First of all — yes, rich people also might enjoy cereal for dinner. The point is that the 400 richest Americans don’t have to opt for a bowl of corn flakes for four straight meals in a row because all together they’re worth $1.7 trillion. Impressive, right? And that’s a 13% bump from last year’s total. So many boxes of cereal could be purchased with that kind of wealth.

Forbes just released this year’s list, which includes that familiar gang of high rollers like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett (Nos. 1 and 2, respectively), Oprah Winfrey, Mike Bloomberg and that young upstart, Mark Zuckerman. The Zuck dropped from 13 last year to 36 this year though, likely because of that whole Facebook stock dropping thing. So, ouch.

The average net worth of the 400 wealthiest Americans is at $4.2 billion, a record high, says Forbes. That’s a lot, especially considering most of us don’t even have one measly billion to play with.

The magazine says the entire group’s net worth is equal to about one-eighth of the U.S. economy, but they did better at growing their wealth than the economy did in improving itself.

So the logical thing to do would be to just sending checks to random Americans, right? HINT HINT.

The Forbes 400 [Forbes]

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