READING 3 Billionaires

Billionaires Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg

Billionaires

Read the following article. Pay special attention to the words in bold. 14.4

It’s hard to imagine having over a billion dollars. Only about 2,100 people in the world are billionaires. The United States leads the world with the largest number. In 2018, the United States had over 500 billionaires. At the top of the list is Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, with over $130 billion. Another area of the world that produces a large number of billionaires is China, with close to 400.

As hard as it is to imagine having over a billion dollars, try to imagine accumulating1 this wealth before the age of 40! In 2018, Kylie Jenner became the youngest self-made billionaire ever at the age of 21. In 2014, a financial website, Bankrate.com, listed the 10 youngest billionaires in the world at the time. The richest, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, now has a net worth of over $62 billion. But he’s not the only one to get rich from Facebook. Another person who became a billionaire from Facebook is Dustin Moskovitz. While other billionaires prefer to live a life of luxury, Moskovitz rides his bike to work and flies commercial airlines. Both Zuckerberg and Moskovitz have signed the Giving Pledge, which Warren Buffet and another famous billionaire, Bill Gates, started. The Giving Pledge has gotten the commitment2 of Zuckerberg, Moskovitz, and others to give the majority of their wealth to philanthropy3 while they’re still alive.

The second richest person on Bankrate’s list in 2014 was Yang Huiyan, from China. She made her money in real estate. She also inherited money from her father. She was the only woman on the list of young billionaires in 2014. All the others were men. With over $22 billion in 2018, she is on the list of global billionaires along with 241 other women.

Some of the billionaires on the list became rich mainly by inheriting family money. One of these is Fahd Hariri of Lebanon. He and his five siblings inherited their father’s wealth when their father, the prime minister of Lebanon, was assassinated4 in 2005. Hariri now owns a furniture company, which supplies furniture to other wealthy people, mostly in Saudi Arabia.

If we think about inheriting this large amount of money, we might think of what a nice life we can have. On the other hand, we might think, “Would easy money kill our motivation?”

1 to accumulate: to gather together 2 commitment: a promise 3 philanthropy: the practice of giving money to people in need 4 to assassinate: to kill