Why Be a Billionaire?

Deconstructing Forbes' annual list.
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Friday, March 24, 2006, at 6:08 AM ET

Forbes magazine has published its annual list of the world's billionaires. On the Web site, there are convenient links to sermonettes in Forbes over the years about how the population explosion at the tippy-top of the wealth scale demonstrates the power of human gumption and the glory of the capitalist system. Twenty years ago, according to Forbes' lists, there were 140 billionaires. Three years ago there were 476. This year there are 793; each has an average net worth of $3.3 billion.

Nevertheless, billionaires remain a mystery. And it's a mystery at the heart of our economic system. There isn't six times as much gumption in the world as there was two decades ago. Free enterprise, or something like it, has spread to Third World and former Communist countries, and this is reflected in the appearance of Russians, Chinese, and Indians on the Forbes list. But that cannot explain the large increase in American billionaires.