A Daily Ranking of the Rich

On Tuesday, Jia talked about how she often finds herself falling down an Internet k-hole while looking at the Harper’s Index. I just learned a bunch of things while looking at the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which is a ranking of the world’s richest people. Oh, but it is so much more than a simple ranking! Its “Intelligence” section is full of fun facts. For example:

• Carlos Slim, the world’s richest man, doesn’t have a computer and loves the New York Yankees.
• The second richest man in the world, Bill Gates, paid the Rolling Stones $10 million for the rights to use “Start Me Up.” He also owns Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester.
• The richest woman in the world is Christy Walton, who owns 12 percent of the Wal-Mart empire. Her husband died in 2005 after his homebuilt aircraft crashed.
• David Thomson, the patriarch of Canada’s richest family who owns 55 percent of Thomson Reuters, flies coach between Toronto and Winnipeg.
• Liliane Bettencourt, Europe’s richest woman who owns 31 percent of L’Oreal, advocates higher taxes for France’s rich people.

I could spend hours reading through this thing, but I’m going to pull myself away from it because I’m never going to become a billionaire if I spend all of my time in this k-hole.

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