Who is the richest person in America?
Critical Analysis
Find answers to the following questions using the visual above, any links below, your big brain, and your knowledge of American government and politics:
According to the data from the visual, who is the richest person in America?
According to the data from the visual, who is the richest person in your state?
According to the data, how many states have at least one high net worth individual worth over $100 billion?
What is the biggest surprise in the data and what question do you have about the visual above?
As of March 2025 there were approximately 902 billionaires in the U.S. according to NPR's reporting on the Forbes 2025 Billionaires List. This figure represents the most billionaires of any country in the world! According to the data from the visual above, how many states have zero billionaires?
Forbes does not list the richest teachers in each state. According to the visual above, how many of the richest people in each state are women and why do you think there are more men than women on the list?
Elon Musk is the richest man in the world. Depending on who is counting his net worth is more than $400 billion. That's more than the GDP (annual income) of almost any country. Until recently, John D. Rockefeller’s 1.5% share of U.S. GDP was the benchmark for entrepreneurial wealth. Today, Elon Musk has surpassed this milestone. With an estimated net worth of $437 billion, representing 1.6% of U.S. GDP, Musk now holds the title of the wealthiest entrepreneur in modern history. It will take Elon Musk 673 years to exhaust his wealth if he spent $1m daily. How long would it take you to exhaust your fortune if you spent $1million a day? What does that make you think about fairness and justice?
Warren Buffett, America’s 9th richest individual, was born in 1930. Would you trade age and money with him? In other words, you get $150 billion but you also become 95 (at press time) years old. And do you think he would trade with you?
According to OpenSecrets, outside spending for the 2024 election outpaced all previous cycles, with outside spending — largely through independent expenditures purchased by super PACs and hybrid PACs — reaching $4.3 billion, over a billion dollars more than outside groups had spent by the same point in 2020. What effect does all this dark and unaccountable money have on the American political system?
In class the other day a student named Jameis said that because of the ruling in Citizens United v. FEC (2010) which basically allows for unlimited spending on elections, the U.S. is no longer a democracy (government by the people) but is an plutocracy (government by the rich.) Explain whether you agree with Jameis.
Write and Discuss
Take ten minutes to write about the question at the top of the page and then discuss with your classmates.
Act on your Learning
The youngest billionaire in America is Edwin Chen Age: 37 | Net worth: $18 billion | Source of wealth: Artificial intelligence. Chen studied math, computer science and linguistics at MIT before doing stints in machine learning across the tech trifecta of Google, Facebook and Twitter. Frustrated by what he saw as the lack of quality training data for AI, he launched Surge AI in 2020 to fix the problem. Bootstrapped from day one, Chen says he scaled the company without a dollar of external funding past $1 billion in annual revenue in just five years. Forbes estimates that the company is now worth $24 billion, making Chen’s estimated 75% ownership stake worth $18 billion. Contact Edwin Chen at Surge AI: team@surgehq.ai and ask him for some money.
Get Creative
The 39th annual version of the Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest people is out now and includes 3,028 billionaires, the most ever recorded by Forbes. The annual world's billionaires list has $2 trillion more in wealth from just a year ago. In total, they have an estimated $16.1 trillion in riches. "It's a great time to be a billionaire," Peterson-Withorn said. When was it not a great time to be a billionaire? Make a list of the best GoPo teacher in your state and then share it with me on the comments section below and we will use your data to make our own best GoPo teachers in every state list.
