John D. Rockefeller’s reign as the undisputed richest man in history for the past 80+ years ends today To date, no other individual has controlled more personal wealth. For the greater part of Rockefeller’s 80-year streak, the main human who came close was Andrew Carnegie.
But Carnegie was also in second place with an inflation-adjusted fortune of $310 billion. Elon Musk has a net worth of $340 billion. Most historians calculate the exact same number when calculating the modern equivalent of Rockefeller’s fortune. Elon and John absolutely bonded.
So in theory, if someone gave Elon a dollar today, he would technically be the richest man in history. The Rockefeller Fortune John D. Rockefeller lived from 1839 to 1937. Starting with a few thousand dollars and a few oil refineries in Cleveland, Rockefeller turned Standard Oil into a world-dominating petroleum monopoly.
Because of Standard Oil, Rockefeller turned into the world’s first non-expansion changed extremely rich person. All in all, he was the principal individual to control a billion bucks continuously resources/riches.
In 1906, Standard Oil was sued by the US government under the Sherman Antitrust Demonstration. The public authority’s claim was fruitful, and the Standard syndication was separated in 1911. You could accept that the breakdown of his domain diminished Rockefeller’s fortune. No. 10 years before the separation, a Standard Oil review assessed Rockefeller’s total assets at $200 million.
Rockefeller possessed bits of each new organization only two years after the domain split; a Standard Oil review assessed his total assets at $900 million. To place that in context, today Imprint Zuckerberg’s resources are $118 billion. Envision on the off chance that Facebook had to separate and side project resources like Instagram and WhatsApp into new contending organizations.
And then imagine if Mark was worth a little less than $500 billion two years later. This is what happened to Rockefeller. but I digress.
Beginning in 1917 (and continuing through the last 20 years of his life), Rockefeller began to transfer the bulk of his wealth to his children and to a charitable foundation (today’s Rockefeller Foundation). If you count all the money transferred to dozens of trusts, John D. Rockefeller’s net worth was very close to $2 billion.
In the event that you utilize a Web mini-computer to change the $2 billion to the present expansion identical dollars, you will show up at a number in the scope of $25-30 billion. Yet, that doesn’t give you the full picture. To appropriately comprehend what could be compared to Rockefeller’s fortune, one necessities to think about a few variables, most quite his total assets as a level of US Gross domestic product.
For example, the United States had a gross domestic product of $74 billion in 1935. Rockefeller was worth $1.5 billion at the time. So his fortune was equal to 2% of the entire GDP at that time. Today $200 billion in wealth would be less than 1% of US GDP.
As we said toward the start of this article, for the beyond 80 years John D. Rockefeller has been by and large thought to be the most extravagant man ever. Subsequent to adapting to all elements, most history specialists stake the cutting edge likeness John D. Rockefeller’s total assets at this.
$340 billion
A few evaluations put Rockefeller’s fortune a little lower, exactly somewhat higher. Wikipedia’s rundown of the most extravagant verifiable figures gives a scope of $300 to $400 billion. However, by and large, the most widely recognized number you’ll hear is $340 billion. (Additionally, everything being equal, the Wikipedia article does exclude Elon Musk which is an undeniable mistake.)
$340 billion is the very number that Elon Musk’s total assets winds up with today. Here is the screen capture of ongoing rundown of world’s most extravagant individuals:
As you can find in the above screen capture, Elon is presently a full $140 billion more extravagant than Jeff Bezos. As such, Bill Entryways ($131 billion) is more extravagant than Elon Jeff Bezos, who has $9 billion in reserve funds.
As of now, Elon is an extra $3 billion more extravagant than Warren Buffett ($105 billion), Larry Ellison ($114 billion) and Imprint Zuckerberg ($118 billion). Those three men are the ninth, eighth and seventh most extravagant individuals on the planet separately.
Elon’s own fortune is presently worth more than the consolidated market upsides of every one of the accompanying organizations:
Walt Disney
Netflix
Exxon Mobil (two previous Rockefeller organizations that converged in 1999)
Nike
toyota
Coca-Cola
Any semblance of Chevron (another Rockefeller organization) Elon Musk, Bill Doors and Gautam Adani might be worth billions, yet their abundance pales into trillions contrasted with the business visionaries, sovereigns and leaders of Russia in the times of Catherine the Incomparable and Joseph Stalin. , Gardner. Is. Mansa Musa had gold in overflow, and Genghis Khan laid out the world’s biggest domain. So who’s on top?
Elon Musk is the richest person ever on earth. Forbes estimates the serial tech entrepreneur’s fortune at around US$220 billion, thanks to his portfolio of companies including electric car maker Tesla, rocket maker SpaceX and tunneling project The Boring Company.
Yet, despite his astonishing net worth, the 51-year-old billionaire doesn’t even come close to the wealth of the richest people in history. Proportionally speaking that means Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Indian tycoon Gautam Adani. And Mukesh Ambani doesn’t make the cut either.
