• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, March 1, 2016

In an age of growing social inequality, $50 million is table stakes and hundred-millionaires are nothing special. If you really want to wallow in soul-corroding envy, you have to go stand in the figurative gutter outside the billionaires’ club to ogle the oligarchs -- and boy howdy, there are a lot of them.

1,810, to be exact, with a total net worth of $6.48 trillion and an average net worth of $3.86 billion. That’s according to Forbes, which has just released its annual Billionaires list, tallying the fortunes of the world’s wealthiest people

The total number is down slightly from 1,826 in 2015, while their total net worth slumped from $7.05 trillion, the poor dears. Most of them are self-made billionaires, with 1,186 having earned their own fortunes, compared to 228 who inherited it, and 396 who inherited part of it but then built on it.

Leading the list is Bill Gates, still the world’s richest man, with a net worth of $75 billion, followed by Spanish retailer Amancio Ortega, of Zara fame, with $67 billion. Warren Buffet is in third place with $60.8 billion, fourth place goes to Mexican telecoms mogul Carlos Slim Helu with $50 billion, and fifth place is occupied by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos with $45.2 billion. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, came in sixth place with $44.6 billion, up $11.2 billion from last year.

Oracle’s Larry Ellison was in seventh place with $43.6 billion, Bloomberg Media founder and form New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg took eighth place with $40 billion, and ninth place was shared by Charles and David Koch, known for their conservative political activism, with $39.6 billion each. Gracing the cover is Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, with a relatively modest net worth of $2.9 billion.

The Forbes Billionaire list includes just 190 women, or 10.5% of the total, down from 197 last year.

The world’s richest woman is Lilliane Bettencourt of France, heir to the L’Oreal fortune with $36.1 billion. The richest self-made woman is Hong Kong technology titan Zhou Qunfei, founder of touchscreen maker Lens Technology, which went public in 2015, with an estimated net worth of $5.6 billion.

Now back to work, peon!