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.

Comments

Bill, you're doing it wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're really trying to give away your fortune by way of the Gates Foundation, you are definitely doing something wrong.

Re:Bill, you're doing it wrong

[mwvdlee]

He just gave away a $million to his "kids' computer education sucks, that's why we need more H1B visa's" fund.
That's, like almost 0.0013% of his bank balance.
It's like I gave away about $1.50 of my fortune and was lauded for it in the press as a philantropist.

Re:Bill, you're doing it wrong

[stdarg]

You can't possibly be so naive as to believe that the value of money is relative to your own net worth, in philanthropy or anything else. Nobody cares about your $1.50 because it's just $1.50.

$78,000,000,000

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:$78,000,000,000

[LynnwoodRooster]

Yes, he could give each and every person $10.50 and have nothing - and we'd still have needy and homeless people all over the world. When there are 7.2 billion people on Earth, $78 billion doesn't go a long way towards easing poverty for any significant fraction of the populace. The best thing you could do is probably what Gates is doing - fighting malaria, working on sanitation and water, education, etc. Improve the infrastructure so those billions can pull out from poverty, rather than a handful of coins...

Re:$78,000,000,000

[RavenLrD20k]

Over the course of a lifetime, $1,000,000 is the equivalence of less than 20 years on the average American income (~$52K according to the 2014 census). If you had that much all at once with a steady stream of your normal income and wise investing, sure...you'll get ahead...but if that's all you had to live on for the rest of your life, you're not getting ahead of anyone. So...to live in America, yes, people do need a million dollars.

Re:$78,000,000,000

[MerlynEmrys67]

You don't plan on retiring?

A 5% return on 1,000,000 is 50K a year. That doesn't go very far when you have to cover your medical expenses, housing, food, and hopefully seeing your grandkids.

1,000,000 dollars isn't really all that much. Take an average 40 year working life, invest/save 25K a year - 40 years later... magic 1,000,000. Rather than complain about someone who provided value to millions of customers - why don't you go after the football/basketball/baseball players that get paid millions a year to play a game.

Re:$78,000,000,000

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have any idea how many people survive on half that? Christ, some people are spoiled.

Re:$78,000,000,000

[darthsilun]

I'll probably be retiring in another eleven years, presuming I can remain employed for the duration. Between Social Security and what I've saved so far, I'll need another $2-3M in order to have the same income in retirement that I have now.

It might be argued that I don't, or won't, need to have the same income. Personally, I don't want to test that theory. And I pity those who have saved less than me, or worse, who have saved nothing.

But I agree, I don't believe anyone needs $78B. If he can't figure out how to give it away faster by himself, I'm sure some other people can help out. (When the revolution comes, he'll be one of the first up against the wall. I'm positive of that much.)

Re:$78,000,000,000

[FunkSoulBrother]

I wonder what percentage of the US population have the means to save 25K a year, regardless of their spending habits. I'm thinking median income after taxes and basic accommodation, used car, etc.

Re:$78,000,000,000

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if they ended up with nothing, that's still a lot of money being injected into the economy. Assuming he even invests it, it's not circulating around like it's suppose to for a healthy economy to work, and it's not trickling down. The trickle down system isn't designed to have that much money taken out of the economy if you add up all the mega wealthy people like that economists are not giving accurate projections. That's a significant amount of money too, he's practically an economic terrorists collecting that much. He could walk into nearly any town in the world and totally wreck havoc on any local economy he wants to. Honestly with that amount of wealth he's a national security risk.

Re:$78,000,000,000

[tsotha]

You're right - a million bucks isn't that much any more, particularly in the context of retirement. They say you should plan for long term care costs of $7k/month, and there are health problems that can cost a couple hundred grand in one go.

You can't get a 5% return these days without taking on significant risk, either.

Re: $78,000,000,000

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

I praise Bill Gates a lot and I'm Christian. Jesus wants us all looking out for each other and helping the poor. Gates and Buffet donate a lot and try and get other billionaires on board too. The world needs help that money can save lives

Re: $78,000,000,000

[sg_oneill]

Where I live a million will barely get you a house in the suburbs , let alone a mansion , boat and the rest of your life off on holidays.

Re: $78,000,000,000

[sg_oneill]

The point is the dude said that he doesn't know what he'd do with a million. Turns out not as much as most people would think. And remember: $50k a year isn't going to be much on 20 years

Re:$78,000,000,000

[Tom]

Yes, he could give each and every person $10.50 and have nothing - and we'd still have needy and homeless people all over the world

900 million people live under the global poverty line of $1.90 a day.

That is 1.71 billion dollars a day to lift the entire planet out of poverty.

The fact alone that one person could do that for a month and still have more money left over than he can spend in a lifetime just boggles the mind.

If you further assume that most of these people don't have nothing, they just have less than $1.90 it becomes more crazy. My old statistics professor said that if you have no information, assume the average. So let's assume it takes 95 cents on average to bring someone just above the poverty line. That means Bill Gates alone could lift the entire planet out of poverty for three months before his fortune runs out.

While that shows how little these crazy fortunes are in global contexts, it also shows how crazy rich these people are compared to everyone else. It means the richest top ten could end poverty for a year and still be rich. Can you even imagine what it could mean to the poor of the world to not be poor for a year? How many of them would use the opportunity to secure a better future? At the end of that year, many of the poor would not go back to being poor. Millions would be permanently enabled to have a better life.

I applaud Melanie Gates to convince Bill to use a good part of his fortune like this, even if there's a lot of shady deals involved that the future will judge (largely, the crowding out of other organisations that try to help).

But the real problem is not that this money could be used to feed the poor. The real problem is that this money, if it had not been taken by the super-rich, would circulate much faster within the economy and would create more wealth. After the "trickle down" bullshit, a number of real economists have done the checking and they all come to the conclusion that money given to the rich hurts the economy while money given to the average people stimulates it.

Or in other words: In Bill Gates hands, these are 78 billion. In the hands of ordinary people, this would be 90, 100 or more billions. That is the real damage the super-rich do to all of us.

Re:$78,000,000,000

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with that argument is that the rich get to shape the policy of countries in a completely undemocratic manner, as we are seeing in this country. The rich own this place, along with our elected representatives. They write the legislation that the rest of us live under. I'm not really interested in kissing the ass of a billionaire in order to get clean water. Providing infrastructure, sanitation and clean water should be the job of government, not of a capitalist. $78 billion dollars is an insane amount of power that no single person should be allowed to have.

Re:$78,000,000,000

[Anonymous Coward]

It will not be useless at all, and certainly should not be "pooled up again". It will be a part of the economy, which serves to improve everyone's lot. When your 5kg of rice is distributed, it will be used to grow more rice, which ultimately helps everyone. The rich hording money (or rice) in offshore investment accounts is a drain on everyone.

Re:$78,000,000,000

[Merk42]

When your 5kg of rice is distributed, it will be used to grow more rice, which ultimately helps everyone.

Not if the amount of rice you get is less than the amount needed to grow more rice.

Re:$78,000,000,000

[Merk42]

Why spend money on a child's education? We should just give them the same amount of money once they reach 18. We're still spending the same amount per person, so therefore it'd had the same effect.

Re:$78,000,000,000

[stdarg]

Or in other words: In Bill Gates hands, these are 78 billion. In the hands of ordinary people, this would be 90, 100 or more billions. That is the real damage the super-rich do to all of us.

lol what? Do you really believe that nonsense?

It would still be $78 billion. You may be thinking of economic impact or something because it circulates more.

Please don't conflate economic measures with "damage to all of us" though. The economy is just an approximation of value. The reason circulating money adds to the economy is the assumption that circulating money equals work, and work improves life on the planet. If I spend $10 on electricity, that's giving someone else $10 to spend, plus I get light and heat and TV and all that. Win-win.

But at the same time, it's an imperfect measure because it assumes that all work is equal. In other words it assumes perfect labor pricing. In reality, if I discover a great unknown artist and give him $100 to paint something, that produces more value than if I give a crappy unknown artist $100 to paint something. There's just no way of measuring that so precisely, so we don't bother taking it into account with economic measures.

When you're talking about one single person though, you kind of have to take it into account. The pros and cons of Bill Gates can't be measured simply by how much his money circulates, that's stupid. The question is whether you think stuff like fighting malaria with $1 billion is subjectively worth more than a bunch of poor people spending $1 billion on big screen TVs from China, 90% of which goes to the super-rich of China anyway. The numbers are the same but the impact is different.

Re: $78,000,000,000

[stdarg]

Not only that but a 5% withdrawal rate is generally not considered sustainable.

Re:$78,000,000,000

[LynnwoodRooster]

No, it's not a lot of money. The world GDP is around $76 trillion. If he gave away everything, that would be around 0.1% of the world GDP. And would be a strictly one-time thing. On a global scale, Bill Gate's has more money than anyone else, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to everyone else.

Re:$78,000,000,000

[Quirkz]

I don't that was a good example. $25k * 40 years is $1 million straight up. Assuming you get interest and growth, you don't need to set aside anywhere near that much. Running some overly simplistic calculations in a spreadsheet, I think more like $4k/year at 8% growth will hit $1m in 40 years. If you want to assume 6% growth, it's a bit over $6k/year. That's still difficult to save, especially early on, but it's not ridiculous.

