If there is one hard truth about our species, it’s that wealth isn’t distributed even remotely close to equally. For as long as humans have used currency in exchange for goods and services, there have been those who, fairly or otherwise, manage to horde quite a pile of legal tender.
While the families of long-forgotten kingdoms and empires were indeed wealthy, their stockpile of coins was nothing compared to the 20th and 21st century titans of riches. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and CEO, is worth more than $180 billion, making him the richest person in the history of the world. But let us not forget that Bezos is “new money,” and the self-made tech titan didn’t come from ancestral wealth. Likewise, his fellow Seattleite Bill Gates, whose mountain of cash is valued at $118 billion.
Let us then instead look at the “family” wealth that is owned by the 25 richest families in the world, who collectively have an absolutely mind-boggling $1.4 trillion.