Friday, March 01, 2002
The Forbes list of billionaires was recently released, and as this article shows, Bill Gates took the top spot for the 8th year in a row. More interesting, at least to me, is that there are only 497 billionaires in the world, who account among them for 1.54 trillion USD.
Of those 497, 243 are Americans (or about half of the total). Furthermore, most of the top spots are held by Americans. Given that fact, most of that 1.54 trillion is probably in the hands of those 243 Americans. As a rough estimate, assume that Americans account for 2/3rds of that 1.54 trillion, or 1 trillion dollars. The total size of the US economy is about 10 trillion dollars (which you can find here). That means that 243 people in the United States account for 1/10th of the US gross domestic product.
Interesting footnote: 260 of the billionaires in the list inherited some or all of their money.
Of those 497, 243 are Americans (or about half of the total). Furthermore, most of the top spots are held by Americans. Given that fact, most of that 1.54 trillion is probably in the hands of those 243 Americans. As a rough estimate, assume that Americans account for 2/3rds of that 1.54 trillion, or 1 trillion dollars. The total size of the US economy is about 10 trillion dollars (which you can find here). That means that 243 people in the United States account for 1/10th of the US gross domestic product.
Interesting footnote: 260 of the billionaires in the list inherited some or all of their money.
