from ProPublica accusing the company of abusing tenants rights, leaving homes in disrepair, humiliating late-paying renters and suing mostly poor immigrants to garnish their wages calling them a "tier-1 predator".
During the COVID-19 pandemic, JK2 filed a significant number of lawsuits against tenants for debt collection and eviction, despite an eviction moratorium being in place.
Are billionaires rich enough yet?