A few days ago, Forbes magazine published its famous and awaited list of the richest people in this planet. As expected, Bill Gates ranked first with his 46,5 KA-ZILLION dollars, not very far away from the runner-up Warren Buffet (with 44 billion thanks to the Berkshire Hathaway company). In Forbe's list you can still find that America continues to house most of the wealth of the world with 12 of the top 25 billionaires (Silvio Berlusconi is number 25 with 12 billion dollars), and almost 50% of the total 691 listed.The latin-american contribution to this list of billionaires begins with the mexican Carlos Slim with 23.8 billion dollars in 4th (FOURTH) position (Mr. Slim apparently owns the whole country). Appart from him, there are other nine mexicans and that's about it in central-american terms. South-America presents itself with 8 brasilians, 3 chileans, 2 colombians, 2 venezuelans, and 1 argentinian.
Although these 26 latinos represent only 3,76% of the total list, it does raise some questions and obvious comments. As a colombian I ask myself the following questions:
1) Does it make sense that in a country with 70% of the population living in extreme poverty, 2 colombians appear ranked 156 and 219 in the Forbe's list of billionaires?
2) How can it be that a country like Finland (Nokia's motherland and most competitive country in the world for many consecutive years) has noone in the list?
The second question might not have one single answer (e.g. huge taxes which have to be payed in Finland...), but i believe that the answer for the first question is: NO. I mean, I do not have anything against these two characters (Julio Mario Santo Domingo and Carlos Sarmiento Angulo). I actually believe that they have done wonderful things and have given job opportunities to thousands in my country. However, this is a clear cause of a terrible wealth distribution which keeps growing and growing everyday.
Now to the point. I wanted to write about this because i have seen that in someway there is a kind of national pride of having colombians included in this list. THIS IS WRONG!!!!! ... and if there is someone who does not agree with me and wants more colombians in a list, then he/she should think about making the list of the poorest people in this world... and then we will have more than 30 million souls contributing to the cause.
Forbe's colombian billionaires
