Showing posts with label rich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rich. Show all posts

Friday, December 16, 2022

Dec 16 2022 - Who is the richest of us all?

 

There was a hint of delight inn CNN's coverage of the news that Elon Musk has lost his position as the richest person on the planet. As CNBC put it, Elon Musk was dethroned by Bernard Arnault and family.

Bernard Arnault, co-founder, chair, and CEO of LVMH, is the richest person and the richest man in the world with a net worth of $172.9 billion.  Think Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, Hennessey, Marc Jacobs, and Sephora. 

Behind Arnault is co-founder and CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk.

Other billionaires with some of the largest net worths include India's Gautam Adani, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Microsoft's Bill Gates.

Six of the top 10 billionaires made their fortunes in technology, with Arnault, Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett, Adani Group founder Gautam Adani, and Reliance Industry's Mukesh Ambani being the exceptions.

Meta's Mark Zuckerberg dropped off the top 10 list in February 2022.

Waren Buffet is #6 and it is noted that he has $1.1 billion in cash. Compare that to Bill Gates who has $55 billion in cash and Bernard Arnault who has $10.3 billion in cash.  

There are lots of charts to compare who has how much money.  Here's the world's richest billionaires in the last 10 years, followed by the world's richest countries. 

 
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Saturday, May 29, 2021

May 29 2021 - What Cost $1 Billion? Crazy Stuff

 

Do self-made billionaires buy different things than other rich people? I wonder that with all the tech billionaires.  It doesn't seem so when you go through the items that you would "never imagine" excessive amounts of money buy. The headlines (and there are lots of them) are consistently full of superlatives: 
  • 10 of the weirdest things
  • 16 craziest
  • 13 strange
  • 20 insane
  • bizarre spending
  • 15 outrageous
These adjectives seem "outrageous" at first, but then reading through the lists, it seems that the superlatives are accurate.  Such strange and amazing things people create and buy.

What caught my eye was the inclusion of Bill Gates in the list of outrageous things bought by the rich. What did Bill Gates buy?

"Bill Gates and Leonardo da Vinci have a lot in common: They're both math geniuses who also changed history. It's only fitting, then, that the Microsoft founder would be interested in the musings of the original Renaissance man. In 1994, Gates spent $30.8 million to own the Codex Leicester, a 72-page manuscript that da Vinci compiled in the early 16th century, complete with the master polymath's diagrams, writings, sketches and ideas for future inventions."

What was the cost:  $30 million in 1994

That seems modest in comparison to a $1.2 billion super yacht, a $1 billion house, and a $5 billion car collection - the three top items on every list.  In case you want to daydream (remember that's a relaxing activity), there are lists of things that cost 1 billion dollars.  For example:  A baseball team or the Solomon Islands (a country).  
This is a Finalist in the BP contest this month - the 1st and 2nd place winners have yet to be announced, so it could move up.  
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Friday, May 28, 2021

May 28 2021 - I forgot watches

 

I got to wondering if celebrity living involves more than cars, houses, and vacations.  

I remembered that key personal item which would likely be number four on the list - watches.  And there are lists of celebrities and their watches.  

I couldn't comprehend that Martin Luther King Jr. had a Rolex, likely gifted to him by Rolex.  This is likely as Rolex noted in an advertisement that he wore it when he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963.  That seems a sad moment for 20th Century advertising.  But it is telling of the 20th Century's elevation of wristwatches to celebrity status. 


Watches aren't like cars to the wealthy. Bill Gates skipped the expensive watch experience:  he supposedly wears a $70 Casio. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook wear affordable consumer watches.  So the assumption is that cars have a higher ranking of success than watches.

There is a long history for the clock/watch.  One article says that the first wristwatch was created in 1812 to fit the wrist of the Queen of Naples. They were worn by women.  Men used pocket watches until the 20th century.  They started to wear wristwatches to allow them to have their hands free - WWI was the defining event that spurred this development.

It is clear that cars are higher on the status list than watches. The most expensive watch ever sold at auction: Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime Ref. 6300A-010, for 31.19 million US dollars in Geneva on November 9, 2019 (by Christie's).  Wikipedia has a long entry on the most expensive cars ever sold.  Number 1 on the list is the 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO for US $48,405,000 at auction.  Another entry lists that model was sold for $70,00,000 privately. 

In the articles about what rich people buy, cars always shows up.  Watches don't always show up. Gold toilets, private islands, private planes, super yachts - they show up on the lists. Even fossils show up on the lists.  Watches are viewed as "another easy way rich people make their wealth known."
 
I went looking for car pictures - I remember we visited a car display on Yorkville one year, but I didn't find the pictures.  This picture comes from one of the Porsche Fun Run events a few years ago. 
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Thursday, May 27, 2021

May 27 2021 - This is the car Bill Gates drives

 

That subject line does spark our curiosity, without doubt.  

What is the draw of the famous and celebrities?  
~Will we find out unusual things about them?  Things we can't imagine?

What makes us curious about how they live their lives compared to our lives?  
~Will we be on the same wave-length for daily living, or find out how completely differently they live their lives?

What makes us think there is something extraordinary about their daily living?  
~Don't we figure there has to be given the attention fans and the media?

How do we decide what a normal life is?
~ Aren't we so immersed in the "everyday" that it takes a celebrity's normal day to show us the differences?

What are banal things that a person would avoid to do if they were a celebrity?
~ Grocery shopping, laundry, getting gas...are these the things that people consider boring and tedious and want freedom from?

These might be questions about celebrity living. I seem to think there are a few top things we are interested in:

1. Cars
What are the 15 incredible female celebrity cars?  What are the ten unique celebrity cars? Celebrities and their A-List cars. How many cars does {  },  {  }, and {  } have?

2. Houses
Which celebrity has the best house?  Most expensive celebrity homes. 10 celebrity homes on the market right now.

3. Vacations
The 13 most popular vacation destinations to spot celebrities. What resorts do celebrities stay at? Celebrities and their vacation homes.  


 
I found this one in the archives of the Photo of the Day - what a lot of great crackle and colour.
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Thursday, July 19, 2018

Richest Person Ever

The Globe and Mail reported this week that the richest man in the world has $150 billion.  He's Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon.  He's the richest person in history. This is more wealth than anyone since Forbes started its rich list in 1982.  Bill Gates had a net worth around $149 billion in 1999, and has since given away billions to charity so has 'lost ground'.

The Independent UK article says that the nine richest men in the world have more combined wealth than the poorest 4 billion people. 

In another article by author Tim Worstall in Forbes, he says that the average American today is 90 times richer than the average person in Central Africa.  And richer than the historical human being.  He proposes that outside addiction or mental health problems, there is no one in the U.S. today who suffers from the usual human description of poverty.  Real poverty is defined as $600 a year.  Brad Delong pointed out that historical living standards never fell very far below $600 for long, because if they do then they become dying standards.

Tim Worstall, the author, makes a poignant observation: "...we sure do have a lot of people still talking about poverty so what are they on about? The truth is they're not talking about poverty at all. They're talking about how some have more than others: inequality."

Which is where we started: wondering over the wealth of the richest person ever.