11/84Percentage decrease-in the cost of seven ounces of Beluga Imperial caviar, from 1982 to 1983: 50
12/84Combined net worth of the 400 richest Americans: $125,000,000,000
Combined value of all the currency and coin in circulation in the U.S.: $175,000,000,000
7/84Number of Rolls-Royces in the Soviet Union: 10
About being elected to political office: 6
11/85Number of Fabergé Imperial eggs owned by Malcolm Forbes: 11
By the Kremlin: 10
5/87Percentage of wealth in the United States held by the richest one percent of Americans in 1972: 28
4/88Percentage increase, since 1975, in the number of Americans earning more than $1,000,000 a year: 280
4/89Average change, since 1977, in the annual federal taxes paid by the richest 1 percent of American families: -$44,440
8/89Percentage of men earning more than $50,000 a year who say they have had at least six affairs with co-workers: 20
1/90Change, since 1980, in the percentage of their income the richest 1 percent of American families pay in federal taxes: -15
Change, since 1980, in the percentage of their income the poorest 20 percent pay in federal taxes: +19
11/91Number of cellular phones checked in the cloakroom by patrons each week at Le Cirque, the Manhattan restaurant: 3
3/91Ratio of the number of unemployed white-collar workers to the number of unemployed blue-collar workers: 1:1
6/91Value of the jewelry Madonna wore to the Academy Awards last March: $20,000,000
10/92Number of the 28 millionaires in the U.S. Senate who are Democrats: 21
10/92Portion of all homeowner tax-deduction benefits that went to households earning more than $75,000 last year: 1/2
Portion that went to households earning less than $40,000: 1/10
10/92Ratio of New York Met Bobby Bonilla’s annual salary to the value of his weight in gold: 5:1
11/92Rank of The Rich Also Cry, a Mexican soap opera, among the most popular TV programs in Russia: 1
8/92Chances that a cigar costing more than $1.25 will be smoked by a millionaire: 1 in 3
4/93Ratio of the number of millionaires in Bill Clinton’s Cabinet to the number in George Bush’s: 1:1
7/93Estimated number of body parts suitable for piercing, according to Gauntlet, a New York City jewelry store: 30
9/93Number of Mexicans who became billionaires last year: 7
8/94Rank of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, among the wealthiest members of the Supreme Court: 1
Year in which Kalawao, Hawaii, the county with the largest income gap, ceased functioning as a leper colony: 1969
4/95Number of Veterans Administration employees whose salaries exceed $100,000 per year: 7,367
2/96Ratio of Steven P. Jobs earnings last year on the day his firm’s stock went public to Michael Milken’s 1987 earnings: 1:1
Ratio of Jobs’s average hourly earnings on that day to the U.S. minimum wage: 13,421,052:1
3/96Estimated ratio of Steve Forbes’s net worth to all campaign contributions made to presidential candidates last year: 5:1
3/96Price paid at auction last December for a diamond-monogrammed gold shoehorn belonging to Frank Sinatra: $5,520
3/96Number of the 24 Mexicans who were billionaires in 1994 who still are: 10
10/97Percentage of Americans earning more than $246,000 who met Bill Clinton last year: 11
11/97Average number of new millionaires created in Silicon Valley each day last year: 64
8/97Percentage of Americans earning less than $25,000 a year who believe the President propositioned Paula Jones: 29
Percentage of Americans earning at least $50,000 a year who believe this: 48
12/98Rank of “office too hot” among white-collar employees’ most common workplace complaints: 2
Rank of “office too cold”: 1
4/98Ratio of the net worth of the richest 1 percent of U.S. households to the size of the national debt: 2:1
7/98Percentage of all privately owned bison in the U.S. that belong to Ted Turner: 7
8/98Ratio of the number of raises Congress has granted itself since 1938 to those it has granted minimum-wage workers: 21:19
8/98Ratio of highway spending Congress passed last May to the cost of gold-plating one lane of the U.S. interstate system: 2:1
9/98Amount that Bear, Stearns’ chairman donated to a New York hospital last June to sponsor Viagra for the poor: $1,000,000
2/99Percentage of his wealth that Bill Gates has pledged to donate this year for children’s vaccines in poor countries: 0.0016
1/00Rank of the African king of Mali among 14th-century rulers most noted for their riches by a Majorcan mapmaker: 1
4/00Chance that an American earning more than $100,000 in 1988 was audited: 1 in 18
8/00Chance that a contestant who’s appeared on ABC ‘s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire has won a million dollars: 1 in 67
9/00Average number of new homes built each day in New York’s East Hampton last year: 0.93
3/01Number of players on Spain ‘s gold-winning disabled Olympic basketball team recently found to have faked their disabilities: 10
4/01Declared value of the jewelry stolen from rapper Prodigy last December after he left a music-video shoot in Queens: $343,000
6/02Number of billionaires worldwide last year and this year, respectively: 580, 497
Rank of the United States among countries that lost the largest number of billionaires in the last year: 1
10/03Year in which Donald Rumsfeld gave Saddam Hussein a pair of golden spurs: 1983
8/03Number of books by Henry Kissinger found in Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz’s mansion in April: 2
Number by New York Times reporter Judith Miller: 1
9/03Amount Pat Robertson has invested in Liberian gold mining: $8,000,000
Number of times he cited the country’s leaders as wronged Christians on his TV show while President Bush was in Africa: 3
11/04Weight in pounds of a “millionaire” seeking “Cinderella” in a New York magazine personal ad last summer: 444
4/04Number of Angola’s seven richest citizens who are government officials and former government officials, respectively: 6, 1
12/05Number of homeless San Franciscans hired to be extras in a movie with Will Smith as a formerly homeless millionaire: 250
Amount they were paid hourly: $8.62
2/05Average total cost for a U.S. eighty-year-old to live out the rest of his or her days on a luxury cruise ship: $230,497
Average cost to live them out in an assisted-living facility: $228,075
3/06Chance that a nation lacking resource wealth will have a civil war in any given five-year span: 1 in 100
5/06Percentage of China’s investable assets that are controlled by the richest half-percent of households: 62
5/06Percentage of white-collar Chinese workers who have personal blogs: 52
5/07Rank of Britain among twenty-one rich countries the U.N. ranked this year for “child well-being”: 21
Rank of the United States: 20
1/08Number of states John Kerry would have won in 2004 if votes by poor Americans were the only ones counted: 40
6/08Percentage of American men with a net worth of at least $20 million who admit to having paid for sex: 34