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Microsoft's Bill Gates Is Richest Tech Billionaire With $78 Billion Fortune (gulfnews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from GulfNews: The "100 Richest Tech Billionaires In The World 2016" list has been topped by Microsoft founder Bill Gates with an estimated fortune of $78 billion. The titans on Forbes' second annual list of the world's richest in technology are worth a combined $892 billion, six percent more than a year ago. Just over half of the 100 richest in tech are from the U.S., including eight of the top 10 richest on the list. Forbes said the second richest person in tech Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is also the biggest gainer on the list this year and has an estimated $66.2 billion fortune, an increase of $18.4 billion since this list was released last year. That puts him ahead of Oracle chairman Larry Ellison, who comes in on the fourth spot. Ellison was also beaten by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who climbed from fourth to third place thanks to a 30 percent jump in the value of Facebook's stock; he is now also California's richest person, another title that previously belonged to Ellison.
If you're really trying to give away your fortune by way of the Gates Foundation, you are definitely doing something wrong.
I don't understand why someone even needs a million dollars, let alone 78 billion, esp. with needy and homeless people all over the world.
This story posted on Slashdot right after one that's entitled, "A Bit of Cash Can Keep Someone Off the Streets For 2 Years or More"....
Bill Gates doesn't even have a job. Life sucks, disconnect, remove device unsafely.
This list is interesting, but hardly anything new. I'd like to see a list of tech millionaires and billionaires that lost the most amount of money. That is, take their peak net worth and subtract their current net worth, and rank the decline. I'm sure Elizabeth Holmes would make that list.
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It's just like the TV preachers always tell us - Bill gives away some seed money to the poor, and riches come back to him - it's a miracle! Praise be, praise be!
People are starving while Gate$ hoards 78 billion dollars in cash. That makes sense.
We remember you, George Carlin. Thank you for your important speeches shortly before you were murdeOISDF*(&Y@# (
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Amassing such a huge fortune based on absolutely shite products but excellent marketing isn't impressive. If he wants to impress me, he needs to give away about 77.9 billion of that, funding things like the elimination of daesh/isis/isil, al-queda & boko haram, making an excellent education free and safe across the entire surface of the earth, ensuring no-one goes hungry, and getting things like an amendment to the constitution to reverse the Citizens United decision. When he reduces his wealth so that he here merely has enough for he and his family to live comfortably on for the next 7 generations, MAYBE I'll stop considering him a worthless piece of shit.
Yes because spending all of your money at once is the smart thing to do. Nevermind what may arise in the future.
He's focused on shit that can actually have an impact like sanitation, drinking water and disease which has great impact such polio and malaria. Unlike these other charity foundations which rely on donations and do jack shit.
Remember that the huge gains of these individuals have been made during the administration of a president who had as wealth redistribution, a la Robin Hood, as a stated goal of his presidency. Now, go look at who each of these billionaires, with a b, is supporting for president, and ask yourself if that candidate is really going to "stick it to the rich, and help the middle class" or if the rich will keep getting richer.
Don't get me wrong. I am all for people being compensated for their efforts and have nothing against people taking risk and profiting from the risk taking. But, if you happen to think that these folks got where they are by acting against their own interests, you are definitely kidding yourself.
but then he would be on the streets if he did that, gave $1000 to 78 million.
There is Scandinavian style social democracy, which gives everyone a reasonable standard of living, and then there is "take all the money off the rich and give it to the poor", which gives you Zimbabwe. This thread is full of the latter.
1) This wealth is a valuation of his investments. He couldn't just realise all the cash. For example, to sell shares, someone else has to want to buy them. He couldn't just magically sell all his Microsoft shares at the current price on the secondary market.
2) He invests his money and invests the returns in charitable and non-charitable businesses. A socialist might argue that this isn't the most moral or even efficient way of determining control of the means of production, but since it's what we're doing now, it's also what keeps people in sustainable work. Giving all that money away won't suddenly give everyone a livelihood.
Also, I know it's popular to have a hard-on for The Cloud atm, but Microsoft's "PC revolution" under Gates represented the pinnacle of computers that individuals owned and operated. Sure, it was never nearly as Free as Linux, but Linux wasn't "ready for the desktop" during Bill's tenure. Rather than moving from Windows to, err, GNOME (ugh), we've moved all our treasures to some server room thousands of miles away, under the purview of Nadella or Bezos and whoever those guys' bosses are.
So, Gates was a harsh businessman at the time, but at least we were once customers. And Windows NT through XP was not half bad. Today, we're mere products.
Interesting to see this as the next article after https://science.slashdot.org/s... - 1% or so and he could keep a million people from becoming homeless...
If Bill took half of his money, gave $10 million to me, and then gave the rest to people at risk at $1000 each, that would keep 38,990,000 people off the streets for two years or more. And he'd still have the other half to play with, plenty... to build a space elevator or something.
