NEW YORK -- Microsoft mogul Bill Gates has cracked the $50 billion barrier, making him once again the richest man in the world, according to Forbes magazine's ranking of the world's billionaires.
For the fourth year in a row, Gates, founder of software superpower Microsoft(MSFT), topped the list as the world's richest man, and also as the world's top among working rich, according to both Forbes' and Forbes Global's 6 July editions.
[a4a: That's sort of an amusing term: "working rich", given that nobody working by their own hand gets rich; you only become rich when you have people working for you!]
As of last summer, Gates had doubled his net worth in 12 months to US$36.4 billion. He added $15 billion in the last 12 months for a total of $51 billion. To paraphrase Liberace: You don't like Windows? He's crying all the way to the bank.
Also weeping copiously on their vaultward trek: Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, who ranks fourth on the list with $21 billion, and Gates lieutenant Steve Ballmer, who ranked 16th with $10.7 billion.
Number Two on the list of the world's top billionaires, excluding royalty and heads of state, is the Walton family, heirs of Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart Stores (WMT). The family's net worth is about $48 billion.
Ranking third is Berkshire Hathaway (BRK/A) chairman Warren Buffet, worth $33 billion.
Fifth is the Oeri, Hoffman & Sacher family of Switzerland, worth $17.8 billion.
In a separate ranking, Forbes estimated the net worth of the world's potentates and dictators.
Topping the list is the sultan of Brunei ($36 billion: oil, gas), followed by Saudi Arabia's King Fahd ($25 billion: oil, investments, property), Iraq's Saddam Hussein ($5 billion: oil), Syria's Hafez Al-Assad ($2 billion: oil, agriculture), Queen Elizabeth II ($420 million: investments, property; or $16 billion if you include the value of royal palaces, jewels, and art collections held by the Windsor family in trust for the nation), and Cuba's Fidel Castro ($100 million: tourism, nickel mining, sugar).
The full billionaires list:
Think about this, folks -- the above people are absolutely ensconced in the ruling class of our society; they are at the very top of the capitalist food chain; they are the reason the rest of us work day in and day out.
Being so enormously wealthy is actually more desirable than being some stupid political wannabe, because you enjoy all the perqs of power anyway, and yet have none of the responsibility that goes with such power! Any one of these economic titans could spend a fraction of their cash and put all of Congress on their payroll -- and this is just fraction of the hyper-wealthy; it doesn't consider corporations, either.
This kind of imbalance (that is, when a handful of people possess $376.7 billion) is and can only be maintained through enormous misery among the vast majority of the population, and an increasingly more totalitarian system of oppression around the world. Yessir, happy days are here again...NOT!