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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.
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.
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...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
He's focused on shit that can actually have an impact like sanitation
I see what you did there.
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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...
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?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org