Forbes
Forbes Inc. is an American publishing company best known for its eponymous business magazine Forbes which is published bi-weekly. It was founded in 1917 by B.C. Forbes and built up by long-time owner Malcolm Forbes (1917–1990), noted for his intense and colorful devotion to capitalism. After his father passed away and prior to his candidacies for president in 1996 and 2000, Steve Forbes (1947- ) managed this publication.
The magazine provides a range of reporting on world business affairs, and is famed for its annual lists of the richest people in America and the world. It calls itself "The Capitalist Tool."
The entire magazine industry has been hit hard by the Recession of 2008, as has the newspaper industry. The subscription base at Forbes is steady at 920,000 copies, but there have been more and more discount offers, and advertising is down 15% from early 2008 to early 2009. There have been layoffs and furloughs among the 1000 employees, a sharp comedown from the days of lavish spending by the Forbes family.
Ad pages have declined even more at the two major competitors; Forbes has a listed revenue of $338 million, compared to $276 million for Fortune and $236 million for BusinessWeek. The rival business magazine Portfolio, from Condé Nast’s is teetering and may not last another year.
Their website is one of the top five financial sites by traffic, generating $70 million to $80 million a year in revenue.
In 2006, the Forbes family sold 40% of the company to Elevation Partners, a private equity firm, for $300 million, setting the value of the enterprise at $750 million. The value today is perhaps half that.
Forbes, along with other fake conservative outlet The Wall Street Journal, has arbitrarily attacked YouTuber PewDiePie.[1][2]
The World’s Billionaires
Since 1987 Forbes publishes a list of the richest people of the world. The 2018 list contains:[3]
- Jeff Bezos
- Bill Gates
- Warren Buffett
- Bernard Arnault
- Mark Zuckerberg
- Amancio Ortega
- Carlos Slim Helu
- Charles Koch
- David Koch
- Larry Ellison
- Michael Bloomberg
- Larry Page
- Sergey Brin
- Jim Walton
- S. Robson Walton
- Alice Walton
- Ma Huateng
- Francoise Bettencourt Meyers
- Mukesh Ambani
- Jack Ma
- Sheldon Adelson
- Steve Ballmer
- Li Ka-shing
- Hui Ka Yan
- Lee Shau Kee
- Wang Jianlin
- Beate Heister & Karl Albrecht Jr.
- Phil Knight
- Jorge Paulo Lemann
- Francois Pinault
- Georg Schaeffler
- Susanne Klatten
- David Thomson
- Jacqueline Mars
- John Mars
- Joseph Safra
- Giovanni Ferrero
- Dietrich Mateschitz
- Michael Dell
- Masayoshi Son
Obamacare
Steven Forbes recommends that Republicans adopt seven key guidelines to fix ObamaCare:
- Allow interstate shopping for insurance
- Give tax deductions for insurance premiums currently limited to businesses and the self-employed to everyone
- Prevent Medicare money from being used to fund Obamacare
- Stop the exemption of Congress and staff from Obamacare
- Encourage high-risk pools to lower costs for everyone else
- Push medical malpractice reform
- Eliminate Obamacare's mandated benefits and let people decide what coverage they want[4]
Notes
Further reading
- David Carr, "Even Forbes Is Pinching Pennies' New York Times June 14, 2009