The Top 50 "Elders" in the Tribe of the Very Very Rich

by Gaius Publius

I've been writing about the "billionaire class" lately, trying to characterize them, give them names, faces and wealth numbers. For example, we know that the Top 20% owns 85% of American wealth, as of 2009. We also know that income distribution, which isn't quite the same as wealth distribution, is also very skewed. For example, this is from 2011 data (slightly rounded):

• Average income of Top 0.01% — $23,800,000 per year
  
• Average income of the rest of the Top 0.1% — $2,800,000
• Average income of the rest of the Top 1% — $1,020,000
• Average income of the rest of the Top 10% — $161,000

We also know that there are roughly 15,000 American tax filers in that top 0.01%, of whom about 500 are already billionaires. (For the difference between wealth inequality and income inequality, check out this chart; source here.) Extend the geography — look at billionaire wealth everywhere — and you're looking at the people who rule the world.

Forbes Magazine keeps track of these people, for reasons that you can easily imagine. (If you can't, here's a clue. Donald Trump once wrote: "Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score." Greed justified.) This page, "The World's Billionaires," is updated daily, as near as I can tell. I took the list down to 1558th name (you have to keep moving to the bottom and waiting for the next chunk to load), which was at the time I looked the last person owning $1 billion or more.

But here's the first 50. The columns show Picture, Rank, Name, Estimated net worth, Age, Source of wealth (approximate), Nationality (nominal). Browse the list; I'll have a brief comment after.

The World's Top 50 Billionaires

	#1	Bill Gates	$80.6 B		59	Microsoft	United States
	#2	Warren Buffett	$73.1 B		84	Berkshire Hathaway	United States
	#3	Carlos Slim Helu & family	$70.4 B		74	telecom	Mexico
	#4	Amancio Ortega	$59.3 B		78	retail	Spain
	#5	Larry Ellison	$51.3 B		70	Oracle	United States
	#6	Charles Koch	$42.2 B		79	diversified	United States
	#6	David Koch	$42.2 B		74	diversified	United States
	#8	Christy Walton & family	$40.2 B		59	Wal-Mart	United States
	#9	Jim Walton	$39.3 B		66	Wal-Mart	United States
	#10	Alice Walton	$37.8 B		65	Wal-Mart	United States
	#11	S. Robson Walton	$37.8 B		70	Wal-Mart	United States
	#12	Liliane Bettencourt & family	$37.6 B		92	L'Oreal	France
	#13	Michael Bloomberg	$35.3 B		72	Bloomberg LP	United States
	#14	Mark Zuckerberg	$33.6 B		30	Facebook	United States
	#15	Bernard Arnault & family	$32.5 B		65	LVMH	France
	#16	Stefan Persson	$32.1 B		67	H&M	Sweden
	#17	Li Ka-shing	$29.3 B		86	diversified	Hong Kong
	#18	Larry Page	$29.1 B		41	Google	United States
	#19	Sergey Brin	$28.7 B		41	Google	United States
	#20	Sheldon Adelson	$28.5 B		81	casinos	United States
	#21	Jeff Bezos	$28.4 B		50	Amazon.com	United States
	#22	Carl Icahn	$24.9 B		78	investments	United States
	#23	David Thomson & family	$24.8 B		57	media	Canada
	#24	Michele Ferrero & family	$24.3 B		89	chocolates	Italy
	#25	George Soros	$24 B		84	hedge funds	United States
	#26	Forrest Mars Jr	$23.4 B		83	candy	United States
	#26	Jacqueline Mars	$23.4 B		75	candy	United States
	#28	John Mars	$23.4 B		78	candy	United States
	#29	Jack Ma	$22.9 B		50	e-commerce	China
	#30	Jorge Paulo Lemann	$22.9 B		75	beer	Brazil
	#31	Phil Knight	$22.6 B		76	Nike	United States
	#32	Steve Ballmer	$22.5 B		58	Microsoft	United States
	#33	Lee Shau Kee	$22.4 B		86	diversified	Hong Kong
	#34	Michael Dell	$21.9 B		49	Dell	United States
	#35	Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud	$21.5 B		59	investments	Saudi Arabia
	#36	Mukesh Ambani	$21.4 B		57	petrochemicals, oil & gas	India
	#37	Leonardo Del Vecchio	$19.7 B		79	eyeglasses	Italy
	#38	Aliko Dangote	$18.3 B		57	cement, sugar, flour	Nigeria
	#39	Len Blavatnik	$18.3 B		57	diversified	United States
	#40	Dilip Shanghvi	$18.3 B		59	pharmaceuticals	India
	#41	Charles Ergen	$18.3 B		61	Dish Network	United States
	#42	Tadashi Yanai & family	$17.8 B		65	retail	Japan
	#43	Laurene Powell Jobs & family	$17.2 B		51	Apple, Disney	United States
	#44	Paul Allen	$17.1 B		61	Microsoft, investments	United States
	#45	Michael Otto & family	$16.9 B		71	retail, real estate	Germany
	#46	Anne Cox Chambers	$16.7 B		95	media	United States
	#47	Theo Albrecht Jr & family	$16.5 B		63	Aldi, Trader Joe's	Germany
	#48	Robin Li	$16.3 B		46	internet search	China
	#49	Alisher Usmanov	$16.1 B		61	steel & mining, telecom, investments	Russia
	#50	Susanne Klatten	$16.1 B		52	BMW, pharmaceuticals	Germany

The Kochs' net worth number is certainly low, but notice that combined they're richer than Bill Gates — and they are combined; they jointly own more than 80% of Koch Industries. The Walton family ("Wal-Mart"), combined, is the wealthiest family in the world — and the key architects of the "no death tax" propaganda and push, plus all the damage Wal-Mart does. Jeff Bezos is the reason that Amazon is destroying the power of the book publishing industry everywhere in the world. Jorge Paolo Lemann is the richest person in Brazil — he's about "one half of one Koch brother," as I wrote elsewhere — and one of the forces behind the Burger King tax inversion scheme, something he's dabbled in lately.

Combined, there's no end to the worldly damage these men and women are responsible for. Yet if you asked them, they're having a wonderful time. Their consciences are clear as a bell and clean as a whistle.

If you really want to play, click to the Forbes source page and browse the whole list using the sort and filter tools. The less-than-one-billion, less-rich mark starts around #1550.

Then consider that almost all of these people, the hyper-wealthy: (a) do know each other; (b) are indeed a "tribe" as Richard Eskow says, with their own culture, values and mythology; (c) are themselves the source of almost all that's instrumentally wrong in the world — from money-captured governments (all of them), to "education reform" (Gates, Murdoch, others), to bloody global wars (military and "security" company owners and investors), to our broken and obesity-causing food supply (owners of Monsanto, ADM, McDonalds, Burger King, Wonder Bread), to ... well, name it.

They will certainly be the reason that atmospheric CO2 will not be constrained to 600 ppm before 2100 without "extraordinary" effort. (We're at 400 ppm today, we're increasing it at a rate of 2 ppm per year, and the rate is accelerating.) Now look at their ages. Most will be dead by the time the rest of us start to suffer and die in great numbers, and the ice starts to melt for good.

But hey, as Mr. Trump might say, they ran up a helluva score before they left. And they're having a wonderful time.

GP