Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Net Worth Of Wealthiest 400 Continues To Rise

By Cornelius Nunev


The annual Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans found that the net worth of the super-rich has climbed during the last 12 months. The income gap continues to widen, as the middle class recedes.

Making more money

The magazines released its annual report on Sept. 19. It discovered that the net worth of the nation's 400 wealthiest citizens grew by $1.7 trillion during the last year. That is a rise of 13 percent. Combined, the net worth of the elite 400 is the equivalent of 12.5 percent of the country's economy, according to NBC News.

There has also been an increase in the average net worth of each of the 400. It has grown to $4.2 billion per person.

There was a rise in income for 261 of the 400, mostly due to the rebounding real estate industry and stock growth.

Hardly anyone brand new prosperous

The top five from 2011 did not change to be Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison, Charles and Koch (tied for fourth) and Christie Walton. There were the expected names.

Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, has headed the list for the last 19 years. He saw his worth grow by $7 billion to $66 billion. Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway, saw his worth rise by $7 billion. Larry Ellison, head of Oracle Corp, got the largest raise, however, with an increase of $8 billion.

Not everybody succeeds

Zuckerberg lost about half of his net worth when Facebook went public this year, so his net worth is only $9.4 billion this year. That is one big exception the increasing.

Much bigger gap

The Economic Policy Institute did a study last week that found that there have been huge increases to more than double the gap between the rich and average earner. In 1961, the wealthy only made 125 percent more in the top one percent of earners. That number increased to making 288 percent more in 2010.

The worth of the wealthy is increasing in spite of the belief that most Americans are seeing decreases in wealth recently.

Even though there is a trend that has been going on for a while, the gap widened a ton after the Good Recession and increased exponentially.




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