However, it’s important to note that the further back we go in time, the more difficult it is to put an accurate or unbiased figure on how wealthy a person was, well, times were very different. The wealth was based on gold, land, salt and electricity and not all academics agreed on the valuation.
But we’ve done our best stocktaking, and according to multiple sources, and the work of multiple historians, these are the richest people ever to walk the earth – taking into account inflation and the value of commodities – in 2022$.
10. John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937)
Estimated net worth today: US$340 billion
According to several sources, including Celebrity Net Worth, John D. Rockefeller amassed a net worth of approximately US$340 billion in today’s money. According to the website History, the American business magnate and philanthropist founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870, which by the early 1880s controlled 90 percent of US refineries and pipelines.
While New Yorkers faced controversy for monopolizing the industry, Rockefeller played a large role in giving back to the community, donating nearly US$500 million to educational, religious and scientific causes through the Rockefeller Foundation.
9. Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)Estimated net worth today: US$372 billion
Money.com says the Scottish-born industrialist amassed the equivalent of about US$372 billion by leading the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
He eventually sold his Carnegie Steel Company to JP Morgan in 1901 for US$480 million (in the currency of the day). By the time of his death in 1919, Carnegie had donated 90 percent of his earnings to charitable causes.
8. Catherine the Great (1729-1796)
Estimated net worth today: US$1.5 trillion
7. Augustus Caesar (63BC-14AD)
Estimated net worth today: US$4.6 trillion
The organizer behind the Roman Realm needs no presentation as one of the best and most well known rulers ever. Augustus Caesar’s realm created around 25 to 30 percent of the world’s worldwide result, and as per Luxuo, a fifth of this was his very own riches. This implies it would be worth around US$4.6 trillion today.
6. Joseph Stalin (1878-1953)
Estimated net worth today: US$7.5 trillion
Joseph Stalin controlled Soviet assets worth approximately US$7.5 trillion in today’s money during his time as General Secretary. It is almost impossible to separate Stalin’s wealth from the Soviet Union, with economists claiming that his complete control over the USSR makes him one of the wealthiest men of all time.
Although Stalin did not technically “own” the wealth, George O’Liber, professor of history at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, points out that he had the power to “control the wealth of the nation”.
5. Empress Wu (624-705)
Estimated net worth today: US$16 trillion
Empress Wu was considered one of China’s cruelest emperors, although history has taught us that female rulers were often treated more harshly than their male counterparts. Photo: Handout
China’s first and only female emperor was intelligent, politically astute – and renowned for being ruthless in the face of her opponents. He ruled the country when China’s economy was about 23 percent of global GDP, which would be about US$16 trillion today.
Despite his sometimes controversial methods of wielding power, he nevertheless built up the country’s wealth by trading tea and silk along the Silk Road, and oversaw the expansion of Imperial China into Central Asia.
4. Akbar I (1542-1605)
Estimated net worth today: US$21 trillion
Akbar I lived far more extravagantly than European leaders of similar wealth at the time. Photo: @akbarthegreat03/Instagram
Abu-Fath Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad Akbar, popularly known as Akbar the Great, was the third emperor to rule the Mughal Empire.
Thanks to his ability to siphon money out of the population, Money.com claims he ruled an empire worth 25 percent of global GDP. According to the economic historian Angus Maddison, the extravagance of Akbar I’s lifestyle easily “surpassed that of European society” in comparison to the wealth of Elizabethan England at the time.
3. Emperor Shenzong (1048-1085)
Estimated net worth today: US$30 trillion
According to Money.com, the sixth emperor of China’s Song dynasty ruled an economically powerful empire that accounted for 25 to 30 percent of the world’s GDP at the time. Historians claim that the empire was years ahead of European governments in terms of effective tax collection, and that its technological innovations and centralized form of governance also added to their wealth.
2. Genghis Khan (1162-1227)
Estimated net worth today: US$120 trillion
The Mongol ruler Genghis Khan established what became the largest contiguous empire in history. Photo: Wikipedia
According to a 2003 scientific report, it is believed that Genghis Khan was so powerful, and his Mongol Empire so extensive, that his DNA can be found in 16 million men today.
And, having built the largest empire ever – which covered most of China and Central Asia during his lifetime, and later expanded to Poland and Vietnam – the richest man is worth around US$120 trillion in today’s money .
1. Mansa Musa (1280-1337)
Estimated net worth … “Incomprehensible”
Landing firmly on the No. 1 spot is a name you probably won’t even recognise. Mansa Musa was the ruler of the Mali Empire, which was extremely rich in land, salt and gold. Historians estimate that the Mali Empire was once the world’s largest gold producer, meaning that its ruler had “incomparable wealth”. While Celebrity Net Worth has estimated his net worth at over US$400 billion, historians believe that the actual number is almost impossible to conclude.
The African monarch was famous for making the most extravagant pilgrimage ever to Mecca, with the BBC reporting that the king left Mali with some 60,000 men, ranging from royal officials to camel drivers and slaves. He spent so much gold during his three-month stay in Cairo that he destabilized the local economy, affecting the price of gold in the region for the next 10 years.