The Richest People List

Forbes Richest in 2020

One of the things I hate the most is the Forbes richest people list. It makes other people feel shitty about themselves. Also the fact that the list is full of lies. Lies that make you believe money is the end all be all.

No one is worth anything close to the amount of money listed because of something called liquidation. No one can possibly withdraw billions of dollar from his or her checking account in one instant. There is no way that someone can go into a bank and the teller will just go to the back of the bank and get a billion dollars in cash just because you have one billion dollars. No ATMs can give that amount neither because there's a cap to the amount you can withdraw per day. Usually it's way less than a billion. In fact, I bet the billionaires don't even have billions of dollars just sitting in their checking accounts.

They have assets that might worth billions but they can't convert them efficiently to cash. A billion dollar withdraw from a brokerage stock account will cause shockwaves across the stock market. And it would take days for the fund to settle. No one has a billion dollar house. The billionaires might have multiple houses in the millions of dollars, but I've never heard of a billion dollar house. It must be made of diamonds and gold if that's the case.

How does Forbes calculate the assets of these rich people? Mostly by estimation, or just outright hearsay. Like when Donald Trump pretended to be Donald Trump's accountant and told the Forbes' reporter how much he was worth.

The richest people list makes people feel bad about themselves because we all like to compare ourselves to other people, which is something that's hard to stop doing.

What is the value of that list? I think it's to make more money for Forbes Magazine. Its owner, more specifically. And we are all just fooled year over year.

I wish Forbes would stop publishing this useless list. But even if they stop, some other dumb magazine will publish a similar list. I must control myself and realize that this capitalist activity will just have to go on. But at least one person on this planet thinks the list is fake and is completely useless.