Are the World’s Super Billionaires Sign of Progress?

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

In the name of ALLAH, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

Are the World’s Super Billionaires Sign of Progress?

American business magazine Forbes started World's Billionaires annual ranking of people who were billionaires in March 1987; based on their documented assets. Royalty and dictators whose wealth comes from their positions were excluded from the lists.

There were 140 of them that first year, whose combined wealth totaled $295 billion. It took two decades for their numbers to swell beyond 1,000. Then there were 2,000 in 2017. Now, eight years later, another milestone: 3,028 entrepreneurs, investors and heirs make up this year’s ranking, 247 more than a year ago. Not only are there more of them, but they’re richer than ever, worth $16.1 trillion in total—up nearly $2 trillion over 2024. The U.S. has a record 902 billionaires, followed by China (516, including Hong Kong) and India (205).

The term "super billionaire" refers to individuals with a net worth of $50 billion or more, as defined by The Wall Street Journal in 2025. On the list, 16 are centi-billionaires, meaning they each have a net worth of at least $100 billion. According to The Wall Street Journal, there are now two dozen people in the world whose net worth is at least $50 billion. At the time of first Forbes ranking in 1987, the richest person in the world was Japan’s Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, a real estate tycoon worth $20 billion. In today’s world, billionaires are increasingly common, but The Wall Street Journal noted that the ultra-rich in the 19th and 20th centuries were industrialists. It was about the Carnegies and the Rockefellers: people who built railroads, steel plants and oil wells. So, who’s on the list?

The World’s Top 24 Super Billionaires (Taken from The Wall Street Journal):

Elon Musk – $419.4 billion (Tesla, SpaceX)

Jeff Bezos – $263.8 billion (Amazon)

Bernard Arnault – $238.9 billion (LVMH)

Larry Ellison – $237 billion (Oracle)

Mark Zuckerberg – $220.8 billion (Meta)

Sergey Brin – $160.5 billion (Alphabet)

Steve Ballmer – $157.4 billion (Microsoft)

Warren Buffett – $154.2 billion (Berkshire Hathaway)

James Walton – $117.5 billion (Walmart)

Samuel Robson Walton – $114.4 billion (Walmart)

Amancio Ortega – $113 billion (Inditex)

Alice Walton – $110.2 billion (Walmart)

Jensen Huang – $108.4 billion (Nvidia)

Bill Gates – $106 billion (Microsoft)

Michael Bloomberg – $103.4 billion (Bloomberg)

Larry Page – $100.9 billion (Alphabet)

Obviously, Elon Musk is on top. He has a net worth of about $419 billion, which is—wait for it—more than two million times as much as the typical American household. Also on the list is Jeff Bezos, who is worth $264 billion; Mark Zuckerberg, who is worth $221 billion and Google’s Sergey Brin, who is worth $160 billion. None of these names are a big surprise. The world is fast changing since the first ranking in 1987. Then the world was for real businesses and industries with end results in construction, manufacturing, productions of things, goods, items and products that can be defined in physical terms of measurements, weight and mass etc. 

Today’s ultra-rich are largely in the tech sector, and they’re not building, making, constructing things, as industrialists did. Their work is related to digital or virtual world and their wealth is affixed entirely to the stock price of their related companies, meaning their wealth can vacillate by tens of billions of dollars in any given year and not hurt their status on the list. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz reportedly said that one reason for all this wealth creation is simply that antitrust laws were not designed to handle the near or virtual monopolies that have emerged in the tech sector. That’s allowed many of the new breed of super billionaires to amass huge amounts of money / wealth. Can this wealth be also described as "digital and virtual wealth"; which has no meaning in real world? Can this wealth be utilized for the betterment of physical sufferings of real humans?

Joseph Stiglitz pointed out that these “super billionaires” are all masters of tax avoidance—far more so than the Carnegies or Rockefellers of days gone by, who would kick more of their money to the government and theoretically towards society. According to a 2021 White House study, the wealthiest 400 American families paid an average of 8.2% on their federal individual taxes from 2010 to 2018. Compare that to the average American taxpayer, who paid 13% during the same time, according to a Tax Foundation report, as reported by CNBC. The analysis of such rich people across the globe may reveal the similar data which means such rich people are amassing such wealth with the tacit connivance of the ruling class.

Historically, individuals like Mansa Musa, the rulers of the Mali Empire are considered among the super-rich of yester years, known for their immense wealth and influence. Historians such as Hadrien Collet have argued that Musa's wealth is impossible to calculate accurately. Mansa Musa is renowned for his wealth and generosity; that provided relief to his people from his wealth. Wal-Mart Inc is an American multinational retail corporation; and is today a people-led, tech-powered Omni channel retailer dedicated to helping people save money and live better. As of late 2024, the Walton family, founder of Wal-Mart, holds the title of the richest family in the world with a combined net worth of $432.4 billion. The Walton family today is probably the only family whose wealth is earned by serving people in real terms.

There has always been some gap between rich and poor in this world, but in the last few decades what it means to be rich has changed dramatically. Alarmingly, the greatest income gap is not between the 1 percent and the 99 percent, but within the wealthiest 1 percent of our nation--as the merely wealthy are left behind by the rapidly expanding fortunes of the new global super-rich. Forget the 1 percent; Plutocrats proves that it is the wealthiest 0.1 percent who is outpacing the rest of us at break-neck speed.

What’s changed is more than numbers. Today, most colossal fortunes are new, not inherited--amassed by perceptive businessmen who see themselves as deserving victors in a cut-throat international competition. As a transglobal class of successful professionals, today’s self-made oligarchs often feel they have more in common with one another than with their countrymen back home. Bringing together the economics and psychology of these new super-rich, Plutocrats puts us inside a league very much of its own, with its own rules.

Chrystia Freeland, an acclaimed business journalist has written in her book "Plutocrats" that the closest mirror to our own time is the late nineteenth century Gilded Age--the era of powerful ‘robber barons’ like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. Then as now, emerging markets and innovative technologies collided to produce unprecedented wealth for more people than ever in human history. Yet those at the very top benefited far more than others--and from this pinnacle they exercised immense and unchecked power in their countries. Today’s closest analogue to these robber barons can be found in the turbulent economies of India, Brazil, and China, all home to ferocious market competition and political turmoil. But wealth, corruption, and populism are no longer constrained by national borders, so this new Gilded Age is already transforming the economics of the West as well.

Chrystia Freeland showed that how, by controlling both the economic and political institutions of their nation, the richest members of China’s National People’s Congress have amassed more wealth than every branch of American government combined--the president, his cabinet, the justices of the Supreme Court, and both houses of Congress. The Book "Plutocrats" demonstrates how social upheavals generated by the first Gilded Age may pale in comparison to what is in store for us, as the wealth of the entire globalized world is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.

 The religion Islam imposes a 2.5% annual wealth tax (called Zakat) on riches possessed over the period of a year and to use that for well-being and nourishment of poor people. If any worlds' body or government collects this tax and make right used of the amount collected which will be 100s of Billion $ US dollars, will probably eliminate the homelessness and hunger related poverty and health issues of the world. The wealth creation by World’s Super Billionaires is definitely Not a sign of progress. The world needs intellectual prowess of another kind that will be marked by compassion, realism and humanism.