the richest people in history Even if they aren’t business owners or even remotely interested in the topic, most people have some very solid ideas.
You probably already have names on the list of richest people in your brain as you read this.
In this post, we rank the top 5 richest persons in the world as of 2022. Let’s find out. These are the game-changers and the individuals who have contributed to the global transformation and reshaping.
Only one person on the list had a net worth of $100 billion when we released the “richest” list many years ago. Nine people now have net worths of over $100 billion as of our September 2021 report, with two people on the verge of the $200 billion mark.
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Most sources concur that John D. Rockefeller was the richest American after accounting for inflation; however, some define wealth as a person’s wealth as a percentage of current Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This approach to assessing people’s wealth through time is debatable. For instance, according to financial writer Scott Sumner, Rockefeller was worth $1.4 billion when he passed away in 1937, which translates to nearly $24 billion. According to 2018 values, Bill Gates was valued at close to $150 billion in 1999.
It is debatable who is the second richest in terms of wealth over current GDP; different sources name Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John Jacob Astor IV, Bill Gates, and Henry Ford. Nearly all sources concur with Carnegie. Even more, people disagree about the farther locations.
Theodore Vanderbilt When he passed away in 1870, I left him a wealth worth $100 million. That would be more than $2.2 billion in 2021 dollars, according to some inflation calculators.
The richest men in America were frequently also the richest men in the entire globe due to the United States of America’s economic growth since its founding, which led to America becoming the world’s leading economic power by the late 19th century.
Who had more money, Genghis Khan or John D. Rockefeller? It’s a straightforward query with a challenging resolution.
This list of the wealthiest persons in history is the result of hours of interviews with academic historians and economists.
Genghis Khan
Lived: 1162-1227
Republic of Mongolia
Money: Lots of lands, little else
Unquestionably, one of history’s most effective military commanders was Genghis Khan.
He ruled the biggest contiguous empire in history, the Mongol Empire, which at its height spanned from China to Europe.
Genghis did not, however, hoard his wealth, according to academics, despite his tremendous power.
Instead, the Khan’s generosity was a major factor in his power.
According to Morris Rossabi, a famous history professor at Queens College in the City University of New York, “one of the bases of his success is sharing the gains among his soldiers and other commanders.”
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World author Jack Weatherford notes that, unlike many pre-modern armies, the Mongols forbade their warriors from taking any booty for themselves.
Following an invasion, every item seized was listed by administrative clerks and then delivered to the armed forces and their families.
Genghis continued to get a portion of the loot, but this scarcely made him wealthy.
According to Weatherford, “He did not build a castle for himself or his family, a temple, a tomb, or even a dwelling.”
He was both born and passed away inside a wool ger.
He was buried after being wrapped in felt, just like any regular person.
Alan Rufus
Lived: 1040-1093
Nation: England
$194 billion in wealth
Rufus, William the Conqueror’s nephew, participated in the Norman conquest alongside his uncle. According to Philip Beresford and Bill Rubinstein, authors of The Richest of the Rich, he passed away with £11,000, which they claim represents 7% of England’s GDP at the time. In 2014 values, that would be equivalent to $194 billion.
John D. Rockefeller
Lived: 1839-1937
nation: the United States
$341 billion in wealth
Rockefeller started making investments in the oil sector in 1863, and by 1880, his Standard Oil corporation was in charge of 90% of the nation’s oil production.
According to a 1918 federal income tax return and estimates of his overall fortune, Rockefeller was estimated to be worth about $1.5 billion, according to his New York Times obituary. This amount corresponds to nearly 2% of the U.S. economy’s output that year, according to data gathered by MeasuringWorth (the U.S. did not keep official records on national income until 1932).
In 2014, the same economic share would be worth $341 billion.
Andrew Carnegie
Lived: 1835-1919
nation: the United States
$372 billion in wealth
Although Andrew Carnegie may be the richest American of all time, Rockefeller receives most of the attention. In 1901, the Scottish immigrant sold J.P. Morgan his business, U.S. Steel, for $480 million. At the time, that amount amounted to just over 2.1% of the U.S. GDP, giving Carnegie economic influence equal to $372 billion in 2014.
