Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the world’s wealthiest particular person, in keeping with the most recent Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with a internet value of $186 billion. 4 others even have fortunes over $100 billion. Right here, Bezos speaks at a convention in 2018.
Jim Watson/AFP through Getty Pictures
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Jim Watson/AFP through Getty Pictures
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the world’s wealthiest particular person, in keeping with the most recent Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with a internet value of $186 billion. 4 others even have fortunes over $100 billion. Right here, Bezos speaks at a convention in 2018.
Jim Watson/AFP through Getty Pictures
You in all probability suppose 2020 has turned out to be a fairly awful 12 months, what with the coronavirus pandemic, a worldwide recession and unceasing partisan warfare in Washington.
Then once more, you are not Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk.
Because of hovering inventory costs at Tesla, the corporate Musk based, the quirky South African-born entrepreneur has seen his private wealth soar to unimaginable heights of $157 billion.
In truth, Musk is one in every of solely 5 centibillionaires on this planet, or somebody with a private fortune exceeding $100 billion, in keeping with the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as of Dec. 8.
However even Musk just isn’t fairly as wealthy as Bezos. With a internet value of $186 billion, the Amazon founder is by far the wealthiest particular person on the planet. He is so wealthy that, like Musk, Bezos has his personal rocket firm.
In truth, Forbes journal as soon as referred to as Bezos the richest human being who has ever lived. His wealth is solely staggering, says Bloomberg wealth reporter Devon Pendleton, who helps compile the billionaire index.
“It’s greater than the GDP of most international locations on this planet. I imply, it’s bigger than the market cap of many corporations which can be on the S&P 500,” she says.
To place it additional into perspective, Bezos’ internet value is greater than the gross home product of Hungary or Ukraine, in keeping with information from the Worldwide Financial Fund.
Rounding out the group of 5 centibillionaires are Musk, Invoice Gates of Microsoft with a internet value of $129 billion, French luxurious items tycoon Bernard Arnault with $109 billion and Fb CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the poorest of the 5, with $107 billion.
The rising fortunes of the billionaires come within the midst of a pandemic that has thrown tens of millions out of labor, with many households nonetheless struggling to make ends meet.
However sectors similar to know-how have benefited as those that are higher off have streamed extra movies and shopped extra on-line whereas caught at residence.
Surging know-how shares have, in flip, helped prop up a inventory market that got here roaring again from the lows of March to the touch file highs.
And the surging shares have helped quite a lot of executives: Seven of the ten wealthiest individuals within the Bloomberg Billionaires Index are American know-how tycoons.
In truth, Musk and Zuckerberg every ascended to the $100 billion membership this 12 months after shares of Tesla and Fb rose 677% and 39%, respectively.
To Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Widespread Good on the Institute for Coverage Research, the rise of the centibillionaires is one other signal of the virtually unprecedented disparities of wealth in the USA at the moment.
“It isn’t something to have fun. It is type of a disturbing milestone,” he says. “However I believe it is a predictable end result of 4 many years of flat wages and steadily concentrating wealth and energy.”
It isn’t simply the centibillionaires who’re doing higher. A report from the Institute for Coverage Research confirmed that the collective wealth of the nation’s 651 billionaires has jumped by greater than $1 trillion to $4 trillion since roughly the beginning of the pandemic.
However few of those rich Individuals strategy the fortunes of the centibillionaires, whilst lots of the ultra-rich have additionally given away billions of {dollars}, together with Gates by means of the Invoice & Melinda Gates Basis.
Bezos, for instance, has such a staggering fortune that regardless of going by means of a messy divorce and giving up a 3rd of his Amazon shares to his ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, he nonetheless stays the world’s richest particular person.
Such is his fortune that his divorce might mint yet one more centibillionaire in the future. Scott was ranked because the 18th-richest particular person on this planet, with a internet value of $61 billion, greater than the GDP of Croatia or Uruguay.
