A man's wealth can be assessed in many ways, two of them being by the mountain of his bank account and the value of his properties. And in these things of assessing the significance, in real terms, of the true value of money, one loses sight of how much it could impact people's lives.
Here it is only shown what money belonging to a single man in the world can mean in reality, which the esteemed reader is invited to digress into...
Bluntly, the richest man in the world is South African Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. His fortune, which approaches $300 billion according to Forbes' real-time rankings of the world's richest people as of 22.04.2022 ($270.4 billion), is more than half the combined fortunes of the other two richest men in the world who complete the trio, Jeff Bezos (174.1 billion) and Bernard Arnault and Family (170.1 billion).
Just to see, the difference in Musk and Bezos' fortunes would make another $96.3 billion multimillionaire. Jeff Bezos, the second on the list, is the owner of Amazon and Blue Origin, Space X's space rival.
The middle-aged South African is the most recent Twitter board member, has more than twice the wealth of legendary investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, who started investing in 1941, when he was 11 years old. The assets of the 91-year-old "Oracle of Omaha" are valued at "only" around $125 billion.
Musk is also worth significantly more than the combined fortunes of former Microsoft CEOs Bill Gates (136 billion) and Steve Ballmer (100 billion). So are Google co-founders Larry Page (120 billion) and Sergey Brin (115 billion).
Elon Musk could buy all 32 American soccer teams (they are worth over $112 billion) and he would still have almost $190 billion left over.
Elon Musk is worth only about $35 billion less than the gross domestic product of his home country, South Africa, whose GDP is $335 billion, according to the World Bank.
Elon Musk's wealth is more than 19.28 times the result of what Mozambique produces in goods and services, because according to the World Bank, the national GDP is $14.02 billion.
With a look at the Final Investment Decision on the Rovuma gas project made by ENI in 2020 of $7 billion, it is suggested that Musk, he alone, could invest 38.62 times in that project.
Musk is clearly in uncharted territory when it comes to fortunes. He is the richest person ever, according to Forbes.
Still, some experts argue that other 19th and 20th century American industrialists, such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, as well as monarchs and rulers, such as Mansa Musa of the 13th century Mali Empire and Caesar Augustus, who ruled from 27 B.C. until his death in 14 A.D., may have been even wealthier, if adjusted for inflation.