The imbalance of wealth in America is staggering to say the very least. It is awful, if you ask me, and it’s only been growing wider.
A small fraction of the population controls an outsized share of the nation’s wealth. This happens while millions struggle to cover basic expenses like housing, healthcare, and education.
The richest one percent own more wealth than the entire middle class combined. Fact.
This divide is fueled by many things. Trickle down wealth, for one. Along with that comes decades of wage stagnation for most workers and tax policies favoring the wealthy. Not to mention the rising value of things like stocks and real estate that the average American can’t afford.
This gap doesn’t just affect bank accounts. Its effects are widespread. This lack of wealth for most people leads to missed opportunities. Those poor people also have very little political influence and social mobility.
This all has created a system where the odds of climbing the economic ladder are increasingly stacked against the majority.
In thinking of this, I recently found an article on All About Facts that listed the “Ten Wealthiest Men to Ever Live.”
Amazingly, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and so many other billionaires were not on this list.
Instead, it cites many from the past. I imagine this is in comparative wealth amount measured by the time in history.
So here they are. The ten wealthiest of all time, supposedly.
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10. John Jacob Astor. Born July 17, 1763 – Died March 29, 1848
He lived the life of a businessman, merchant, and investor. What is most notable about Astor is that he was the first multi-millionaire ever to have lived in the United States.
9. Cornelius Vanderbilt. Born May 27, 1794 – Died January 4, 1877
He was one of the most famous (and wealthiest) industrialists in American history. He was the patriarch of the Vanderbilt family, who themselves were among the wealthiest American families in history.
8. Henry Ford. Born July 30, 1863 – Died April 7, 1947
Ford built his wealth, not just because his company made good cars (starting with the Model T), but because the company utilized rapid production through assembly lines and lowered the price of the vehicles.
7. Muammar Gaddafi. Born June 7, 1942 – Died October 20, 2011
Muammar was a famous revolutionary who ruled over Libya for over forty years, first taking power in a coup d’état in the late 1960s.
6. William the Conqueror. Born c. 1028 – Died September 9, 1087
William the Conqueror ruled in his European empire for two decades. His wealth was built not through business and investing, but rather through conquering neighboring, weaker kingdoms.
5. Osman Ali Khan. Born April 6, 1886 – Died February 24, 1967
Osman Ali Khan ruled over a part of India known as Hyderabad for nearly forty years from 1911 to 1948. His wealth came from a variety of sources, including gold worth hundreds of millions of dollars and jewels worth in the billions.
4. Andrew Carnegie. Born November 25, 1835 – Died August 11, 1919
Born in 1835 in Scotland, he traveled across the Atlantic Ocean as a child to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After decades of hard work, Carnegie rose from the bottom to the top, to become the owner of the Carnegie Steel Plant, and to become one of the wealthiest men in the country.
3. Rothschild Family. Mayer Amschel Rothschild was born February 23, 1744 – Died September 19, 1812
Maybe it’s not fair to include the Rothschild family as a whole. After all, they are a family and not a single individual. Otherwise known as the Rothschilds, the family came from Frankfurt, Germany. They established a banking business that quickly overtook the other banking businesses in terms of wealth.
2. John D. Rockefeller. Born July 8, 1839 – Died May 23, 1937
JDR was the single, wealthiest American ever to have lived. He gained his wealth in the oil market in the latter part of the 1800s, eventually founding his own oil company.
1. Mansa Musa I Born c. 1280 – Died c. 1337
It’s certainly debatable, but the title of the number one wealthiest person in world history goes to Mansa Musa I. He ruled the African country of Mali and amassed a huge fortune producing gold and salt, which eventually turned into half of the world’s total supply.
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So there they are. But today, the richest of the rich are controlling the world. And we are just collections of data for them to manipulate into winning more money for themselves.
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“The rich get richer and the poor get prison.” — Jeffrey Reiman
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“The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.” — Mahatma Gandhi
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“The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all. To free the many, we must abolish the private ownership of the means of livelihood.” — Henry George
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