In this article we will present the 20 richest people in the world. Click to skip ahead and see the 5 richest people in the world.
If you want any proof of whether life is fair or not, you only need to look at the fact that billionaires in the world have more money than over 4.5 billion people in the world. In a world where hundreds of millions don’t know where their next meal is coming from, someone is wondering whether to gold plate his 5th private jet.
There are over 2,100 billionaires in the world, with billionaires actually doubling in just the last decade. If you’re wondering where they reside, then you should consider taking a look at the 25 richest cities in the world with the most billionaires per capita. These facts are quite gloomy as they demonstrate the level of inequality in this world, and how it is simply growing. While I’ve always supported capitalism, as to me it was the logical choice, after learning these facts, even I am left to wonder whether there is some limit which should be applied or implemented to ensure a fairer distribution of the world’s resources. The toughest question here is on how to do that. People say earnings should be capped, but then once a person reaches that level, his motivation will mostly stop. How do you determine where you should draw the line, and how should that line be drawn to benefit everyone, or cause the least possible issues?
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These numbers seem even worse when you consider the pandemic. Tens of millions of people across the world have been left jobless, people who depend on their paycheck for basic necessities and who now don’t know where their next meal will come from. The economy has been left devastated and many businesses have folded, causing further layoffs as well. Even for many people who did not get laid off, their salaries were reduced or they were sent on unpaid leaves, so the actual situation is even worse than what the numbers suggest. And now that the second wave has hit many countries across the world, including Europe, we have no idea when this will end.
However, it wasn’t doom and gloom for everyone. Billionaires actually gained over $637 billion in wealth during this time. Imagine how crazy that statistic is. While tens of millions of people lost their jobs, billionaires gained over HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS in the exact same time. Welcome to capitalism, folks. Just 5 people gained over $214 billion in 2020, with Tesla’s (NASDAQ:TSLA) Elon Musk alone gaining an amazing $79.1 billion in this time. His net worth has actually more than quadrupled in this time. Most of the top billionaires are men who are in the technology sector. Amazon.com’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Jeff Bezos has gained $60 billion in 2020, because more people are moving on to online shopping, avoiding the need to risk their health, and of course, it’s incredibly comfortable. There’s a reason why Amazon is once again adding over 100,000 employees, because demand has grown exponentially as well, the fourth such hiring spree in 2020 alone. Tesla shares have increased vastly as well, while Facebook hasn’t done too badly either, which is why for a brief moment, Facebook Inc’s (NASDAQ:FB) Mark Zuckerberg was a centabillionaire. Even now, there are three men who are centabillionaires.
The main factor for the rapid increase in the number of billionaires is technological innovation. Facebook’s, Tesla’s, Alphabet Inc’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Alibaba’s (NYSE:BABA) founders weren’t even millionaires 25 years ago.
However, such valuations should always be taken with a grain of salt. After all, most of these valuations are based on the interest that person holds in a company and stocks are known to fluctuate wildly. For example, just earlier this month, tech stocks went down, costing tens of billions of dollars in the net worth of the top 10 tech billionaires. Jeff Bezos alone lost $9 billion. So these valuations don’t really mean that they have exactly that amount of cash. In many cases, they’re not even allowed to sell their shares until a specific date and not more than a specified number, to avoid a flooding of shares in the market, which can lead to a crash in the stock value.
The richest 20 people in the world had a combined net worth of $1.5 trillion. These 20 people have more money than the GDP of all but 12 countries in the world. They are some of the most powerful people in the world, and the choices they make affect hundreds of millions of people. 10 out of the 20 people in this list are from the technology sector, and this number will only keep on increasing in the future. 4 are from the retail sector, and I’m sure you can guess which retail company is responsible for the net worth of three of these individuals. Hint: they are among the 10 wealthiest families in the world. For our rankings we have taken the data from both Bloomberg and Forbes, and calculated the average of rankings from both sites, as they maintain real time information on the net worth of billionaires, to ensure our data is completely accurate. So without further ado, let’s take a look at the 20 people who indirectly control the world, starting with number 20:
