Day 5 post 1

Please look at Forbes' list of the world's richest people and click on some of their names to learn more about them. Then, in a well-developed paragraph, discuss some trends, demographic or otherwise, that you notice among these super-elite. What about today's world makes it possible for these individuals to be so enormously wealthy?
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/10/billionaires08_The-Worlds-Billionaires_Rank.html