Beyond the Numbers: Ranking the Super-Rich

Sept. 21, 2006 — -- Sure, you've banked a billion dollars and now you're on the Forbes list of richest Americans. It's great that you're rich, but what kind of rich are you?

The world's most famous capitalist magazine has been on newsstands since 1917, and the editors have been compiling the rich list for 24 years.

Every year an editor and reporters spend about six months compiling the vaunted list and have to come up with some interesting way to slice and dice the top roster of American wealth.

Just plastering the richest at the top and the poorest -- if you can call them that -- at the bottom would be, well, boring.

This year Forbes associate editor Matt Miller donned his thinking cap and came up with 13 categories that allowed all 400 members of the super-rich club to be presented in a comprehensible way. They're organized according to the industries in which they made their fortunes.

"It's more interesting to the reader to divvy them up this way," Miller said. "People like to compare to their competitors -- their peers."

For example, the moneyed class from science, medicine and insurance all live in a paper neighborhood called Healers & Dealers. The traditional manufacturing moguls all hang out in the Bricks & Mortar section of the 'zine.

Forbes 400 Categories -- 2006:

The annual cross-tabbing of the rich list reveals much more than what was on the editor's mind. You can spot economic trends in there.

"Every year, there are fewer and fewer manufacturing guys on the list," Miller said. "That category has been in there since the beginning of the list, but as the American manufacturing sector has waned, we've seen its numbers dwindle."

Needless to say, the ranks of the Petro Princes (oil and energy) and Land Lords (real estate) have both grown in the past years as those industries have flourished.

The largest group by far are the Cash Kings. They are the people who profited by buying and selling in the banking and finance sector.

"We've been adding hedge fund guys over the past few years," Miller said. "They're not pushing the old corporate raiders off the list, but they're certainly gaining more and more members every year."

There are 82 wealthy members of that Cash Kings class, nearly twice as many as in the next largest class, the Courtesy Callers, who racked up a fortune in the service sector.

The oldest group, at an average age of 71.1 years, were the Taste Makers. They got rich satisfying the American palette with food of all types.

Not surprisingly, the youngest group is the Technocrats, the people who made money by inventing the high-tech wonders that have become so prevalent today. Their average age is just 54.

But when it comes down to it, the Forbes list is not about age, it's about how much you have in the bank.

Headliners -- the media elite -- had an average net worth of $3.69 billion, higher than any of the other Forbes list categories.

"These guys literally own their industry," said Miller. "People like Sumner Redstone, George Lucas and Rupert Murdoch control the entertainment industry, which is such a big part of the American economy."

This year for the first time every person on the Forbes list is worth at least $1 billion. It's a change that reflects a growing concentration of wealth in the country.

One thing that has not changed in the history of the Forbes list is its size. When Malcolm Forbes started sending editors and reporters into the field to get a census of the country's wealthiest people, he said he wanted to gather the names of the top 400.

Forbes decided that was the ideal number because it was the largest group of well-heeled guests that Lady Caroline Astor could accommodate in her ballroom during the Gilded Age.