CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- How does North Carolina's richest person stack up to the richest person in California or Virginia? Or New York's compared to Connecticut's? Or Nebraska versus Kansas?
An interactive map created by real estate blog Movoto shows just how rich the wealthiest person in each state is, and which states have someone even richer.
In North Carolina, most won't be surprised to find out that James Goodnight, of Cary, has the most dough. Goodnight founded the business analytics software firm SAS with fellow billionaire John Sall in 1976, according to Forbes.
But California has Goodnight beat, with Oracle ORCL CEO Larry Ellison's $49.9 billion, says Movoto. The author of the Movoto map, Christopher Kolmar, said he used data from Forbes and Celebrity Net Worth.
Interestingly, one family — and one company — has produced three people who are the richest in their respective states. Three heirs of Wal-Mart WMT founder Sam Walton are the richest people in Arkansas, Texas and Wyoming.
In the Northeast, hedge fund billionaires elbow each other for the top ranking. In Connecticut, Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates is worth an estimated $14.4 billion. Fellow hedgie David Tepper, of Appaloosa Management, is the top-ranked resident of New Jersey, with $10 billion.
But both those stockpiles pale beside David Koch's estimated wealth of $41.1 billion, which makes him the richest New Yorker. (His brother Charles, by the way, is the richest person in Kansas.)
The "poorest" rich person in the country, Alaska's Robert Gillam, has a paltry $700 million.
And, of course, the richest of the rich Americans is Washington's Bill Gates. The Microsoft MSFT founder is sitting on around $80 billion (well, not exactly sitting -- he's donated billions to AIDS research so far). His buddy Warren Buffett, famously of Nebraska, has $63.1 billion.