Re:$78,000,000,000

[Quirkz]

My grandmother is 99. She's been living off investments for thirty or forty years. A million spread over that much time doesn't really give you that much. Of course, the money's been invested and wasn't just a pile of cash, but on the other hand inflation over that long has cut the value of the money down to a third of what it used to be. By the time I retire in 20 or 30 more years, a single million isn't likely to be anywhere near enough.

Re:$78,000,000,000

[TheGreatMcCluck]

Where the hell are you getting 8% growth right now?

Seriously... sign me up!

Secure/guaranteed investments right now seem to be getting closer and closer to 0%, and market volatility makes things like mutual funds a crap shoot. 8% year over year... I dare to dream.

Re:$78,000,000,000

[Quirkz]

"Right now" isn't really pertinent to the discussion about a 40-year average. I don't know if 8% is realistic for that, but given historical trends it's a possibility.

Re:$78,000,000,000

[Tom]

I didn't advocate it as a program. The point was to illustrate just how crazy rich these people are. If one person can have such a global effect, you understand how poor everyone else is compared to them. He could literally pay for the life of millions of people.

Re:$78,000,000,000

[Tom]

lol what? Do you really believe that nonsense?

Scientific evidence is not a belief. We understand a little bit about economy, you know? It's taught at universities.

The reason circulating money adds to the economy is the assumption that circulating money equals work, and work improves life on the planet.

That's the most stupid bullshit I've read in a long time.

The reason circulating money adds to the economy is that if I spend $100 at your shop, you can now spend $100 on buying something, and the person you buy it from can spend $100 on some service and that person can donate $100 to the poor and they go to ten shops, spending those $100 and those shops come to me to buy something for $100. At the end, the $100 has made a full circle, so no money was created or destroyed and everyone has as much money as they had before, but everyone also got goods or services worth $100 that they didn't have before. Or, in other words: Those $100 of money have turned into $700 of wealth.

That's simplified, of course, ignoring a lot of details, but that's the basic principle.

In reality, if I discover a great unknown artist and give him $100 to paint something, that produces more value than if I give a crappy unknown artist $100 to paint something.

You are clearly confusing cultural value with economic value. Besides, great or crappy in the arts is very often judged long after the artist and the original buyer are both dead.

The question is whether you think stuff like fighting malaria with $1 billion is subjectively worth more than a bunch of poor people spending $1 billion on big screen TVs from China

Again, you are confusing values, in this case moral values with economic values. Those things are not the same.

Re:$78,000,000,000

[Tom]

Like another poster, you confuse monetary or economic value with the value of education. These are not the same things and they don't cleanly exchange into each other.

The reason we spend money on a childs education is that education takes time. If you could get the same education in, say, one day via brain implants, it would be smarter to wait it out until you are 18 and can decide by yourself which education you want. But since it takes years, you need to start early because life time is limited.

These are really trivial arguments to follow. Why do I have to spell it out?

Re:$78,000,000,000

[Merk42]

Like another poster, you confuse monetary or economic value with the value of education. These are not the same things and they don't cleanly exchange into each other.

The reason we spend money on a childs education is that education takes time. If you could get the same education in, say, one day via brain implants, it would be smarter to wait it out until you are 18 and can decide by yourself which education you want. But since it takes years, you need to start early because life time is limited.

These are really trivial arguments to follow. Why do I have to spell it out?

Yes the trivial arguements for/against brain implants?
I guess I have to spell it out: Which is better, giving someone $X or spending $X on their education?

Re:$78,000,000,000

[stdarg]

The reason circulating money adds to the economy is the assumption that circulating money equals work, and work improves life on the planet.

That's the most stupid bullshit I've read in a long time. [...] Or, in other words: Those $100 of money have turned into $700 of wealth.

That's what I said.

You are clearly confusing cultural value with economic value.

I'm not confusing it, I'm distinguishing it. Economic value is an approximation of cultural or moral value or whatever you want to call it. Quality of life basically. We can do things to economic measures to bring it more in line with something meaningful by applying things like inflation and PPP adjustments. It's still just an approximation which we bear out of necessity.

When it comes down to a single individual and a small list of actions, though, it is possible to make more precise judgments than just counting the number of dollars that circulate. If you give a random person a billion dollars, they might just sit on it and live a comfortable life and make their kids rich and just kind of trickle the money out for a few generations. Or they might be another Elon Musk and make strides in the space industry and electric cars. That's a big difference.

