Who Is Rich In The US? 10 Wealthiest People In America

Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates attends the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 19, 2017. Reuters

One of the world’s most well-known dichotomies is the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots, or the one percent and the 99 percent, as popularized by the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011.

And it’s true: There’s an enormous wealth gap in the U.S. Indeed, Americans had a total of $67 trillion in 2013, and the top 10 percent of Americans owned more than three-fourths — 76 percent — of that wealth.

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The families in the top 10 percent all had at least $942,000 in their name, and the average amount of wealth was $4 million per family, according to a report released by the Congressional Budget Office last year. The rest of top 50 percent of families in the U.S. had an average of $316,000 per family. That means they accounted for 23 percent of the total wealth in the U.S.

If you’re good at math, you already know what’s next: The bottom half of Americans only own 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.

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The top ten richest people in the U.S, in contrast, were all white, billionaire businessmen in 2016, according to Forbes. The poorest among them was worth $37.5 billion.

1. Bill Gates

Co-founder of Microsoft

Net worth: $81 billion

Age: 61

2. Jeff Bezos

Founder of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post

Net worth: $67 billion

Age: 53