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America is home to 735 billionaires with a collective worth greater than $4.7 trillion, according to Forbes. There were just 424 billionaires in 2012, Forbes found, and only 243 a decade before that. The billionaires keep multiplying.\n\nIn this article, Willy Staley uses information from the first billionaire count \u2014 commissioned in 1981 by the entrepreneur Malcolm Forbes for his own magazine \u2014 to consider the reasons behind the rapid increase in American billionaires, but also the changing attitudes on publicizing the details of one\u2019s wealth.\nMany factors enabled American entrepreneurs to amass such enormous fortunes, including the Reagan administration\u2019s policies, the arrival of computer technology, the creation of a more globalized economy and the rise of the developing world.\n\nYet despite the conspicuous consumption this level of wealth often encourages, Staley finds that few billionaires want to be discovered. So how do you keep tabs on America\u2019s billionaires?