The Forbes 400 is a yearly released list of the four hundred wealthiest Americans. In the 2023 issue, the richest, Elon Musk, was listed with a net worth of $251 Billion (LaFranco & Peterson-Withorn, 2023). In last place, you will find Daniel Sundheim, worth $2.9 Billion. This means that the cutoff for the Forbes 400 is $2.9 Billion. To reach the coveted 1% of Americans in terms of net worth, you need to have more than $11.1 Million (Cussen, 2023). The age group with the highest median net worth in the US is the 65-74 group, at $409,900 (Gravier, 2023). You would need 27 times the median wealth of this age group to reach the top 1%. The Forbes 400 threshold is 261 times higher than the top 1% threshold. And finally, the richest person has 90 times the wealth of the Forbes 400 threshold. $251 Billion (the wealth of America’s richest) is $251,000 million, meaning that if distributed, would make a quarter-million people millionaires! These numbers can be difficult to visualize, so I created the following chart using a linear scale. It clearly shows the disparity between the richest person and the Forbes 400 threshold, but anything below that does not even register on the chart. In the second chart, I have used a logarithmic scale where each graduation on the y-axis represents a ten-fold increase. Where do you fall on the scale? Let’s say you have a $1 Million net worth – you are only $1 Million away from being poor with $0, but you’re $260,999 Million away from America’s Richest, meaning that you’re thousands of times closer to being poor than considered rich in the Forbes 400. This is not intended to discourage you, but rather to make you realize the disparity of wealth and reconsider your definitions of rich and poor.

Another example to put the vast wealth gap into perspective is the stadium example. Consider that there are 10,000 people in a stadium enjoying a concert, and let’s assume that the average spectator has a net worth of $150,000. As a big fan of the performer, Elon Musk arrives late to the concert and is now the 10,001^st person in the stadium. How does his attendance affect the average net worth of the crowd? Since Elon Musk has a net worth of $251 Billion, we would calculate it as follows:

Simply the presence of Elon Musk in the crowd of ten thousand people raised the entire group’s net worth from $150,000 to over $25 million! Of course, the median net worth would remain unchanged since there’s only one additional person added to the equation.

References:

Cussen, M.P. (2023, January 9). What Is the Average Net Worth of the Top 1%? Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1212/average-net-worth-of-the-1.aspx

Gravier, E. (2023, November 16). Here’s the average net worth of Americans broken down by age—See how you compare. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/select/americans-average-net-worth-by-age/

LaFranco, R., & Peterson-Withorn, C. (2023, September 8). Forbes 400 2023. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/