The title the worlds richest man is never definitively answered in any generation.
Often the men (or women) who might be claimants to that title are loath to reveal their real wealth, the title therefore falls upon someone who doesn't care, or is not clever enough at hiding their assets from a curious world.
So for example when I was a kid, we were told that its was J. Paul Getty, the oil billionaire who was the richest man alive. As the decades have passed by, the claim was that it was the Sultan of Brunei, then the Saudi Kings, and then Bill Gates etc.
Until last week, it was determined that it must be Amazon founder Jeff Bezos - who was estimated as worth $131bn (£99bn), which makes him the wealthiest man in modern (last decade?) history.
However, he's not the wealthiest person of all time ..... far from it indeed. A recent compilation based on the current values of past fortunes, have come up with this listing of the 10 richest men of all time:
Noticeably, these are all people who literally owned their empires and all that was in it, or men who built up their economic empires before anti-monopoly regulations stopped people creating vast corporations. There is probably an argument to be made that some modern corporate behemoths such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Paypal, Facebook, etc are also ripe to be broken up a bit.
However, we are where we are, and the vast wealth that some people can accrue is staggering. One of the Kardashian girls, Kylie Jenner, became the worlds youngest billionaire this week aged 21. She founded and owns Kylie Cosmetics, three years ago and it has generated an estimated $360m in sales last year alone.
But back to the 'all time' wealth listings ..... I was kind of surprised that Genghis or Kublai Khan (to name but two dictators), didn't feature but then I guess they maybe weren't as completely ruthless as some of the others.
But one things for sure .... if the poor are always with us, then so are the rich.
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| Jeff Bezos Has $131bn (£99bn) Reasons To Smile |
Often the men (or women) who might be claimants to that title are loath to reveal their real wealth, the title therefore falls upon someone who doesn't care, or is not clever enough at hiding their assets from a curious world.
So for example when I was a kid, we were told that its was J. Paul Getty, the oil billionaire who was the richest man alive. As the decades have passed by, the claim was that it was the Sultan of Brunei, then the Saudi Kings, and then Bill Gates etc.
Until last week, it was determined that it must be Amazon founder Jeff Bezos - who was estimated as worth $131bn (£99bn), which makes him the wealthiest man in modern (last decade?) history.
However, he's not the wealthiest person of all time ..... far from it indeed. A recent compilation based on the current values of past fortunes, have come up with this listing of the 10 richest men of all time:
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| Mansa Musa Put Mali On The Map - Literally In The Case Of The Catalan Map .... |
- Mansa Musa (1280-1337, king of the Mali empire) - wealth incomprehensible.
- Augustus Caesar (63 BC-14 AD, Roman Emperor) - $4.6tn (£3.5tn).
- Zhao Xu (1048-1085, emperor Shenzong of Song in China) - wealth incalculable.
- Akbar I (1542-1605, emperor of India's Mughal dynasty) - wealth incalculable.
- Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919, Scottish-American industrialist) - $372bn.
- John D Rockefeller (1839-1937, American business magnate) - $341bn.
- Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov (1868-1918, Tsar of Russia) - $300bn.
- Mir Osman Ali Khan (1886-1967, Indian royal) - $230bn.
- William The Conqueror (1028-1087 English King) - $229.5bn.
- Muammar Gaddafi (1942-2011, long-time ruler of Libya) - $200bn.
Noticeably, these are all people who literally owned their empires and all that was in it, or men who built up their economic empires before anti-monopoly regulations stopped people creating vast corporations. There is probably an argument to be made that some modern corporate behemoths such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Paypal, Facebook, etc are also ripe to be broken up a bit.
However, we are where we are, and the vast wealth that some people can accrue is staggering. One of the Kardashian girls, Kylie Jenner, became the worlds youngest billionaire this week aged 21. She founded and owns Kylie Cosmetics, three years ago and it has generated an estimated $360m in sales last year alone.
But back to the 'all time' wealth listings ..... I was kind of surprised that Genghis or Kublai Khan (to name but two dictators), didn't feature but then I guess they maybe weren't as completely ruthless as some of the others.
But one things for sure .... if the poor are always with us, then so are the rich.
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