WA Billionaires Now Much Richer, Forbes List Reports

SEATTLE, WA - Local tech giants Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are the top 400 wealthiest Americans this year, according to the annual Forbes ranking of richest people in the country. Those two men saw enormous wealth gains since October 2017: Gates up $8 billion, and Bezos up a whopping $80 billion.

With just that combined $88 billion wealth gains, Bezos and Gates could: operate the city of Seattle (the whole thing) at current levels for 14 years; pay for the Sound Transit 3 package and still have $38 billion left over; pay for the Tacoma I-5 HOV lane project 58 times over; buy all 12,112 homeless people in King County a $700,000 home and send them all to the University of Washington for four years.

Overall, the 400 richest Americans have a massive amount of wealth. According to Forbes, the minimum net worth needed to join the list in 2018 was $2.1 billion, the highest amount ever for admission. In all, Forbes says the net worth of the 400 was a record high of $2.9 trillion and half of that belongs to just the 45 richest people in the country.

In Washington, 10 residents made it to the elite club. Those residents are:

1. Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder - $160 billion; philanthropy score: 2
2. Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder - $97 billion; philanthropy score: 5
3. Steve Ballmer, former Microsoft exec - $42.3 billion; philanthropy score: 4
4. Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder - $20.3 billion; philanthropy score: 5
5. Gabe Newell, Valve Corp. CEO - $3.9 billion; philanthropy score: N/A
6. Ken Fisher, Fisher Investments chairman - $3.8 billion; philanthropy score: 1
7. James Jannard, Oakley founder - $3 billion; philanthropy score: N/A
8. Howard Schultz, former Starbucks CEO - $2.9 billion; philanthropy score: 3
9. Charles Simonyi, Microsoft employee - $2.9 billion; philanthropy score: 3
10. Chuck Bundrant, co-founder Trident Seafoods - $2.4 billion; philanthropy score: 1

Some other notable points from Forbes’ reporting:

• 57 women were on the list
• Those with self-made fortunes vastly outnumber those with inherited wealth
• President Donald Trump dropped 11 spots on the list compared to 2017, coming in at No. 259; see the New York Times account of how Trump accumulated his wealth, which differs significantly from the president’s account.

Forbes’ takes a hard and thorough look at the wealth of those on the list to figure out just how much they’re worth. Reporters at Forbes conduct interviews, look over documents, assets and factor in debt in their calculations. (You can see a more detailed methodology here.)

Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, right, high-five prior to their celebrity pro-am set during the Schick XTreme III Tennis Challenge at the Key Arena in Seattle in 2001.

Photo by Jeff Vinnick/Allsport