The problem with your original post was taking some crap you learned at university ("rich people hoard money in conservative investments, poor people spend every penny, so giving money to poor people results in greater overall economic stimulus") that spoke in generalities and large groups, and applying to a specific person like Bill Gates.

You spoke of scientific evidence... well where is your scientific evidence that Bill Gates himself spends like an average rich person? He doesn't. Most rich people are not tech-savvy philanthropists giving away billions with the specific goal of improving life through the application of technology.

Timing

[Anonymous Coward]

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"....

Ups and Downs

[speedplane]

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.

That's only because he gives so much to the poor

[ffkom]

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!

Not impressed

[Heebie]

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.

Re:Not impressed

[jcr]

If he wants to impress me,

He doesn't.

-jcr

Re:Not impressed

[Heebie]

Yeah, you're probably right, but hearing this asshole's name in the news is alwasy annoying.

Re:Not impressed

[ArchieBunker]

Maybe you should read up on what his foundation has already done. Most of his wealth is tied to stock. He can only cash out so much before it causes an upset on the exchange.

Re:Not impressed

[tsotha]

Bill Gates is probably the most effective philanthropist ever, which is why Buffett gave his foundation so much money.

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

He couldn't do that if he wanted to - you can't run your own foreign policy under US law, and even if he could people like you would criticize him for it. Daesh exists for a reason, and even if you were able to eliminate the group you'd have the same ideologies percolating under the surface. Daesh wouldn't exist but for the fact we went around "eliminating" people and groups thinking they couldn't be replaced by anything worse.

...making an excellent education free and safe across the entire surface of the earth...

I doubt you'd ever get people to agree on just what an "excellent education" is. Certainly I wouldn't pay a bent nickel to subsidize the US university system at this point.

...ensuring no-one goes hungry...

Probably also a bad idea. There are a whole lot of people who would sink into a cycle of dependency and sloth if they were allowed to do so, and they'd be miserable for it. You want to lift people out of poverty? The only way that actually works is to provide them with the tools to lift themselves out.

...and getting things like an amendment to the constitution to reverse the Citizens United decision

Why? Is there some reason people should lose their right to free speech when acting as a group? Or do you just want to remove that right for people who criticize Hillary Clinton?

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.

I'm trying to understand why you would think of a person you don't know in those terms. Gates has already done more for destitute people in Africa than you our your descendants will ever do. What would make you think he's a "worthless piece of shit"?

Re:Not impressed

[coofercat]

He'd be a whole load more impressive if he hadn't shit all over us for decades before turning 'nice'. I dread to think of the number of companies that went out of business as a result of his company's actions.

Re:Not impressed

[stdarg]

I'm trying to understand why you would think of a person you don't know in those terms. Gates has already done more for destitute people in Africa than you our your descendants will ever do. What would make you think he's a "worthless piece of shit"?

Hey now. If we stripped Bill Gates of his wealth and distributed it equally to everyone, OP would take his share (about $11) and do AMAZING THINGS with it. He would spend his $11 to solve world hunger and create a global education system.

He just hasn't done it yet because Bill Gates has his $11!

Eggs and baskets

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Eggs and baskets

[Luthair]

Its less spending all your money at once, and more that at this rate he probably won't spend it before dying.

Re:Eggs and baskets

[Pseudonym]

He's focused on shit that can actually have an impact like sanitation

I see what you did there.

Re: Eggs and baskets

[pinkushun]

Matter of fact, before Bill's wife came along he was hardly any kind of philantropist. She should be thanked for being the brains behind the goodwill.

Secondly, Slashdot, reading about the richest top 2% is *not* "news that matters".

I really wish for a \. content voting mechanism.

Re:Eggs and baskets

[mwvdlee]

His kids will inherit it, without having done any effort and not having learned about the value of anything.
We all know what happens to spoiled little rich kids like that; they end up as reality TV stars or running for political offices.
In the worst cases they end up doing both.

Re:Eggs and baskets

[Jason1729]

Yeah, what a travesty of civilization that children can inherit from their parents. All America's problems could be solved if we had a 100% inheritance tax and only let people spend what they "earn"* * Earn for this definition means gets handed out by the government, because there is far more virtue in sitting on your ass collecting welfare than in creating world changing technology and passing the profits on to your children.

Re:Eggs and baskets

[mwvdlee]

Obviously you're being satirical by pretending to be obnoxious, but let's just assume for the sake of argument that you were being serious.
It's clear that I never advocated such a thing as "100% inheritance tax" or anything even remotely close to that.
Nor did I even mention hand outs or welfare. Besides; that argument confuses the person providing the inheritance with the person receiving it.
I was merely stating that inheriting billions of dollars (i.e. "sitting on your ass collecting inheritance") might mess up their perception of value.

