A Brief History of Wealth Creation
The grandeur of the Roman Empire was built on the aggregation of wealth. Using its superior military organization, Rome conquered its neighbors, took their gold and silver and sold their populations into slavery. When the empire ran out of neighbors, the Roman economy began to falter.
In 1982, the first year of the Forbes 400, it took $100 million to make the list, and the wealthiest American was Daniel Keith Ludwig, worth $2 billion. In today’s dollars, those figures are approximately $346 million and $6.9 billion.
In 2025 it took $3.8 billion to make the list, and the man at the top was Elon Musk, worth $428 billion as calculated on Sept. 1.
How did this rapid increase in wealth come to be? Simple: the microprocessor and the internet. Whenever a new technology greatly reduces the cost of a major input into the economy, the cost of goods and services drops and an influx of new fortunes quickly follows.
Before the Industrial Revolution, fortunes were based on land or trade. Energy was provided by muscle power, windmills and water wheels.
Then in 1781 James Watt patented a rotary steam engine that could turn a shaft and thus power a factory. Unlike water wheels, steam engines could be scaled to almost any size. The Industrial Revolution moved into high gear because energy was suddenly cheap. That reduced the price of industrial goods for everyone while increasing profit for the owners.
