The 2010 Forbes Rich List is out and for the first time in 15 years, an American is not in the top spot of the top 10. Microsoft co-founder and former-Chairman Bill Gates (or William Gates III) is not number one and neither is Warren Buffett. This year, Bill Gates, the 2009 leader, was replaced by Mexican telecommunications mogul Carlos Slim.
On ABC's Nightline Wednesday, much was made of the fact that fewer Americans were in the top-10; in 2005 five of the ten on the list were American. But this should come as no surprise considering the last 30-years of American assistance in the development of the multinational economy. Three decades of "outsourcing" of jobs - sending American jobs to countries like Mexico and India - has created the wealth base in those countries that allows the purchase of goods and services produced by the people who runs the businesses that caused them to reach the Forbes Rich List.
Over the last three decades, America has lost over $976 billion in job-generated wealth; over $400 billion of that in just the last eight years. The reason is America never installed a really coordinated industrial policy to improve and maintain key export industries.
In the case of telecommunications, which is Carlos Slim's area, America was the call center for the World in the 1980s; today call centers are primarily in India, Mexico, Canada, and Asia and over the years those countries have subsidized the growth of the telecom industry.
In the case of France's Bernard Arnault, who's number 7 on the list, French government subsidies helped him acquire a textile company Boussac, which owns Christian Dior. Arnault sold off all assets, save for the luxury Christian Dior brand and the Le Bon Marché department store. The Arnault family only used $15 million of its own money according to Wikipedia.
And the Forbes Rich List Top 10 may one day have no Americans on it; right now there are only three: Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Warren Buffett.
Stay tuned.
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