This is obviously a question about wunderkind, and to some extent about child labor laws. The exemplar would be some hypercompetent young founder, but hitting it big in crypto would be fine, or any other way of getting there.
Self-made is here defined as meaning the money cannot be inherited: specifically, no more than $13m in 2023 US Dollars can come from investments or gifts from parents (somewhat arbitrary; derived from the current US gift tax exemption). Obviously rich families help in many intangible ways; for the purpose of this question that's fine. If the parent gave them $500m and they're now worth $1.5b, that does not satisfy the definition, although still an impressive feat.
As far as I can tell, Kylie Jenner is the closest so far, having in 2018 had a net worth of approx $1.1b in 2023 dollars at the age of 20.
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@jskf Where does it say USD? I assumed that's likely what it meant, but it could be NZD, or CAD, or any other country that uses dollars
@Toby96 indeed. where would you draw the line and why? (i am not planning to change the resolution, just curious)
@noumena Well, difficult to say. 13000000USD is approximately 240 annual US median incomes. These people - through nothing but fortunate parents - start with more wealth than an average person would earn through a lifetime of labour. Significantly more.
And at 5% ROI it would pay 650000USD a year in passive income if invested in an index fund.
With these numbers it is ridiculous to call somebody self-made. I think that a number that is lower than a lifetime income at median salary would be more reasonable, but still not good enough.
In the end, I think the real take-home point is that billionaires just aren't ever self-made.
I understand not wanting to change the resolution criteria, but I think you should consider at least changing the title to better reflect them. Currently it is quite misleading.
@LightLawliet I suppose I should say “in September 13, 2023 dollars” to rule out the chance of massive hyperinflation by the end of this year, but come on
Also this resolves yes if it already happened.
Hmmm that raises some interesting questions about 2023 dollars in the past. A billion dollars is 1/500,000 of all human money, is that the bar?
What about the time that the human population was reduced to <10,000?
@Joshua it's not about relative power; it should be easier to become a billionaire in 2030 than it is now, and much harder in the past. For past reckoning, I will only consider possession of fiat money, precious metals or company shares. Capture of land holdings, although notable, is not the sort of thing that I care about (measuring historical leaders by that standard that would be more similar to claiming that Tim Cook has $2.72 tn.)