After SpaceX stars in , Elon Musk’s fortune is expected to exceed US$1 trillion. Today, he is already the richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, with assets that include US$167 billion in Tesla (), around US$538 billion from his pre-IPO shares in SpaceX (), in addition to around US$150 billion in stock options from these companies.
Now, after the IPO, Musk becomes the first trillionaire in recent history – a value so high that it is difficult to comprehend and which represents the sum of the fortunes of the other four richest people in the world: the co-founders of Google (), Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founder of Amazon (), Jeff Bezos, and the founder of Oracle (), Larry Ellison.
This does not mean, however, that the South African businessman is the richest person who has ever lived. This is because comparing wealth throughout history is a difficult process due to differences in purchasing power and standard of living. Still, Musk is on track to have a fortune that exceeds the annual economic activity of more than 125 countries, including his native South Africa, as well as Norway, Argentina and Thailand.
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The trillionaire will also control a larger share of the US economy than the 19th century American tycoons who ushered in the industrial era, such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie.
John D. Rockefeller, for example, was born in 1839 and multiplied his fortune by transforming Standard Oil into an empire. He accumulated about $1.4 billion by 1937, equivalent to about 1.5% of American GDP at the time. Musk’s assets, however, will be equivalent to 3% of the current GDP of the United States.
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Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, also frequently cited among the richest people in history, accumulated a fortune of around US$380 million, a value equivalent to approximately 0.5% of US GDP at the time of his death in 1919.
Long before Musk, Rockefeller and Carnegie, however, the first superbanker in history, Jakob Fugger, earned the suggestive nickname ‘The Rich One’. Born in Augsburg, Germany, in 1459, the banker and merchant was the first to practice trade on a global scale, according to his biography, Fugger: The richest man who ever lived, published in 2015.
Greg Steinmetz, former correspondent for The Wall Street Journal in Germany and author of the book, defended the title, in an interview with the BBC, stating that, “in the Renaissance, the time in which Fugger lived, the world was controlled by two figures: the Roman emperor and the pope. And Fugger financed both of them.” The banker was also one of the financiers of Cristóvão Colombo and Fernão de Magalhães.
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Historians estimate that Fugger’s fortune would be around ‘just’ US$400 billion. However, depending on the calculation, this represented up to 10% of the European economy at the time.
Trillionaires
In nominal terms there have also been other trillionaires. Catherine the Great, empress of Russia between 1762 and 1796, controlled an important share of the Russian GDP. According to estimates, his adjusted fortune would be close to US$1.5 trillion.
The Roman emperor Augustus Caesar would have gone even further: controlling the equivalent of a fifth of the economy of the entire empire. The estimate is that his fortune would approach an adjusted US$4.6 trillion.
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But, at least until now, no one has come close to the African king Musa Keita I. Musa took the title of Mansa, which means king, and ruled the Mali Empire from 1312. Under his rule were the territories of present-day Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria and Chad.
His fortune was not known until 1324, when, together with an entourage made up of tens of thousands of soldiers, pilgrims, servants and scholars, he made a pilgrimage to Mecca. On the way, when passing through Egypt, Mansa Musa would have donated so much money that he caused a financial crisis with inflation that would take years to end.
At the time, Musa’s fortune represented a third of all world gold production at a time when the metal was the main global currency. Therefore, according to experts, it is impossible to calculate the real size of his fortune.
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Philanthropy
The history of many of these billionaires (or trillionaires) is also linked to philanthropy. Gilded Age tycoons in the United States, for example, were prolific philanthropists and, in addition to donating large amounts to support causes, they also built libraries, universities, museums and hospitals.
Fugger, in turn, financed one of the first housing projects in the world, called Fuggerei. There, residents pay the same rent as 500 years ago, a value that today is less than 1 euro per year.
Musk has also donated billions of dollars in shares to charities, according to US regulatory filings, and has pledged millions to different causes. However, his philanthropic activities receive criticism. The New York Times called Musk’s donations “random and largely self-serving — making him eligible for huge tax benefits and helping his business.”
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