Taking another look at America’s superentrepreneurs

So how did the richest Americans get that way? Through government largess, such as crony contracts and bailouts? No, they didn’t. Glance at the new Forbes 400 list, and you will see massive entrepreneurial fortunes built on the ability to expertly exploit the latest advances in information technology, not political connections. Among the tech superbillionaires: Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, the Google Guys, and Mark Zuckerberg. 

But the digital economy also played a key role in the wealth of some other folks not typically thought of as “tech billionaires.” Certainly the microprocessor and internet have played a big role in building Michael Bloomberg’s wealth. His company describes the famous Bloomberg Terminal as a “data, analytics and information-delivery service.”

Then there is the Walton family. They’re another kind of tech billionaire. As George Will notes in his new book, “The Conservative Sensibility,” (keying off the analysis of business historian John Steele Gordon) the family’s collective wealth has “depended on Walmart’s worldwide system of precise inventory control and logistics, which would be impossible without the microprocessor.”

(Now the big exception at the top of the list is Warren Buffett, whose $80 billion fortune puts him in the third slot. Of course, one might describe his brain as the most impressive microprocessor of all.)

The big point here is that all of the sudden concern about wealth inequality should factor in an acknowledgement of how so many American fortunes are built. It’s of our economy’s superpowers.  Again, one of my favorite charts: