It is often said that the only way to become rich today is by inheriting a fortune. But this ignores the fact that eight of the world’s ten richest people are rich because they built their own businesses, not through inheritance.
This is shown by the latest Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which ranks the world’s richest people.
Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, became rich as an entrepreneur with Amazon. Elon Musk, No. 2 on the list, is a self-made billionaire thanks to success with several companies. Bill Gates is No. 3 on the index and became rich with Microsoft. Bernard Arnault, at No. 4, also became rich as the world’s largest maker of luxury goods, though he had already inherited a substantial fortune. Mark Zuckerberg, No. 5, also became rich as a result of a great idea: Facebook.
Warren Buffett comes in at No. 6 and became rich as an ingenious investor. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, No. 7 and No. 8 respectively, became rich on the back of a fantastic idea as the co-founders of Google. Steve Ballmer is No. 9 and, like Gates, became rich with Microsoft. No. 10 on the index is Mukesh Ambani, another entrepreneur, although he took over India’s most valuable company from his father.
Moving beyond the top 10, the names on the index tell the same story. And it’s not just the Bloomberg Index. Forbes also publishes an annual ranking of the richest people in the United States and arrived at the same conclusion. In 1984, fewer than half of those on the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans were self-made entrepreneurs. In 2018, the figure was 67%!
This analysis is based on a scoring system that awards a score of 1 to 10 to each of the 400 richest Americans, based on how they became rich. A score of 1 means that a person inherited everything and has done nothing to grow their wealth. A 10 is awarded to anyone who rose from humble beginnings and overcame every obstacle to build their wealth and become a self-made billionaire. Individuals who score between 6 and 10 are classed as self-made.
Taking a global perspective, it is even clearer that a majority of the superrich built their wealth as self-made entrepreneurs. China is home to more billionaires than any other country in the world except the U.S., and almost every billionaire in the country is a first-generation, self-made entrepreneur.
Among the wealthiest people in Europe, there is certainly a higher proportion of heirs because countries such as Germany, for example, still maintain a strong tradition of family businesses being passed from one generation to the next. But even in Europe, there are countless examples of people who became superrich on the strength of their ideas. Here’s just one recent example.
Together with his mother, Ugur Sahin moved from Turkey to live with his father in Germany at the age of four. At the time, his father was working in a Ford factory in Cologne. Besides soccer, Sahin was mainly interested in popular science books, which he borrowed from the library at his local Catholic church. He graduated from the Erich-Kästner-Gymnasium in Cologne in 1984 with his Abitur (German high school diploma). He had taken advanced courses in mathematics and chemistry and graduated top of his class. In 2008, Sahin co-founded the biotechnology company BioNTech, and has been the company’s CEO ever since. The company was one of the first in the world to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. He currently owns 18% of the listed company. He and his wife have now joined the ranks of the 100 richest Germans with net assets of $2.9 billion.
Clearly, the frequently expressed opinion that “The only way to become rich today is through inheritance” is nothing more than an anti-capitalist slogan and an excuse that in no way matches the facts.
Rainer Zitelmann is the author of The Rich in Public Opinion and The Wealth Elite.
