Monaco
According to the list of the world’s billionaires released by Forbes the United States isn’t even in the top 1o. At the top the list is a tiny country with a relatively small but proportionally large number of billionaires. That country is Monaco. Monaco has three billionaires—specifically, David and Ezra Nahmad, two brothers who are art “megadealers,” along with Lily Safra, the widow of a wealthy banker.
Coming in second and third after Monaco are two other tiny states: St. Kitts and Nevis (a 104-square-mile sovereignty in the Caribbean) and Guernsey (a British Crown dependency). The U.S. comes in at 14th in between Lebanon and Norway—even socialistic Sweden (12th) has more billionaires per capita than we do. China comes in 57th place, or eighth from the bottom.
Here’s the top 10 (number of billionaires/estimated population):
1. Monaco (3/35,427)
2. St. Kitts and Nevis (1/53,051)
3. Guernsey (1/65,573)
4. Hong Kong (39/7.1 million)
5. Belize (1/356,600)
6. Cyprus (3/1.1 million)
7. Israel (17/7.8 million)
8. Singapore (10/5.2 million)
9. Kuwait (5/2.8 million)
10. Switzerland (13/7.9 million)
And the bottom five? Romania, India, Nepal, Nigeria, and Vietnam. India has 55 billionaires, which seems respectable until you realize that Germany has 58 billionaires with 6 percent of India’s population.
Photo credit: Enjoy Your Holiday
Via Slate
