Tagged by how they made their money - first mover advantage, hard work and insight, theft, unfair practices, cheating, destroying the environment, war profiteering, rackets, bribery, political corruption, pure luck, ovarian lottery, etc, would be a much more interesting read.
Whenever I see these lists I always find it interesting to think about the fact that the only reason a Walton isn't in #1 is because Sam is long gone, and his value was split between his children, all 4 of whom have $30+ billion. Kinda crazy.
It's interesting that the only 3 self-made billionaires under 40 are in tech - Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Mark Zuckerberg. The fact that 12 of the top 100 are Russian is rather striking to me as well.
Surprised to see Sergei Brin so low on the list, considering his website is the number 1 IN THE ENTIRE PLANET.<p>Then I remembered, the old saying: "You gotta diversify yo bonds, nigga." [1] - The top spots have mining operations, tech, banking, etc.<p>[1] - <a href="http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/tw2ltp/chappelle-s-show-wu-tang-financial" rel="nofollow">http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/tw2ltp/chappelle-s-...</a>
At risk of sounding like a communist...<p>When you consider just how much money $10+ billion is, from an ethical standpoint, does any individual deserve to have that much money/power?<p>I can't help but think that it is really a grotesque thing for a single person to have more money than the GDP of a country like Cuba. There's just no way one person has contributed to society enough to justify that kind of wealth.
Wow. The infographic is cool but some of the copy is incredibly snarky. On Mark Zuckerburg under 'intelligence' "Sister Randi likes to pretend she was a television production assistant." That said I think it's more interesting to see who the next 900 richest people are than the top 100. maybe just me though.
Interesting that 71 of the 100 are self made. Of the 29 that inherited their wealth, 12 are female, however of the 71 that are self made, none are female. Very surprising that the disparity is that huge. Also surprising that only one of the 100 is black. We have a long way to go!
Someone have checked the "map" part? It shows a world map with a slider of the last year net worth changes. Something happens at April 18 and August 2.
Big mistake:<p>They drew eyebrows on Larry Ellison.<p>(Reference image: <a href="http://allthingsd.com/files/2012/05/larry_ellison1.png" rel="nofollow">http://allthingsd.com/files/2012/05/larry_ellison1.png</a>)
#6 and #7 on the list are the Koch brothers. Under the categories "inherited" or "self-made" Bloomberg lists them as "self-made". Only 29 of the 100 are listed as having inherited their wealth. Ibn Saud's grandson, Alwaleed Al Saud is #16 and is also listed by Bloomberg as self-made. I guess even if you're the grandson of the guy your country is named after, you can still be listed as self-made by Bloomberg. Happy to see these self-made guys pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and became billionaires.