A recent issue of Forbes magazine, "The Capitalist Tool," as the magazine proclaims, lists the two hundred wealthiest persons in the world, and to nobody’s surprise, Bill Gates, the chairman and founder of Microsoft, heads the list, followed by his good friend, Warren Buffet, Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder, and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s President. According to Associated Press estimates, Bill Gates’ fortune, estimated by Forbes at ninety billion dollars, reached the level of one hundred billion only two months ago, but since then it receded to only ninety billion, reflecting the stock market fluctuations.

The October 1998 issue of American Heritage ranks the wealthiest Americans of all times. To account for inflation, the magazine divides the Gross National Product (GNP) by the estimated worth of the fortunate few to find today’s equivalent value. This way, John D. Rockefeller heads the list with an estimated wealth of nine hundred million dollars in 1913, followed by Andrew Carnegie (estimated worth two hundred fifty million dollars in 1901), Cornelius Vanderbilt (one hundred five million dollars in 1860), John Jacob Aster (twenty million dollars), and William H. Gates, III, as only number five, whose total fortune was estimated as sixty-one billion dollars in 1998. I don’t necessarily agree with Forbes’ effort to show the equivalency between the 1980's and today’s dollars by dividing the GNP by the estimated net worth. There are better methods, such as comparative purchasing power in three basic categories, such as housing, food and clothing, or by comparing the wealth of an individual with the average wealth of a citizen, or his yearly income, or even with the minimum salary.

The fact that individuals such as Vanderbilt, Carnegie or Astor could employ thousands of people as gardeners, butlers, chauffeurs, butlers or maids while many of today’s billionaires drive their own cars or cook their own meals is not a reflection on relative affluence, but on living style which changes with the times; however, the fact remains that one individual can amass the fortune that would require the efforts of one million average people working from age fifteen to their death, with an estimated lifetime income of $300,000.

Regardless of the method used in estimating wealth through history, this country and civilization have a debt to those industrial pioneers who contributed so decisively to our progress. But the question remains: is it necessary? Can we believe that without the disproportionate inducements people like Carnegie, Vanderbilt or Gates would not have followed their basic instinct to build, discover or create?

During the decades of the seventies and eighties, the average income of the American citizen went from first place in 1950 to twelfth or fourteenth in the world. That means that the average Dutch, Belgian, Swede, French, or Japanese citizen earned higher incomes than the average American. With the enormous economic recovery of the Clinton years this situation has been reversed and the income of the average American is on a par with the income of a Swiss or a Japanese citizen. Of course, the costs of living are quite disparate, and a Japanese person would not dream of owning in his small country the large houses that the American takes for granted. On the other hand, the disparity of incomes is never as great abroad as it is here. That means that the income of a company president, which in this country is up to one thousand times that of the lowest paid employee, is only ten times larger in countries like France or Japan. This means that with the exception of Microsoft where every employee is a stockholder and partial owner of the company, the lopsided income of the richest two hundred people affects the national income average, while it is not a real indication of the wealth of the average citizen.