How rich are the rich? Well, Bill Gates has $75 billion, Warren Buffet $60.8 billion and Mark Zuckerberg about $44.6 billion. The people in the top 1 percent have so many assets that they own half the wealth on the planet, as reported by Credit Suisse. Specifically, 30 of the wealthiest individuals own as much as a trillion dollars collectively, according to Forbes. Nevertheless, not everything is good news for them. The combined wealth of the 20 richest dropped from $899 billion in 2015 to $827 billion in 2016; the Mexican businessman Carlos Slim alone lost $27 billion, according to The Guardian.

Most of the wealthiest billionaires in the world come from the U.S., and a little less than 20 percent are in the tech industry, according to Forbes. Of the wealthiest, 1,186 people are defined as self-made millionaires; 228 inherited their fortunes and 396 inherited at least a part of their wealth, as reported by The Guardian.

So, how did these people get to be so wealthy? It is clear that there was a huge amount of hard work, discipline, clear goals, ambition and guts. But is that enough to get into the billion-dollar club? You probably know many people with these traits yet they are nowhere near to becoming billionaires. One common trait, though, is that almost all owned and then sold stock in their own company or one of their relatives did.

That said, there are lots of people who sold their company's stock who did not become billionaires. So, what made the one percenters so rich? There is no single answer. Yet one possibility is outlined in Malcom Gladwell´s book: "Outliers." Outliers are people who find themselves far above average in their respective fields, like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg. They are hard-working, determined geniuses, who had the right abilities and found themselves with the right opportunities at exactly the right times. Luck?

An interesting question is: What would have happened if Steve Jobs had been born 30 years earlier? Even with his amazing creativity and sense of design, could he have been able to apply his genius in the field that he came to dominate? The industry itself did not exist and from a technological perspective, would not for another 20 years. Alternatively, what if he would have been born 20 years later? He would have been too late to an already crowded field. Timing is everything.

by John Hoffmire and Heeje Yoo

Slavery as an institution has existed in almost every human society since Neolithic times. As the age-old process of buying and selling of humans as property for involuntary labor continues, slavery has been legally banned in every country of the world (Mauritania being the last to do it in 2007).

The United Nations' definition of contemporary forms of slavery includes such conditions as "forced labor, debt bondage, children working in slavery or slavery-like conditions, domestic servitude, sexual slavery and servile forms of marriage." The International Labor Organization estimates 21 million people worldwide are victims of forced labor, while the Walk Free Foundation, which produces the Global Slavery Index, estimates that 35.8 million people are in one form of slavery or another.

Forced labor is thought to be prevalent in India's brick kilns, quarries and textile industries, while bonded labor is known to be common in China, Pakistan and Russia. Reports of rampant human trafficking in Thailand's seafood industry made news last year, while an investigation by NGO Verité estimated a quarter of workers in Malaysia's electronics sector were in forced labor.

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Why would it be important for low-income people to access financial services? Again, an interesting answer comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which takes the perspective that having the right resources and tools at critical moments can make the difference between getting out of poverty when the opportunity arises, or going deeper into debt when disaster or misfortune strike.

In the face of an emergency, people may require a quick loan to pay for an expensive medicine. Without any financial services, the money might only be available through loan sharks, who tend to be very expensive. Often these lenders make available money at rates of over 200 percent interest per year, some much higher.

The problem is, how can financial services be made available to more people in need? A possible answer may lie in that, as of 2014, there are more mobile devices than people on this planet. This amounts to 7.2 billion mobile telephony gadgets, according to The Independent. The connection is clear. If we find a way to link financial services to cellphones, then financial services could reach a huge part of the world's population.