I am a journalist, trained as a journalist, but I spent most of my last 35 years as an anthropologist. I've kind of been embedded with a very unique subspecies. You might know them by their Latin name, Billionarius Maximus. And uh when I got to Forbes out of college in 1991, there were all of 274 billionaires in the world. It was a very aspirational little club. You know, Bruno Mars in his song Billionaire sings of dreaming of being on the cover of Forbes magazine, standing next to Oprah and the Queen. Well, you know, fast forward, if we did that cover now, it would be very crowded. Forbes tracks 3,428 people we believe have a net worth right now of a billion dollars or more. And they all have one thing in common. Who wants to know the secret uh of every billionaire right now in the world, which is nobody likes them. Uh Forbes and Harris X, we conducted a survey a couple weeks ago, 1,009 Americans. The results are not good. Uh trial lawyers are kicking billionaires' ass. They are tied with members of Congress. They are barely beating TikTok influencers.

But there's a disconnect going on right now because the world needs billionaires. The world desperately needs billionaires. If you look at countries that have billionaires, they tend to have all the things that we all love, progress, jobs, growth. Let's go to China. At the beginning of this century, there were no Chinese billionaires on the Forbes list, and almost 500 million people living in extreme poverty. Fast forward 20 years, it's almost the opposite. Almost 500 Chinese billionaires and no one living in extreme poverty. That is not a coincidence. If you go to Nigeria, one of the largest countries in the world by population, only four billionaires, but 100 million people live in extreme poverty. There are no billionaires in Cuba. There are no billionaires in Iran. There are no billionaires in in Belarus. History shows that incentive creates personal wealth and societal wealth. When you cap earnings, that correlate with repression and stagnation.

So, why all the hate? Why all the hate? Wealth disparity is some of it. In a few weeks, if [snorts] SpaceX goes public as scheduled, Forbes believes that at that moment, Elon Musk will become the world's first trillionaire. That's a million million. But here's the deal. Elon is no richer not much richer at least com- when you measure by GDP as John D. Rockefeller when he became the world's first billionaire 100 years ago. John D. Rockefeller, he was an OG monopolist. But by the end of his life doing lots of good works, he was highly respected. Andrew Carnegie, even more so. People don't resent billionaires. People want to become billionaires. People resent billionaires when they forget that the purpose of business is to create happiness, not who dies with the most toys.

[applause] >> So, here's the here's the scorecard. Right now, here are the five richest people in the world, all Americans, all with a net worth north of 200 million dollars. Forbes tracks pretty much every billionaire in terms of how much they give to charity, how much winds up end result goes into charity. Right now, these five collectively, compared to their net worth, less than 1% of their net worth has been donated to charity, 0.9%. Compare that with the average American, teacher, fireman, gives 2% of his or her income to charity. That gap, as somebody who loves entrepreneurial capitalism and defends entrepreneurial capital capitalism, bothers me. That gap is why there are pitchforks. But that gap is something we can address and we can address by leaning into the final decision-maker that a lot of billionaires have when they decide if they're going to be philanthropic or not, which is their egos. It turns out that a lot of people care about where they are on various Forbes lists. In fact, in 1982, the very first Forbes 400, we had one tycoon who helped us create an immutable law of wealth tracking, the Trump rule. Take what the Donald tells you, divide by three, and refine from there. Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed created an entire public company basically to get higher on the Forbes list. Every year before the Forbes issue came out, the Billionaires issue, he would buy up his own stock, pump up his own stock, and after it came out, he would sell it. Look, it's like a 10-digit cardiogram there. Kylie Jenner Steen gave us what we believe are bogus numbers about her company to get onto the Forbes Billionaires list, and she's not even the thirstiest member of the Kardashian family. During COVID, Kanye West called me maybe every other day. We talked about an hour at a time, mostly about how he thinks he was richer than we said he was. When we respectfully disagreed, he respectfully responded by tweeting my cell phone to 30 million followers on Twitter. That was a tough day. I was >> [laughter] >> But Kanye inspired an idea. Why can't we lean into this strange leverage we have over some people? Why can't we create a list that rewards people for donating to charity versus penalize them by taking further down on the Forbes list? >> [applause] >> So, we created something called True Net Worth, and we're going to debut it right here. >> [applause and cheering] >> True Net Worth is your regular net worth combined with the money you've donated that we appreciate like you still own it. >> [applause]

Here are a refresher, here are the top five in the world. Here are the top five by True Net Worth. >> [applause] >> Look at my friend Look at my friend Warren Buffett. He's already given more away in today's dollars than he still has. He's pledged 99% of what's left to charity, and he's stipulated that all that money has to be spent down within 10 years of his death as opposed to just sitting in a foundation gathering interest for years. That >> [applause] >> That's true That's true net worth. Now, let's look at the biggest movers on this list. >> [cheering] [applause] >> MacKenzie Scott is giving away money faster, smarter, no strings attached than pretty much anyone in history. She's the 84th richest person in the world by net worth, she's 26 by True Net Worth. >> [applause] >> People don't value what you can't measure. True Net Worth offers role models for billionaires, for millionaires, for thousandaires. Give while you live. Give faster and bigger maybe than you're comfortable with. Give your money or your time. But what all of it does is support the system that makes all of us prosperous. Thank you. >> [applause]