“Wealth” as a static number is extremely fickle and tells you nothing about reality
The Waltons have a completely different kind of wealth than Musk - In many practical and theoretical ways.
So even within this subset of insane wealth hoarders, there is a difference in kind, type legal structure, ability to liquidate, etc…
We have thousands of examples where someone’s “wealth” disappears overnight because a handful of “analysts” downgrade future expectations of what their percentage of equity is worth in a secondary market. That’s not really going to happen with Buffet, Gates but very possible with Musk and similar.
On the flipside arguably Musk has the most political influence within the right wing (See: recent Trump stuff) compared to for example, the relative influence of the Waltons on the “liberal” wing.
Similarly I could point to a ton of people who aren’t on on this list but fall into the >500M$ category who have a lot more influence on power and economics than some of the people in the top of this list.
The fact that this is not calculated within this framework, means that this ranking is pure vanity and says nothing about economic, power, political power, or anything other than an arbitrary, monetary leaderboard.
The Waltons have a completely different kind of wealth than Musk - In many practical and theoretical ways.
So even within this subset of insane wealth hoarders, there is a difference in kind, type legal structure, ability to liquidate, etc…
We have thousands of examples where someone’s “wealth” disappears overnight because a handful of “analysts” downgrade future expectations of what their percentage of equity is worth in a secondary market. That’s not really going to happen with Buffet, Gates but very possible with Musk and similar.
On the flipside arguably Musk has the most political influence within the right wing (See: recent Trump stuff) compared to for example, the relative influence of the Waltons on the “liberal” wing.
Similarly I could point to a ton of people who aren’t on on this list but fall into the >500M$ category who have a lot more influence on power and economics than some of the people in the top of this list.
The fact that this is not calculated within this framework, means that this ranking is pure vanity and says nothing about economic, power, political power, or anything other than an arbitrary, monetary leaderboard.