Come to think of it, if Bill took 3/4 of his money, gave $100 million to me, and then gave the rest to people at risk at $1000 each, that would keep 58,400,000 people off the streets for two years or more. And he'd still have $19,500,000,000 to invest in honorable charities around the world.
My friends, if Bill took 7/8 of his money, gave $250 million to me, and then gave the rest to people at risk at $1000 each, that would keep 68,000,000 people off the streets for two years or more. And he'd still have the $9,750,000,000 to spread peace and love around the globe.
The great thing about it, the more Bill gives to me, the more people get help. Win-win, from the guy who gave us C:\WIN.
Now, if Bill took 15/16 of his money...
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
... with next slashdot story on "A Bit of Cash Can Keep Someone Off the Streets For 2 Years or More."
mfwright@batnet.com
There is Scandinavian style social democracy, which gives everyone a reasonable standard of living, and then there is "take all the money off the rich and give it to the poor", which gives you Zimbabwe. This thread is full of the latter.
Those ungrateful bastards won't care. They'd just keep demanding all the fish for granted.
He used to be the richest person, now he's only the richest tech person... Who did he lose out to in order to make this conditional boast?
It's really quite simple. You invite in some poor, give them some loot, give 'em each a good punch in the mouth, and off they go, considerably less poor.
Jolly good.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Not much he can do either. And he is old. Soon, he will be screaming forever.
On another note.. the USA currency is robbed. It is akin to Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe 78 billion buys you like a milligram of goat cheese.
He will be the richest man in the graveyard.
> Do you mean full of niggers? Cuz that's what Zimbabwe's problem is.
America's too. Niggers drag everyone's standard of living down by their mere presence. And then you have an anti-white neo-Marxist establishment - masquerading as today's 'progressives' - who treat the debasement of white societies as a moral imperative. At best these people desire to make us all equally poor, helpless, and dependent upon the government, thus raising the nigger's social status to that of an equal; at worst, they working tirelessly to achieve genocide via demographic transformation, driving whites into a minority through uncapped non-white immigration. These are dark times we live in.
"Richest" is a euphemism for inverse penis size ( dicklessness, microsoftness)
The fact that this article comes right above the "A Bit of Cash Can Keep Someone Off the Streets For 2 Years or More " one says a lot.
So from the gain of one year alone, one of these guys by himself could save 18.4 million people from being homeless for two years, meaning he could do that every other year and his net worth would still rise.
But the USA has less than 600,000 homeless. I understand the other article is about people who are on the edge of becoming homeless, so it's hard to apply it in general, but let's just do it anyway because everyone who is homeless at one point became homeless. Let's also imagine that on average, such a person would need 2-3 such cash infusions to permanently turn their life around and not end on the street at all. Meaning it takes around 900 million a year to end homelessness forever. Or in other words, with the money that one of these super-rich people make in two weeks, homelessness within the USA would be over.
Which begs only one question: Why is homelessness still a thing?
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Just imagine what Windows could be - a half decent Operating System, if Bill Gates spent some of that $78bn fixing Windows and stop being a whore for the media companies / feds.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
... they name a quantity of money after you.
n/t
Wow, you've got all three of the most despicable people in technology in one place. Pardon me while I throw up.
Remember, it's american billion, meaning just 10^9 instead of 10^12.
Wasn't this the guy that said 640k should be good enough for anyone?
Time to him to put his money where his mouth is!
He can give every person in the US about $248 each. Pointless. So he can give every resident in the state of Washington $11k each, much better. Thanks Bill!
Reality is doing the latter would probably benefit the world better than wasting it away on all the other crap that does NOTHING for anyone here.
Unlike the so-called "robber barons" of the past, most of these modern ultra-wealthy are completely worthless.
Men like Andrew Carnegie built huge industrial empires (in his case, the steel industry) that not only employed a huge number of Americans but empowered the national economy and national defense and national infrastructure. Then, with his massive fortune, he spent the last couple decades of his life going around the nation building public libraries and universities. Many small towns all around America have Carnegie libraries, though most people do not lotice if they do not look at the inscriptions on the cornerstones.
These modern guys like Gates and Buffet and Zuckerberg and Soros etc are using thier wealth to maniputlate the politics and culture to suit their desires, creating foundations to continue this activity long after they are gone, and seeking good PR by doing charity in the third world where Americans will have no visibility into whether it has done any good at all and where the so-called charitable dollars will stretch the furthest.
Why are these guys not building public cancer treatment facilities in the US? How about public universities? Public hospitals? old folks homes for the poor elderly?
Instead,they spend their money and time telling the public that they want people to vote for Democrats and will happily pay more taxes - but they then offshore their money and avoid taxes and can be confident the Democrats will never actually "tax the rich". The taxes that are backed only actually ever go after the middle class and upper middle class, and NEVER after the global assets of the very rich.
"Give me control of a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws." --Rothschild, 1744
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