Bill Gates, billionaire and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, listens during a panel session on the opening day of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2019. (Photo: Jason Alden/Bloomberg)Gates’s fortune, now $100 billion on the nose, hasn’t reached such heights since the dot-com boom, when Bezos was only beginning his march up the world’s wealth rankings. The Amazon founder is now worth $145.6 billion, having added $20.7 billion this year alone, while Gates has gained $9.5 billion in 2018.
These two fortunes underscore a widening wealth gap in the U.S., where those with the most capital are accumulating riches the fastest. It’s also a worldwide trend. France’s
Bernard Arnault has an $86.2 billion fortune, equal to about 3 percent of his country’s economy. The net worth of Spain’s
Amancio Ortega represents 5 percent of that nation’s gross domestic product. And then there’s
Bidzina Ivanishvili, whose worth about a third of Georgia’s GDP.
Read more: World’s richest just can’t give away their money fast enough DM
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