A fortune of $198 billion is likely to help Elon Musk overcome his fall to the second place of the richest people in the world.
According to the index of billionaires of the Bloomberg economic agency, Jeff Bezos, the boss of Amazon, took the first place, with exactly 200 billion dollars.
During the last year, Musk lost about 31 billion dollars, while Bezos gained 23 billion dollars.
Shares of Tesla, the electric car brand owned by Musk, fell more than seven percent on Monday.
Musk previously reclaimed the title of the world's richest person in May 2023, ousting LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault, who heads the conglomerate that includes brands such as Louis Vuitton and Dior, from the top spot.
They have doubled their assets since the pandemic
The three so-called centi-billionaires - because they have a three-digit number of billions - Musk, Arno and Bezos have been "competing" for the first place for months.
Of course, they don't keep that money in a safe, but it's primarily about the value of the companies they manage, so the outcome changes quickly, depending on the stock market and the market.
While a team of billionaires amuse themselves by flying into space, buying social networks and media that then write for them - Musk bought Twitter, and Bezos bought the Washington Post - the poor are getting poorer and poorer.
This follows from a report by the Oxfam organization published in January.
It warns that the five richest people have doubled their wealth since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. Their companies, like Amazon, have profited from the lockdown and the ruination of the classical economy.
A fairer economy is possible, in theory
At the same time, 60 percent of the poorest people in the world (about five billion people) have less today than they did four years ago. Oxfam states that people are working more and have less.
The first woman of Oxfam, Alima Shivji, warned that at this rate, poverty in the world would only be eradicated in 229 years, but that we will have the first billionaire in ten years.
"This widening chasm between the rich and the rest is neither a coincidence nor inevitable." "Governments around the world are deliberately pursuing policies that enable and encourage the perverse concentration of wealth while hundreds of millions of people live in poverty," Shivji said in January.
And she added: "A fairer economy is possible, one that benefits everyone." We need policies that introduce fair taxation and support for everyone, not just the privileged."