Re:Eggs and baskets

[Jason1729]

You said that it's a bad thing that his kids should inherit the wealth without having done any effort. Why should it matter if we're talking about $1,000,000 or $78,000,000,000? What is the point of having anything if you can't pass it to your kids without them doing any effort? One of the perks of owning my own home is that someday it's going to help my kids out a whole lot even though they don't earn that help or do anything to deserve it. By your logic, I should be more selfish, and get a reverse mortgage or sell the place and rent when I retire so I can spend all the equity.

Re:Eggs and baskets

[rockout]

In the United States, the first 10 million dollars inherited is tax-free. And that's per child.

After that, yeah, the money starts getting taxed. If it doesn't, that money that funds stuff you like (like interstates, military defense, whatever) has to come from somewhere else. Who ends up paying the difference? People that actually worked for the money.

So yeah, I think an inheritance tax is a fair thing. In fact, with the first $10 million tax free, it's really really fair right now.

Re:Eggs and baskets

[Jason1729]

The earlier poster was implying there should be no inheritance at all because the kids getting the money did't put in any effort to earn it. The parent who earned that money did (presumably) pay their taxes on it, and the kid receiving it will (presumably) pay tax on anything they do with the money. And fwiw, here in Socialist Canada where they'd tax breathing for people earning over $50,000year if they could, we don't have an inheritance tax.

So, who do they support for president?

[El Cubano]

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.

Re:So, who do they support for president?

[Tom]

I am all for people being compensated for their efforts and have nothing against people taking risk and profiting from the risk taking.

Me neither. Sadly, this discussion is always brought to an end with the oldest strawman in the world. Because apparently if you point out that the differences are just crazy, it means you are against differences at all.

Where is the proper wording to say that "I want rich to be rich, I'm fine with that. I just want them to be rich, not super-crazy insanely-boggles-the-mind beyond-all-imagination hyper-rich." ?

There is no amount of personal effort or risk taking that justifies taking in billions. If you want to know how much personal risk is actually worth, look at what the hazard pay we give to people whose job includes risking their lives. There's no greater risk than that.

I'd be completely ok with someone having 78 million of personal fortune, or even of someone making 18.4 million profit in a good year. But we are talking about people who make a thousand times that. The only reason we are not on the street to hang them when thousands of people are actually in starvation poverty is that the mind boggles and we simply can't comprehend this amount of money.

The divide between the rich and the poor today is much bigger than it was at the time when the famous "if the people don't have bread, why don't they eat cake?" quote was allegedly made.

Re:So, who do they support for president?

[bazorg]

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.

Which country's president do you mean? The people on the list have/had careers in multinationals which were perfectly capable of moving cash across borders to suit their goals.

Re:So, who do they support for president?

[vinlud]

The voting preference of some tech CEO's does really say almost nothing about the likeliness that some candidate is not going to follow up on their campaign promises. You pretend it is a logical truth, but it is nothing more then poor reasoning, basically simplifying everyones political views being 100% dependant on ones living conditions, which is insanely shortsighted.
Some of those extremely rich people have publicly called for increased taxing, and I personally know some wealthy people that support such a change as well. Political views can definitely be different from ones personal circumstanes

ITT armchair wealth redistributors

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Greedy

[Gorobei]

People are starving while Gate$ hoards 78 billion dollars in cash. That makes sense.

Somewhere, a computer has { BillGates: 78,000,000,000 }. So what?

Interest rates are effectively zero right now. Hoarding is obviously not a way to make money, nor does it impact anyone's ability to borrow money and be productive.

Hoarding corn, or gold, or Titan-X graphics cards, or elephants, or opera singers would be a dick move. Hoarding money is pretty value neutral.

Re:The rich get richer

[unixisc]

Isn't he still the Chairman? The guy Satya reports to?

Just 1%...

[vanyel]

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...

But I saw THIS on Slashdot!

[WheezyJoe]

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...

seems like something is out of balance...

[k6mfw]

... with next slashdot story on "A Bit of Cash Can Keep Someone Off the Streets For 2 Years or More."

This is how you give to the poor

[WheezyJoe]

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.

Re:The rich get richer

[ahabswhale]

No, he's just an advisor. John Thompson is the chairman.

crazy

[Tom]

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?

$78bn from Windows

[Wowsers]

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.

you know you are rich when...

[WizardMarnok]

... they name a quantity of money after you.

Technically

[DarthVain]

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!

Print Money

[NewYork]

"Give me control of a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws." --Rothschild, 1744