The American magazine “Newsweek” described 2024 as an amazing year for America’s billionaires, as their collective net worth increased by hundreds of billions of dollars on the back of the boom in the technology sector.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which ranks the richest individuals in the world on a daily basis, nine out of 10 individuals who have seen the largest growth in their net worth since January are US citizens, “she added.
It stated that Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, Tesla and ex (formerly “Twitter”), born in South Africa, his net worth increased by 222 billion US dollars, for a total of 451 billion US dollars as of December 24, and his shares in Tesla, which make up a significant part of his total wealth, grew by 81 percent during the same period.
She pointed out that this list of ten billionaires, including the CEO of”meta” Mark Zuckerberg and the CEO of “Amazon” Jeff Bezos monitored an additional 730 billion dollars increase to their collective net worth in 2024, a few billion less than Taiwan’s GDP.
This increase in wealth is important because this incredible accumulation of wealth – boosted by the re-election of Donald Trump in early November and the rise in US stock prices-highlights the economic inequality in the United States and its wider implications.
Discussions have already been raised about this due to the effects of inflation and wage stagnation suffered by the middle and working class in America, and in the past such high figures have prompted calls for higher taxes on the very wealthy, as well as conducting examinations of the influence of money in the American political system.
The magazine reviewed the wealthy people on the list of “Bloomberg”, classified according to the increase in their net worth over the past 12 months, they are: Elon Musk (222 billion dollars), Mark Zuckerberg (84 billion dollars), founder of “NVIDIA” Jensen Huang (77.9 billion dollars), Jeff Bezos (+67 billion dollars), founder and CEO of “Oracle” Larry Ellison (67 billion dollars), CEO of “Dell” Michael Dell (46.6 billion dollars), co-founder of the search engine “Google” Larry Page (46.1 billion dollars), co-founder of the search engine “Google” Sergey brain (42.2 billion dollars), the heirs of the founder of “Walmart” the largest retailer in the world, Jim Walton (39.6 billion dollars) and Alice Walton (39.0 billion dollars).
The nature of the billionaires on the “Bloomberg” list also highlights the enormous and growing impact of technology on the global economy today, as almost all billionaires derive their wealth from the ownership of companies in this sector, the magazine said.
The global reach of communications technologies and the high scalability of high-tech companies mean that companies at the forefront of digital transformation are ready to reap greater rewards, promising today’s billionaires greater wealth in the future, she added.
On the flip side, the ongoing decline in the luxury goods sector has seen many well-known billionaires lose large portions of their net worth.
Bernard Arnault, the founder and CEO of the company “LVMH”, who held the title of the richest person in the world, has seen his fortune decrease by 32 billion dollars in 2024.
Willy Arnaud is followed by Francoise Bettencourt Myers, businesswoman and heiress of the “L’oreal” fortune, whose net worth has decreased by 25.6 billion dollars so far this year.
The magazine reported that some analysts likened the technology boom to the dot-com bubble, known as the bubble of internet companies that occurred in the late nineties and early first decade of the Twenty-First Century, and warned that this bubble may also burst, hurting those who bet their fortunes on artificial intelligence.
But for now, technology seems to have led to an unprecedented rise in the net wealth of those who have reached the top, resulting in levels of individual wealth unprecedented in history.
