All three have grown up and joined the club of 2,800 people on the planet who have a fortune valued at at least $1 billion. This is the answer to the title of the article.
They are Miuccia Prada, Tiger Woods and Jerry Seinfeld.
Talent, luck, circumstances, will
O Maria Bianchi She was a student at the School of Theater, a member of the Communist Party’s youth movement, before changing her name to Miuccia Prada and conquering the world of fashion and luxury.
India’s first female billionaire, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, started brewing beer, but faced with gender discrimination, he turned to the pharmaceutical industry, becoming the largest producer of insulin in Asia. His parents Jerry SeinfeldThey were both orphans and their father never embraced him. Maybe one of the reasons why they turned him into a comedy.
The individual success of these billionaires often tells a story of broader historical, political or technological trends.
O Chinese Jack Mawho built the e-commerce giant Alibaba, took advantage of two powerful and simultaneous forces – the birth of online retail and the growing economic power of China.
O Microsoft Founder Bill Gatesattended one of the few schools in the US in the late 1960s that had a computer. While Rihanna got her own shot at fame and billionaire status thanks to a chance audition with a record label who happened to be on vacation in Barbados.
And others had luck on their side, but they didn’t manage to become billionaires, or even rich. Obviously, it takes talent, intelligence and hard work. Above all,Do you have something that is needed by others?
81 people have up to 4 billion people in their hands
According to Forbes, the United States has 813 billionaires, China (including Hong Kong) is second with 473 and India is third with 200.
The magnitude of these properties can be hard to comprehend. A billion is a huge number – to give you an idea of scale, a million seconds is 11 days, but a billion is 32 years.
And for some, the very existence of billionaires is… a problem. 81 of the world’s richest people have more wealth than the world’s poorest 4 billion people combined.
Billionaires as… a political mistake?
In a 2023 report on inequality, Oxfam concluded: “Every billionaire is a political mistake. The very existence of prosperous billionaires making record profits while most people face austerity, growing poverty and a cost-of-living crisis is evidence of an economic system that is failing to deliver for humanity.”
The problem is certainly not that some people have managed to acquire a lot of money, but rather the enormous and ever-increasing inequalities. That is why we are increasingly hearing voices in favour of taxing absolute wealth rather than income.
In the US, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren has proposed a 2% tax on assets over $50 million and a 3% tax on assets over $1 billion.
And yet, we need more
On the other hand, American economist Michael Strain argues that we need more billionaires, not fewer, and cites Nobel laureate William Nordhaus, who discovered that around 2% of the benefit of technological innovation goes to founders and inventors – the rest goes to society.
Strain calls billionaires “largely self-made innovators who have changed the way we live.” He cites examples such as Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, who revolutionized the personal computer; Jeff Bezos, who turned retail on its head with a humble idea for an e-bookstore; and Elon Musk, who pioneered electrification and space travel.
None of these are “political failures,” he concludes. “Instead of wishing they didn’t exist, we should be excited that they do.”
Source: BBC