Talk:Billionaire

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[edit] USD?

Why is a billionaire only one who is worth US$1bn? Take Gina Rinehart, for instance – she recently became worth over a billion dollars AUD. Is she not a billionaire, then? --fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 23:39, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

  • IIRC, "billion" means a million million in British Commonwealth nations, and as far as I know, no one claims to have that many Australian or Canadian dollars, or British pounds for that matter. So millionaires would be multinational term but "billionaire" is particular to American English. (Arnoldlover 19:54, 18 March 2006 (UTC)) ... Just checked my OED. One thousand million is the French/American definition, not the British/Australian one. (Arnoldlover 19:57, 18 March 2006 (UTC))
    • Canadians definitely favour the American definition of Billionaire, and there are definitely Canadian Billionaires (though I'm not sure any are so close to the line as to not alsobe worth $1 billion USD. WilyD 17:10, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
      • The title of the article should technically be 'People who are worth more than $1 billion USD', but billionaire is in common usage, and the article states the qualification very clearly. If you change the qualification to 'People who are worth 1 Billion units of their own currency' then it will be an unfair comparison. For example, 1 dollar is worth more than 100 Japanese Yen, so 10 million USD would make you a Japanese billionaire. In addition, where can you draw the line as to being 'so close'? $999 million? $950 million? The only obvious line is at exactly $1 billion. There is, of course, nothing to prevent alternative articles being written on 'People who are worth more than 950 Million Canadian dollars', and seeing whether the Wiki Community thinks the article necessary. Blowski 13:53, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

A centimetre is 1/100 of a metre. A centibillion should be 1/100 of a billion, - 10 million (US billion), or 10 thousand million (10 milliard) with French or 'old' British understanding of the term. Thus, this article refers to who was the first person to have in excess of 10 million currency units from a US perspective; from a Turkish perspective, where at one point the exchange rate was a million Turkish lira to the British pound, this is a rather easy target. —the preceding comment is by 82.32.83.216 (talk • contribs) 21:07, 14 May 2006: Please sign your posts!.

"So millionaires would be multinational term but "billionaire" is particular to American English." Not in my experience. I'm British and the American usage is Billion and billionaire is now standard over here, and not even considered a crass 'Americanism' by us haughty Brits [in the way that 'airplane' would be]. Given its use in finance, goegraphy, demographics, physics etc, the US/French definition of Billion is internationally preferable. 80.176.236.203 13:26, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copyighted materials

Materials were copied and pasted from http://www.forbes.com/lists/home.jhtml?passListId=10&passYear=2000&passListType=Person into the article by User:Hoof38. I have reverted prior to that version. --tomf688 (talk - email) 01:08, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but you also erased stuff that wasn't copyvio. I'm putting that back in. --Mr. Billion 17:04, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] First trillionaire?

Given that inflation and economic growth keep making the wealth of the richest human higher in nominal dollars over time, when can we expect to see the first trillionaire? This guy says in the year 2038. However, the party might end sometime after the onset of peak oil, unless the economy shifts largely to information rather than energy, and economic growth becomes tied to Moore's Law. --Teratornis 16:31, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

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