The top 10 richest people in the world are worth $2.7 trillion combined - that is more than Canada, Australia and Spain combined

358 points by InterestingCat308 a day ago on reddit | 54 comments

THE_IRL_JESUS | a day ago

Can you provide your figures / explain what you mean? I am not sure how you compare the net worth of an individual to the net worth of a country?

Unless you mean to say that their net worth is higher than the yearly GDP of those countries? But that wouldn't make sense because (other than it being a nonsensical comparison) the figures are wrong, the GDP of Australia and Canada alone is greater than 4 trillion USD

Mental_Evolution | a day ago

Yeah, make no sense, the net worth of those three countries is ~50 trillion

EconEchoes5678 | 23 hours ago

Oh it's far, far more than that. 50 Trillion is just an estimate of the net worth of the citizens. But the government owns buildings, national forests, never-developed remote land, parks, landmarks, business entities, art, historical artifacts, entire colleges, military equipment, intellectual properties, brands, and much more.

The value is incalculable. When people try to make these comparisons, it's just... laughable. The "net worth" of modern countries is hundreds of times the value of billionaires. It's just a very poor understanding of what "GDP" means, and a complete failure to understand how net worths are calculated.

SconiGrower | 23 hours ago

It's just people seeing the value of the top 100 wealthiest people and the value of some countries, seeing that they're both measured in trillions and missing the fact that net worth is a stock and GDP is a flow.

jointheredditarmy | 23 hours ago

I just love all these rational responses OP thought he was on latestagecapitalism instead of r/economics lol

Prestigious_Load1699 | 19 hours ago

Hope is restored.

Gamplato | 20 hours ago

You were way nicer about this than I would’ve been, so thanks for being early.

shnieder88 | a day ago

... wtf are you talking about?

they don't have more wealth than any of those countries, let alone combined, and the wealth of those 10 people doesnt equal the GDP's of those countries combined

also, the link you posted doesnt even mention anything about spain or australia or canada combined?

can we downvote this BS post?

mparks37 | 22 hours ago

The bots are upvoting it lol

KlausHeisler1 | 22 hours ago

I think it's just redditors doing that tbh

mparks37 | 22 hours ago

Even sadder, upvoting this shit

SafeMargins | 18 hours ago

OP is a clanker too. Reddit is increasingly posts made by bots, commented on by bots and people ignorant of what's going on here. Dead internet theory is rapidly becoming true.

ialwaysforgetmename | 23 hours ago

OP can't math, apparently. Nonsensical.

But the automod can, which is why I'm adding these extra words even though the amount of words doesn't equal quality. It's got that labor theory of value vibe in here.

mparks37 | 22 hours ago

Are you saying $2.7 trillion is worth more than all the assets on those countries, including land? Because that would be moronic. It's also not more than the annual gdp of those countries combined. What are you talking about? Please come back when you have at least a 5 year old understanding of econ.

Aggressive-Cut5836 | 22 hours ago

No it isn’t. Their lifetime wealth is worth more than what those countries make in only 1 year. If you compare what the top 10 richest people earned last year to what Canada, Australia and Spain achieved in GDP, the countries absolutely destroyed Elon, Jeff, and the rest. Compare apples with apples not with oranges.

heyhayyhay | a day ago

Why shouldn't 10 people be worth more than 120 million people? Those are reasonably wealthy countries. There's also the billions of people in poor countries. Absolutely sickening. Every government on earth needs to implement policies to tax billionaires heavily, with no way to evade them.

shnieder88 | 23 hours ago

FYI the post is false. those 10 people aren't worth more than 120 mil people

Ebenezer-F | 23 hours ago

I don’t think you understand. They don’t just have a bunch of dollars in a vault like a McDuck. They own companies that do something valuable for society, which is why it has value. What do you suggest we do about that?

russian_cyborg | 21 hours ago

This is the best advertisement for American capitalism that i can imagine. The current richest person in the world is an African American Immigrant.

NewsWeeter | 23 hours ago

Its all funny money and im starting to belive doesn't mean shit. People hold the power thats the only truth that is important enough to repeat.