read my mind

" I approached the 2005 edition of the Forbes 400 issue with a certain ambivalence. Every year in October, the normally bi-weekly Forbes magazine puts out an extra edition to catalogue the 400 wealthiest people in America. Four hundred sounds like a lot of people to me. I’m pretty sure that’s more people than I know. So, naturally, reading the Forbes 400 List makes me feel that everyone’s a billionaire but me. And that’s what causes my ambivalence.

Actually, what I feel may be more like anxiety. I’m curious, you see, about who’s on The List and who isn’t. I wonder how their stories have changed from one year to the next. So I have to buy and read The 400 every year. But, I have to admit, I invariably feel a sense of failure when I do. Because these folks are all – every last one of them – just crazy rich. That makes me feel like I’m running out of time to join the club. *sigh* There’s that anxiety again. I have to take a deep breath – deep breath.

Now, despite my earlier comment, I realize that not everyone is a billionaire except me. It turns out that you can get on the list with just $900 million. But the fact remains that 26 people on The List are not billionaires, and are only in the upper ranges of centimillionaires. Somehow, though, I don’t find enormous comfort in this. Fully 93 percent of the 2005 Forbes 400 are packing a net worth of 10 digits or better.

Or better, you ask? Um, yes. Quite a number of folks need 11 digits to measure what they’re worth. You can feel my pain now, right? Eleven digits. The net worth of several generations of my entire family is a rounding error for these people. I am crushed by this.

Make no mistake. My pain is all about me. I don’t begrudge these people their staggering wealth. God bless ‘em, and good for them. I’m perfectly glad everyone else is a billionaire. It just irritates and embarrasses me that I’m, well, not. I see it as a personal failure. After reading The List, I am always left feeling that if one doesn’t have at least $900 mil, well, what the heck have I been doing, anyway? (There’s that anxiety again. Hold on a minute while I breath deeply into my paper bag…)

You assume that I am kidding about all this, of course. But I have to tell you that it is less that I am kidding and more that I know this to be absurd. I do feel those things. And things like The Forbes 400 List exists because I and others feel this way that. There is an entire industry built around selling envy. Sure, it’s fascinating to look into the lives of the rich and fabulous. The reality is, of course, that 400 super-rich people out of the 296,000,000 souls that currently live in the United States represents a scant 135 millionths of a percentage point of population. So not even close to everyone is on The List. In fact, it would be generally true – if not perfectly statistically accurate – to say that virtually no one has that kind of money. It is only because enormous media resources project those people into our attention sphere that we know that they exist at all. And it is because of the media ubiquity of these people that we feel a sense of familiarity with them, and feel like they are everywhere. They’re not. They barely exist at all.

Wow. Think of that. Statistically they barely exist at all! I’m feeling a lot better about myself already.

Of course, that they barely exist at all in numerical terms doesn’t mean they don’t hold a rather conspicuous share of available wealth. The combined net worth of The List adds up to $1.13 trillion U.S. dollars. For comparison, the GDP of Canada is quite a few U.S. billions less than this. That’s significant wealth for an insignificant number of folks. It’s worth noting here, perhaps, that many of those people were also significant contributors to the building of wealth in society. The folks that build great enterprises are not just aggregators of wealth – they are often creators of wealth.

But at the end of the day, a lot of the zeroes in a net worth statement are merely abstract notations, and are poor measures of real success or happiness. So after contemplating the remarkable stories and amazing sums of such fortunates as those on The Forbes 400 List, it’s useful to tally one’s own blessings. And then, despite the potential for envy and even in comparison, I find that I am still blessed beyond all justification. "

John Caspar