Joseph Stalin
Lived: 1878-1953
nation: USSR
Complete command over a country with 9.6% of the world’s GDP is wealth.
Stalin is a unique figure in the history of contemporary economics: he was a totalitarian ruler who oversaw one of the biggest economies in the world. Stalin’s economic power and total control over the USSR led numerous economists to name him as one of the richest people in history, despite the fact that it is nearly impossible to separate his fortune from that of the Soviet Union.
Their reasoning is clear to see. The USSR contributed around 9.5% of global economic output in 1950, three years before Stalin’s demise, according to data from the OECD. That level of production would be roughly $7.5 trillion in value as of 2014.
Stalin wasn’t the rightful owner of the money, but he had the power to use the Soviet Union’s power to his advantage.
George O. Liber, a history professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, claims that “he had great authority, and via his power he could have anything he wanted.” Without any oversight, he had power over one-sixth of the planet’s land area.
Is Stalin now considered wealthy in the conventional sense? Liber is unsure of this. The professor wonders if he is one of the wealthiest persons. It was not his money; I suppose if you want to stretch the notion of wealth. The nation’s wealth was under his hands.
Stalin must undoubtedly be listed among the most economically influential historical figures, nevertheless. Despite the uncertainty surrounding his riches, the premier’s economic impact is unmatched in recent memory.
At present, it is considered Elon Mask.
Elon Musk became well-known because of his wealth, not the other way around. Musk has been one of the most “extremely online” celebrities since he was born into riches. That fortune catapulted him to wild success in the early days of the Internet through his engineering and computing talents. Aside from his endeavors in technology, space, and A.I., his most recent is among his most recognizably Elon Musk actions: He joined the board of directors of social media juggernaut Twitter in April 2022 and rose to the position of the company’s top shareholder. This is the same platform where he once caused controversy by jokingly referring to a rescue diver as a “pedo person.”
In the upcoming months, he planned to “make big enhancements to Twitter,” he wrote in a tweet.
As Musk has been vocal about his goal to decentralize the platform and even relax its rules of behavior for users in the name of “free expression,” any upgrades may be arbitrary.
Twitter is simply the newest business that Musk has invested in with his money and his fingers. Learn about Elon Musk’s wealth and how he acquired it.
In 1995, Musk launched Zip2, a company that produced online city guides for newspapers. Musk received a cool $22 million for his shares when Compaq paid $307 million for Zip2 in 1999. Later that year, Musk unveiled X.com, an online payment platform and one of the first-ever online banks to be FDIC-insured. It later merged with Confinity, an online bank that supported PayPal transactions. Musk, the biggest stakeholder, received between $160 million and $180 million for his shares when eBay acquired PayPal in 2002. (He eventually bought the X.com domain back because of its sentimental worth.)
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Musk continued accumulating riches and power in the engineering and tech industries because of his earlier success. He established SpaceX in 2002, and in 2004 he acquired a majority stake in Tesla. To develop underground transportation tunnels, Musk established The Boring Business in 2016. The same year, he also established Neuralink, a neurotechnology company that aims to combine artificial intelligence with the human brain.
Due to his money and Tony Stark-like swag, Musk became well-known. Still, his celebrity connections kept him in the public eye: The billionaire has dated a number of well-known people, including singer Grimes and actress Amber Heard, with whom he has two children. Because of his fame, he even hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live.
How much money does Elon Musk make?
According to Bloomberg, Musk has a $276 billion net worth as of this writing. According to a ProPublica investigation, Musk barely pays any income taxes despite his fortune.
Who is currently ranked as the richest person in the world?
Musk is the richest man on the planet, at least as of the time of his investment in Twitter. He has a net worth of around $80 million more than Jeff Bezos, the creator of Amazon and potential target of a Leonardo DiCaprio beating. Musk is expected to maintain his position as the richest person even though their net worths frequently fluctuate based on the markets and other circumstances. This is because the gap is already so wide. Find out more information about the remaining 19 richest people in the world here.
