(Map altered to fit)

Largest Country not on the list: Indonesia
Smallest Country on the list: United Arab Emirates


A friend of mine from Hong Kong pointed me towards the Forbes Richest list. He was bragging that his small country has the most billionaires per capita in the world.

Impressive? Hell no.
I've long held that a sure sign of success in the world is a high GDP with a relatively even distribution of wealth. Without wishing to sound all Commie, I can't help noticing how many of the countries listed above are among those with the most uneven balance between rich and poor. Of particular note are Israel, Ireland, Turkey and the US.


Which leads me into my point:

Wealth is always perceived as being the primary indicator of success. Everybody thinks that Donald Trump, for example, is a 'Somebody'. Why? Its purely because he's rich, isn't it? What do we know about his charitable contributions or how well he treats his dog?


Its hard to tell who are worse, the people who devolte their lives to the sccumulation of huge wads of cash or the rest of us who parasitically pander to them.


I'm not naive enough to suggest that this will ever change, but there is one statistic that would have a huge impace (in the US at least), and that's the Forbes list itself.


You know for a fact that as soon as the list comes out, a fair proportion of the world's wealthiest people (I consciously avoid the word 'elite') can't wait to take a look to see where they're ranked.


Some of them even hold back on their philanthropic gestures in case the couple of bucks they give to the Pensacola Donkey Sanctuary puts them just behind Sir Johnny Heafty-Options.


What would happen, if Forbes, instead of printing a list of the 'world's richest', printed a list of the world's greatest philanthropists?


I'll bet we'd see a few more billionaires stepping forward to do something magnanimous instead of buyingup large chunks of the Caribbean.