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Bill Gates's Net Worth Hits $90 Billion (bloomberg.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the that's-a-lot-of-zeros dept.

schwit1 quotes a report from Bloomberg: The net worth of the world's richest person Bill Gates hit $90 billion on Friday, fueled by gains in public holdings including Canadian National Railway Company and Ecolab Inc. Gates's fortune is now $13.5 billion bigger than that of the world's second-wealthiest person, Spanish retail mogul Amancio Ortega, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. At $90 billion, the Microsoft Corp. co-founder's net worth is equal to 0.5 percent of U.S. GDP. Less than two weeks ago, Bill Gates topped Forbes' "100 Richest Tech Billionaires In The World 2016" (Warning: may be paywalled) list with an estimated fortune of $78 billion.

11 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Nope, no wealth inequality here by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Insightful

    none whatsoever.

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    1. Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here by smooth+wombat · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Why? Because you say so? Because you haven't been smart/lucky/whatever enough to get such a fortune?

      Regardless of how you feel about the guy he earned his money. He didn't have daddy give him a few million to get started (like Trump did), nor have daddy bail him out to protect him from his own incompetence (like both Bush and Trump had done).

      Gates is the one who came up with the idea, ran with it, invested his money (initially) and created Microsoft. He then used his money to take on more risk for which he has been handsomely rewarded.

      He is literally the spitting image of the American dream: a self-made man (or woman). It doesn't get much better than that.

      That he's not going to pass it on to his children but will give his fortune away when he dies says much about the man.

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    2. Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here by somenickname · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sorry but there's no way one person should be allowed to acquire so much personal wealth that in the list of the worlds 191 countries by GDP, he individually is the 68th richest.

      http://statisticstimes.com/eco...

      Using the word "allowed" kind of implies that there should be laws against becoming rich. That's a terrible idea. The real issue is that society has become so tilted in the favor of the rich that individual humans have more wealth than many countries. Don't hate the ultra-rich person, hate the world that created them.

    3. Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      doesn't that mean taking my money and giving to some dumb lazy bum?

      This is exactly the sort of belief that keeps society locked into the status quo. If you redistributed wealth as most people agreed as fair, then sure, lazy bums would get more money. So would every single blue and pink collar worker, most managers, and basically everyone who isn't a rockstar or fortune 500 executive. You have no idea how badly you're being fucked and yet you continue to cheer for it. Why?

    4. Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 4, Insightful

      . He didn't have daddy give him a few million to get started

      No, just be on the board of IBM to help him get MS DOS on literally every machine. And his dad was worth millions, so getting some startup cash wasn't impossible.

      That said, he is giving away a lot of his cash.

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    5. Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Also because of the fact that people with less money do not sit on that money but are forced to spend it on essentials, the economy as a whole would increase more if you spread the money around. If you spread that money around more people would benefit,even people at the top, they may have a smaller slice of the pie, but the pie would get larger.

    6. Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here by drinkypoo · · Score: 1, Insightful

      That said, he is giving away a lot of his cash.

      Bill Gates is not giving away money. He is spending it. He claims to be spending it on humanitarian aid, but he really isn't. He's spending it to disrupt education, he's spending it to spread strong IP law. He's spending it, ironically, to make more of it; the foundation is invested in profitable businesses which are literally killing people . After that story broke the foundation announced that it would review the ethics of its investments, then un-announced that (took the announcement down from their PR page) and put up a new announcement saying that they wouldn't do that because it would be hard. The Gates Foundation is first and foremost a tax dodge, and second a way to get strong IP protection in developing nations for Big Pharma (in which Gates is massively personally invested.)

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  2. Re:All I care about is: by EEPROMS · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Wrong, deleting official US federal emails is illegal, being careless is negligence and also illegal. Negligence is not an excuse when it comes to this specific mater because every US official would accidentally be deleting official emails.

  3. Other admirable traits by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I seriously admire Bill for the passion he has for helping the world's most vulnerable -- and in that vein I'm surprised to see his stockpile of cash going UP and not down...

    I seriously admire his talent for amassing huge sums of money by breaking the law, and getting away with a slap on the wrist.

    I don't have that level of chutzpah - I'd have always been afraid of getting caught. He must have had a different upbringing from mine.

  4. Stay off the slippery slope by s.petry · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Rich" is a vague and subjective term that GP never used.

    The story of the artisan from Plato's The Republic is interesting and rational. There are two failures with Gates. First, he has failed society by hoarding. Then again he has displayed a tremendous amount of sociopathic tendencies so we should not be too surprised. Second, the State has failed by allowing him to hoard that much personal wealth. I use Plato as my reference.

    There should absolutely be a wealth cap. Sorry if you don't like it, but unless you can come up with something better than Plato for me to reference I think Socrates had it correct. To preempt someone saying something stupid, go read the book.

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    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

  5. Re:All I care about is: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    She was careless. Being careless is not illegal.

    When you're dealing with classified material (and hence the opposition is nation-states) there are certain procedures that you are required to follow.
    In order to be cleared to handle those classified materials you get briefed on those procedures,
    Once briefed you need to contractually agree to folow those procedures, with jail time as punishment for non-compliance.
    Less politically connected people who failed to follow those procedures (and get caught) did in the past go to jail.

    Merely by having the private server for government mail Hillary clinton broke the handling procedures at a fundamental level. While that's technically a breach of contract and not a crime, she should indeed go to jail for it (just like less politically connected people who did so would)