Ehh... Actually, Haf, most of the truly powerful rich people are not famous. Take the Koch brothers, for example. People only know their name now because their political opponents have made a point of getting it into the public consciousness, but five years ago no one had heard of them. And even now they're not really "famous." If they walked into a restaurant no one would know who they were. There are a few charismatic exceptions who are public figures, like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, but the vast majority of the über-rich prefer to keep a low profile.
Here's the list of the fifty wealthiest people in America, with a combined net worth of over $800 billion dollars. These are the most powerful people in the country, who could buy and sell people like us hundreds of times over. Even someone like Mitt Romney is a gnat compared to them. How many have you heard of? How many do you know what they look like without Googling them? Probably not many.
- Bill Gates
- Warren Buffet
- Larry Ellison
- Charles Koch
- David Koch
- Christy Walton
- Jim Walton
- Alice Walton
- S. Robson walton
- Michael Bloomberg
- Jeff Bezos
- Sheldon Adelson
- Sergey Brin
- Larry Page
- George Soros
- Forrest Mars, Jr.
- Jacqueline Mars
- John Mars
- Steve Ballmer
- Paul Allen
- Carl Icahn
- Michael Dell
- Phil Knight
- Donald Bren
- Len Blavatnik
- Ronald Perelman
- Abigail Johnson
- John Paulson
- Laurene Powell Jobs
- James Simons
- Jack Taylor
- Anne Cox Chambers
- Ray Dalio
- George Kaiser
- Harold Hamm
- Richard Kinder
- Rupert Murdoch
- Mark Zuckerberg
- Charles Ergen
- Steve Cohen
- Andrew Beal
- Pierre Omidyar
- Leonard Lauder
- Philip Anschutz
- Eric Schmidt
- Samuel Newhouse, Jr.
- James Goodnight
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
- Harold Simmons
- Charles Butt
Bill Murray once talked about people wanting to be rich and famous. His advice? See if rich doesn't do it for you all by itself, because famous ain't all it's cracked up to be.
I'd still take it, though.