Good news on the wealth front
One of Connecticut’s favorite sports is teeth-grinding over our loss of wealth. We’re in the majors.
It’s a great game because you can set up a billionaire fantasy league — will Karen Pritzker leave? When will Ray Dalio break $20 billion? — and also look at the big picture.
We’ve got the Red Sox and the Yankees: One side says Connecticut sucks, everyone is leaving for great places like Boston and Florida. The other side is true blue, taking losses in stride and believing our Yankee roots will keep our super-rich at home.
We’ve had some good news lately in Connecticut in both the billionaires fantasy league and the big picture.
First, the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans shows nine Connecticut members, up from seven one year ago. The list, which came out last week, shows four new Connecticut names, including Vince McMahon of Greenwich, whose WWE wrestling empire has gained stock value.
Among the two who exited the list, yes, it’s true dear cynics, Paul Tudor Jones II departed for Florida. But Peter Buck, the Subway restaurant co-founder, simply dropped down to the poorhouse — $1.5 billion. The cutoff for this club is $2.1 billion.
At the very top of the list, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos skyrocketed to $160 billion, leaving longtime former No. 1 Bill Gates in the dust at $97 billion. Both took a hit in Wednesday’s stock market bloodbath but save your donations for the truly needy.
In Connecticut, Ray Dalio, the iconoclastic Bridgewater Associates hedge fund founder, moved to the Top 25 at $18.1 billion, up from $17 billion and No. 26 last year. Steve Cohen the Greenwich hedge founder who recently regained the right to manage other people’s money, held firm at $13 billion, the No. 36 spot in the nation.
At stake in all this, the reason we care, is that Connecticut’s government, as you may have heard, is broke — facing a shortfall of $2 billion in the fiscal year that starts next July 1. If we could finagle a very small increase in the state income tax for