“Forget about the 1%,” David M. Ewalt writes for Forbes. “The men and women who are featured on Forbes’ annual ranking of the World’s Most Powerful People are the 0.00000001% –the global elite whose actions move the planet. These heads of state, financiers, philanthropists and entrepreneurs truly run the world.”
“To compile the list, we considered hundreds of candidates from various walks of life all around the globe, and measured their power along four dimensions,” Ewalt writes. “First, we asked whether the candidate has power over lots of people. Pope Francis, ranked #4 on our list, is the spiritual leader of more than a billion Catholics. Doug McMillon (#32), CEO of Wal-Mart Stores, employs 2.2 million workers.”
“Next we assessed the financial resources controlled by each person. Are they relatively large compared to their peers? For heads of state we used GDP, while for CEOs, we looked at measures like their company’s assets and revenues. When candidates have a high personal net worth, like the world’s richest man, Bill Gates (#6), we also took that into consideration,” Ewalt writes. “In certain instances, like the King of Saudi Arabia, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (#14), we considered other valuable resources at the candidate’s disposal –like 20% of the world’s known oil reserves.”
“Then we determined if the candidate is powerful in multiple spheres. There are only 73 slots on our list – one for every 100 million people on the planet – so being powerful in just one area is often not enough,” Ewalt writes. “Lastly, we made sure that the candidates actively used their power. North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un (#46) has near absolute control over the lives of the 25 million people who live in his country, and is known to punish dissent with death.”
Select names and rankings from Forbes’ ‘Most Powerful People’ 2015 list:
1 Vladimir Putin, Russia, 63
2 Angela Merkel, Germany, 61
3 Barack Obama, United States, 54
4 Pope Francis, Roman Catholic Church, 78
5 Xi Jinping, China, 62
6 Bill Gates, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 60
7 Janet Yellen, Washington, United States, 69
8 David Cameron, United Kingdom, 49
9 Narendra Modi, India, 65
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17 Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com, 51
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19 Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, 31
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27 Tim Cook, Apple, 55
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30 Sergey Brin, Google, 42
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38 Elon Musk, Space Exploration Technologies Corp., 44
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59 Michael Dell, Dell, 50
61 Satya Nadella, Microsoft, 48
70 Carl Icahn, Icahn Capital Management, 79
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Even on some dopey Forbes list, Tim Cook doesn’t get the respect that he deserves. Page, Bezos, and Zuckerberg ahead of him? Seriously? Puleeze.