According to Forbes Magazine’s annual ranking of the richest people in the world, the number of billionaires worldwide fell by 329 to 2,668, with the total value of their combined assets falling slightly from $ 13.1 trillion in the 2021 list. He said Putin’s invasion of Ukraine – and the avalanche of sanctions that followed – led the Russian stock market and the ruble to plummet, leaving 34 fewer Russian billionaires on the list. Almost all of the country’s billionaires have seen their fortunes stagnate or decline, with their total wealth falling by more than $ 260 billion from a year earlier. Forbes said the decline in the total number of billionaires from 2,755 to 2,668 was the biggest since the 2009 financial crisis, but followed by an increase of more than 600 in 2021, when global equities recovered from pandemic lows. Elon Musk, the spontaneous boss of Tesla and SpaceX, became the richest man in the world for the first time with a fortune of 219 billion dollars, an increase of 68 billion dollars compared to the previous year due to the rising share price of the automotive industry. Bezos’s estimated $ 1.5 billion in charitable donations is pale in comparison to his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott, who has donated $ 12.5 billion to more than 1,250 organizations in less than two years. Scott, who raised $ 38 billion in her divorce from Bezos in 2019, dropped from the 22nd richest man on the planet to the 30th with a fortune of $ 43.6 billion. Among those dropped out of the rankings are 169 “one-year miracles” – newcomers to the list in 2021, but who have already fallen. They include Peloton’s John Foley fitness bike company and Bumble’s Whitney Wolfe Herd dating app. About 236 people joined the club of billionaires for the first time, including pop star Rihanna, Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson and capitalist Joshua Kushner. Barbados, Bulgaria, Estonia and Uruguay have their first billionaires. The Millionaires for Humanity, a coalition of the rich demanding a global property tax on the super-rich to tackle inequality, said the Forbes list was “a slap in the face to society”. Subscribe to the daily Business Today email or follow the Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk Djaffar Shalchi, a Danish multimillionaire businessman and founder of the initiative, said: “Forbes’s list of the rich is a stark reminder of the obscene unequal world in which we live. While most people around the world have struggled to adapt and survive the pandemic, many have lost their jobs, plunged deeper into poverty, and those on Forbes’s rich list have been able to lag behind and watch their wealth in heights “. “It’s an insult to humanity, an insult to the claim that we are all together in it and a slap in the face to those of us who believe we share this planet and its resources equally. “The time for a property tax on people like me is long overdue. Inequality is bad for everyone. Even in the United States, we are considering President Biden’s prospect of introducing a billionaire tax. That would be an important step in the right direction. “
