Every once in a while, I like to check in on the richest people in the world. Just to see how they’re doing. Are they eating properly? Are they taking their meds? (No, not those meds, Elon.)
Obviously, I’m checking in on their financial well-being. How much are they worth today and how does that make them feel? Online, we can now track their fortunes as they change by the minute. For some commoners like me, it's a cheap thrill (no pun intended).
So who are these humble billionaires? The top 10 richest people consist primarily of whom I’ll call The Techies – the Google, Amazon and Facebook founders. The next Top 10 are a little less interesting, whom I’ll call Old (and some new) Money, including the owners of mining companies, crypto currencies and major corporations like Walmart.
For the most part, other than Elon Musk (we’ll get to him), they’re fairly boring people. But if you go a bit further down, into the lowly 40s, you’ll find someone a little more relatable. Here you will find the humble founder of Nutella. That’s right, the man who invented the creamy hazelnut chocolate spread I like to apply to my bananas to make them more edible. Maybe I don’t know if he actually invented the product, but it says Nutella under his name and so I can only assume he holds the rights to this absolute kitchen-cupboard essential!
His name is Giovanni Ferraro and so, naturally, he also owns the rights to Ferraro chocolates, which my wife ranks #1 in chocolates.
Now perhaps it’s because he’s a simple chocolatier, but he seems (and looks) more human than the other billionaires. While I have no idea what he’s like in real life, he’s got to be more likable than Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder who limits bathroom breaks for his warehouse employees, or Elon Musk, who has become a full-time tweeting machine, now valued at nearly a trillion dollars.
A trillion dollars!! Musk’s immense wealth would be maddening if it wasn’t so disgusting. While he has done some innovative things in his life, namely creating a cool electric car, he has done very little as of late to double his fortune in the last year.
Why do I say this? Because he’s barely working! He tweets on average thirty times a day on his platform X, he played top bureaucrat in the Trump administration for four months straight, and he's allegedly addicted to Ketamine, a drug that can cause hallucinations and illusions of grandeur (I'm guessing).
His net worth does not compute, unless you understand that money makes money. For decades, the value of capital has outpaced the value of labour – i.e. those of us who don’t own private jets. What’s helped the rich to become even richer is the fact that capital – including gains in the stock market – is taxed at a lower rate than most working peoples’ wages. It’s a great time to be a trillionaire!
The wealthiest people in the world are typically talented, hard-working people, but at some point, it’s all about compound interest. Mr. Ferraro stepped down as CEO in 2017 at the age of 55, but he still makes enough money to be the 41st richest person in the world. In fact, he moved from 49th to 41st richest in one month just by sitting around, keeping his money invested.
Even the divorcees are killing it. Bill and Melinda Gates’ divorce was the most expensive in history at $67 billion. Next came Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos’ divorce at $38 billion. This is still a relatively small fraction of their wealth, and you’ll be happy to know, each of these men is still in the top 20.
Unfortunately, none of the top 10 richest people are women and only one woman – a daughter of Same Walton, interestingly labelled as the only “philanthropist” – is in the top 20. It’s still a man’s world when it comes to ridiculous amounts of wealth.
And it’s not like they’re sharing their wealth with the rest of the world. They may have their pet projects (to his credit, Bill Gates has more than any of them), but most wealthy people are not much different than when they were non-wealthy. For many, it’s ambition and greed that has made them who they are today, and they remain, well, greedy.
For Musk, it’s more than greed; he's acted with malice. While working for the Trump administration, he hurt the poorest in the world by gutting American foreign aid, cutting funding for vaccines, food assistance, and environmental programs.
This is capitalism run amuck. The rich controlling the levers of government spending. With so much money, they also feel entitled to political power.
Our nephew, who grew up living frugally in Ukraine but now lives in Canada, was often amused by the excesses of North American living. “Welcome to capitalism!” he would say, jokingly, at small things like me owning two fifty-inch TVs (hey, why not?). For him, life in Canada meant better economic prospects and an opportunity to own “capital”, even if that only means owning your own car and home, with a couple big TVs to boot.
But that’s it. That’s what most of us have, if that. We do not own our own private jets, nor should we.
Capitalism has created more wealth than ever before, pulling millions out of poverty worldwide, but that shouldn’t stop us from trying to make the world a little more equitable.
For myself, it could start by paying less attention to the richest men in the world, and a little more to the poorest. Sigh. I suppose Elon doesn’t really need any more attention.
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