I have a love/hate relationship with the Forbes Billionaires List. I love it because my name is on it, sort of. I hate it because the person the name represents isn't really me.
My name is Chris Walton or Christopher Walton. With the name Christopher, I might have been called "Christy" if I had lived some time in the late 1800's or early 1900's. It used to be a common boy's nickname. The most famous male Christies are hall of fame baseball pitcher Christy Mathewson and writer Christy Brown, who was played by Daniel Day-Lewis in the movie "My Left Foot". The part gave Day-Lewis the first of his so-far three Oscars.
But in the modern world, most everyone named Christy is a female. And that includes Christy Walton. Christy is the widow of John T. Walton, who was a flying enthusiast and died crashing a plane in 2005. He was also the son of Sam Walton, who founded Walmart. I've heard that Christy's friends call her "Chris", so it's not a lie if I tell people that Chris Walton is on the list of billionaires.
The list itself is released every year by Forbes magazine. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, returned to the top of the list this year after four years at number two. Gates has a net worth of 76 billion dollars. That puts him four billion ahead of Carlos Slim Helu, the cellphone king of Mexico, who was the world's richest individual from 2009 to 2012. Gates has been number one for 15 of the past 20 years.
This year's list includes a new record number of 1,645 billionaires. That's up from 1,426 in 2013. The net worth of all billionaires combined is 6.4 trillion dollars. Only 172 billionaires are women. That's up from 138 last year. Christy Walton is the richest female with 36.7 billion dollars, and she's the ninth richest person overall.
If I could go back and re-do the 1990's, I'd try to spend all my time learning about computers and the Internet. Some of those who did are well represented on the Forbes list. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google, are worth 32 and 31 billion dollars, respectively. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, is also worth 32 billion. And Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is now worth more than 28 billion.
1,080 of the world's billionaires, or about two-thirds, made the money themselves through inventions or business. The other third inherited theirs. And that includes all of the Walmart Waltons. Together, the family is worth 150 billion dollars. That means the family could, if they wanted to, give at least one million dollars to everyone named Walton in the world. And I wish they would, if only because I'm getting really tired of holding my breath.
