Bill Gates is America's richest man for 22nd straight year

Washington Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates retains the top spot on the Forbes list of America’s 400 richest people for the 22nd straight year with Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump ranked 121st with $4.5 billion. While Gates’ worth is assessed at $76 billion, down $5 billion from 2014, Trump’s is put at $4.5 billion - less than half of what he has been claiming. In a cover story on “What’s Donald Trump Really Worth?”, the US business magazine says “for 33 years, he’s been building and boasting his way higher on The Forbes 400.” [caption id=“attachment_1825963” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Microsoft founder Bill Gates. AP[/caption] “The most paradoxical presidential candidate in a generation”, Forbes says, “claims ‘I look better if I’m worth $10 billion than $4 billion’.” There are four persons of Indian origin also on the list with John Kapoor ranked 194th with a wealth of $3.3 billion followed by Romesh T. Wadhwani (234), Bharat Desai (268) and Kavitark Ram Shriram (358). The combined wealth of the 400 richest people in America is $2.34 trillion, up from $2.29 trillion in 2014 and the highest ever. The average net worth of a Forbes 400 member is an astounding $5.8 billion, the highest to date, up from $5.7 billion last year. Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett ranked number 2 is at $62 billion, down $5 billion from last year. Larry Ellison (3) of Oracle worth $47.5 billion, is down $2.5 billion from last year. Jeff Bezos (4) was the biggest gainer overall, up $16.5 billion, after Amazon reported a quarterly profit in July. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg (#7), worth $40.3 billion, made it into the top 10 for the first time ever. Larry Page of Google with $33.3 billion is ranked tenth. IANS