Annie Lowrey:

If the United States averages 3 percent annual inflation, and the richest American’s fortunes keep up with Gates’, America would have a trillionaire in 98 years. But now let’s assume that the richest American’s fortune not only matches the rate of inflation, but outpaces it by, say, an additional 3 percent a year. At that rate, we should have a trillionaire in 50 years.

But, as Slate points out, it probably won’t be the United States that has the first trillionaire. We haven’t even had the richest person for some time — that’s now Mexico’s Carlos Slim Helu. 

Also interesting:

The richest-ever American, John D. Rockefeller, had a personal fortune of about $320 billion in today’s dollars, earned during the robber-baron days. And even the Rothschilds, the European bankers whose fortune ran into the hundreds of billions and whose name is a synonym for wealth, likely did not make it to a trillion.

Fuck yeah, Warren Buffett.

One of these numbers represents the cash reserves of an entity that is perhaps the most well-oiled, fine-tuned money-making machine the world has ever seen.

The other represents the operating balance of a long-time power that is now a broken machine constantly tied down in bureaucracy. 

(No, not Google.)

Now that Apple has far surpassed Microsoft in every financial category (market cap, revenue, profit), what do we watch for? I think one interesting thing will be when Apple passes HP in revenue.

While Apple’s market cap is roughly five times that of HP, the world’s largest PC-maker still pulls in more revenue. How much more? About $25 billion, over the last four quarters. But Apple’s revenues are growing so fast that this could fall in the next year. 

Of course, while Apple is behind in revenue, they’re far ahead in profit. Even though HP pulls in $125 billion a year in revenue, they’re only doing about $11 billion in profit. Apple has done over $23 billion in profit in the past year.

Meanwhile, I have to run the numbers again, but I think Apple is now making more yearly revenue than another old-school powerhouse: IBM.

Update: Apple still slightly behind IBM over the last four quarters in terms of revenue: $104.6 billion to $100.32 billion. That will change next quarter, I imagine.