[Retric]

It’s worth keeping things in constant dollars for those kinds of comparisons.

In 1999 Bill Gates was worth the equivalent of ~187 billion dollars today. 25 years later Elon Musk is worth ~269 Billion and Zuckerberg is worth ~206 Billion.

None of these guys gets close to the robber barons in terms of share of total assets though.

[rootusrootus]

Yeah I want to say it was Rockefeller who is the richest guy in history. He'd be closing in on half a trillion dollars in today's money IIRC. Perhaps we should rank wealth as a percentage of GDP for somewhat more accurate comparisons.

[kens]

Rockefeller had $1.4 billion in 1937, which works out to $31 billion in 2024 dollars after adjusting for inflation. Ranking wealth by percentage of GDP doesn't really make sense. Otherwise, I could move to a small island like Tuvalu and become richer than Bill Gates by fraction of GDP.

[Retric]

Fraction of GDP within the same country makes more sense when talking about how much land someone can purchase or their ability to influence politics. Standard oil was broken up in 1911 which significantly reduced his power but not his nominal wealth. Each of those entities was still generating significant returns.

Fraction of GDP doesn’t translate that well when talking about different countries for obvious reasons but for billionaires global GDP isn’t a bad metric.

[rootusrootus]

I think this speaks to the difficulty in adjusting for inflation over such a long period of time.

I have no dog in the race, personally, but historians routinely put Rockefeller up as the top or among the top richest Americans in history. I do disagree with your assertion that GDP is invalid. You could indeed move to Tuvalu, and you'd be the richest person in Tuvalu by fraction of Tuvalu's GDP. Unless Bill Gates also moves there.