Who wants to be a billionaire? Chances are, most of us. And the next best thing? Getting a slice of the pie from other billionaires.
GOBankingRates posed a hypothetical question: If the wealth of everyone on the Forbes World’s Billionaires List 2025 were to have their money equally divided and given to every American, how much would each person receive?
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Working with Jamie Wall, a personal finance strategist at Gamblizard, GOBankingRates looks at the math and finds out how much money the average American would get in this scenario.
Adding Up the Money
According to Wall, Forbes reports the combined value of the more than 3,000 billionaires in the world is approximately $16.1 trillion in 2025. Additionally, in the same year, the U.S. population is roughly around 340 million people. Therefore, if these billionaires were to distribute all of their combined wealth evenly, each American would receive roughly $47,000.
“That sounds promising at first blush, but let’s put that in context,” Wall commented. “$47,000 may help pay off some bills and even help support a few months, but that’s not something that will make anyone permanently wealthy.”
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Breaking Down Billionaires’ Wealth
Even though $16 trillion is massive, Wall highlighted that amount would actually be a small amount compared to the entire U.S. economy which he described “is around $28 trillion annually, and splitting it across hundreds of millions of people means it’s more of a bump in finances than a way to raise the stakes economically.”
“The real issue is that billionaire wealth cannot be cashed in and taken away,” Wall continued. “Most of their money is held in shares of companies and in assets that lose value the moment you try to liquidate them. If everyone suddenly sold their shares and redistributed via checks, the markets would crash, jobs would dry up and the pot would significantly shrink.”
One-Time Payment vs. Legacy Wealth
Even if these billionaires could somehow give away their combined wealth, Wall pointed out that it would be different than actually acquiring wealth over time. He called it a “one-time adrenaline rush, as people would spend and pay down debt, but within a couple of years, the wealth gap would appear again, because inequality is not only about who owns money, but also about who owns systems that generate more money over time.”
“If you divided all billionaire wealth, everyone would be happy to receive a check, but it wouldn’t shift any structural barriers that create new billionaires tomorrow,” concluded Wall. “True equality is the ability to give the tools and opportunity to play the long game.”
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: How Much Would You Get If Forbes’ Billionaires Wealth Was Distributed Equally
