The Magical Nine-Figure Fortune

Making a nine-figure fortune isn’t what it used to be about a decade and a half ago. This year, for the first time, everyone in The Forbes 400 is worth at least $1 billion.

The collective wealth of America's 400 richest people featuring in the latest Forbes 400 list sums to a record high of 1.25 trillion dollars, as compared to 1.13 trillion dollars only a year ago.

The rising busines trends, swelling real estate, surging stock prices, rolling oil and other asset prices paved the way for 28 new entries in the list while posting 14 dropouts.

Ruling the list for 13th consecutive year is the big boss of Microsoft, Bill Gates with his 53 billon dollar fortune. Warren Buffett, the investment guru-turned-philanthropist, director of the Washington Post Co. bags the second spot with his 46 billion dollars of net worth.

Squeezing in the 400th spot is the Los Angeles semiconductor magnate Sehat Sutardja posting a net worth of 1 billion dollars.

The other interesting aspect of the list, other than all 400being billionaires, is the mind blowing speed at which they made such fortune.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders of Google Inc. featuring at 12th and 13th spot respectively, made about $26 million per day over the past two years.

Sheldon Adelson, the casino tycoon gained 12 spots and reached No. 3 after making about $1 million a hour for last two years. He posted a net worth of 20.5 billion dollars.

But not everybody is convinced with the billionaire boom hitting the American economy. Pointing towards the slow economic growth rate in U.S., Dean Baker, a macroeconomist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington said, “U.S. economic growth in the past 25 years - the period that hatched this crop of billionaires - is actually slower than in the preceding quarter-century, which produced only 13 billionaires.”

Harvard University professor Larry Katz feels that this growth in the number of billionaires can be significantly attributed to paying of lower taxes. He said, “Today's marginal tax rate for the richest Americans is 35 percent, down from more than 60 percent 25 years ago.”

An interesting feature is that America has shown a concentrated growth, out of the 400 American billionaires, 89 hail from California, while 44 belong to New York City.