Wiekes weetjes: 10 bizarre feitjes over de rijkste mensen ter wereld
The rich are getting richer in the world, that has become clear in recent years. Also since corona, that gap has become significantly larger: Jeff Bezos, for example, still did very well with Amazon (better than ever, I think). I would honestly love to swap places with him for a week, because I am so curious about what life looks like for an unimaginably rich person.
How much money the richest in the world have is really unimaginable. I seriously wonder if they even have any idea what the value of money is. By the way, it's a fun item: celebs who have to guess how expensive standard groceries are on late night shows (James Corden has done this, for example). Well, and then you quickly see: they really have no idea how ‘normal people’ live.
That's why I thought it was high time to dive a little deeper into it and voilà: ten bizarre facts about the richest of the richest.
1. In 2020, 493 billionaires were added
An unfortunate consequence of the pandemic: the poor became poorer and the rich became really much, much richer. No less than 493 people were added to the Forbes Billionaires List.
2. Most billionaires come from China and Hong Kong
Of those newcomers, 210 are from China and Hong Kong. America comes in second place with 98 billionaires.
3. The rich in the Netherlands are richer than ever
In 2021, our country had 45 billionaires, which is a record for the Netherlands. The richest has been Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken for years with 13.5 billion, the number two has 5.7 billion (Remon Vos). Quite a difference.
4. The top ten richest billionaires in the world are worth a total of 1.15 trillion
How much is a trillion? Let me summarize it for you:
Billion (English: billion) — 1,000,000,000
Trillion (English: trillion) — 1,000,000,000,000
Quadrillion (English: quadrillion) — 1,000,000,000,000,000
Quintillion (English: quintillion) — 1,000,000,000,000,000,000
So a trillion is really bizarre. Sometimes I really think: just give a million to me. They wouldn't even notice.
5. Only four people are worth more than a hundred billion (in dollars)
And those are Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Bernard Arnault. I didn't know the last one, so I looked him up: he is the head of the LVMH empire, the parent company of brands like Louis Vuitton and Sephora.
6. The majority of billionaires are self-made
I hope that in this overview from Forbes, Kylie Jenner is not included (because she called herself a self-made woman; forgetting that all her companies were fully funded by her family), but in 2021, no less than 72 percent of billionaires were self-made. That is really a huge increase, as it was only 49 percent in 2001.
7. The richest woman in the world is worth 75.3 billion according to Forbes (March 2022)
That honor goes to the French Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, the granddaughter of the founder of L’Oréal. Well, you have to rely on your family.
8. There are over 100 billionaires under 40 years old
106, to be exact. And it is precisely that group that has caused the percentage of self-made billionaires to rise significantly; two-thirds of this group have made it all on their own. Nice.
9. The youngest billionaire is eighteen years old
My goodness, you could become an adult and be the richest teenager in the world. Kevin David Lehmann, a German boy, knows all about it. At that age, he received his share in his father's company: the drugstore DM-Drogerie.
10. They are really very rich
Oxfam Novib came up with a calculation: if you had saved 10,000 every day since the first pyramids were built in ancient Egypt, you would now only have a fifth of the average of the five richest on earth. Pfff… There goes my motivation to really start saving now.
