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Bill Gates's Net Worth Hits $90 Billion (bloomberg.com)
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.
What a twist!
even his Foundation requires Windows which should be a conflict of interest.
What's Trump's net worth?! Release the fucking files, Trump!
No one gives a shit.
none whatsoever.
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i should've bought a ticket
Microsoft could never maintain two separate operating systems. A privacy focused Windows 7 style and Cloud based Windows 10. They simply couldn't afford it.
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 am also worth $90 billion, give or take $90 billion.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Meanwhile Hillary broke the law...
No, she didn't. She was careless. Being careless is not illegal.
Wait... you mean she *didn't* lie to congress?
That damn mainstream media, always distorting the truth!
Next I suppose you'll be telling me she didn't come under sniper fire in Bosnia!
If you are a billionaire and you need more money then FUCK YOU.
If the money is made good use of in the process then it's win-win. Who says you have to be self-sacrificing to help others?
The central banks of the world are conjuring money out of thin air and using it to buy stocks, which are ownership claims on real businesses with real assets, made of real materials in a universe dominated by the laws of thermodynamics [1]. Think about this absurdity and the implications for holders of fiat currency.
Therefore, the marginal buyer is increasingly a central bank that can create as much money as it wants, consequences be damned. When this ends, I suspect equities, like most other asset classes, will have a long fall back to reality.
Concurrently, interest rates are artificially low, leading to all sorts of chicanery and malinvestments. Shares of dividend-paying blue chips, such as Microsoft, are bid higher and higher as income-seeking investors search for yield wherever they can. However, the price you pay for future cash flows absolutely matters and determines your return; at current valuations, I suspect there will be a lot of tears for equity holders.
Between the third central bank-induced financial bubble in less than 20 years and Trump/Clinton, I'm starting to think I'm on a bizarro Earth 2 or something.
[1] http://www.reuters.com/article...
Don't hate the ultra-rich person, hate the world that created them.
I can go one better!
These ultra-rich persons only exist in a universe that allows matter to interact.
Don't hate the world that created the ultra rich, hate the universe that creates such worlds!
(Not that I'm not trying to deflect blame or anything. I'm sure you weren't either.)
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.
"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.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
My distance traveled is half my speed!
So, what're you stockpiling for the impending shitstorm? Asked as a person who has similar beliefs and worked hard for my money.
Warning: It's a waste of everyone's time to post something that can't be viewed.
Requiem for the American Dream
a beowulf cluster of bill gates' fortunes
It won't end, they're past the point of no return, Gates will be a trillionaire, and the working class won't even be allowed to access cash
even his Foundation requires Windows which should be a conflict of interest.
It's his money, so he gets to decide who to give it to. Nothing wrong with that.
But my dick is still bigger
The central banks of the world are conjuring money out of thin air and using it to buy stocks
Cite? I'm not aware of any central bank buying stocks. The "quantitative easing" they're doing -- AFAIK -- is all bond purchasing, which means they're not buying ownership in real businesses, they're lending money to real businesses.
Concurrently, interest rates are artificially low
That's debatable. Without the actions of the central banks, we would likely be in a deflationary cycle. Assuming interest rates naturally adjusted accordingly, they should go very low, or even negative. Some of the central banks have gone to slightly negative interest rates, but they won't go nearly as negative as would naturally occur in a deflationary cycle. Instead, they're pumping money into the economy (via QE) to avoid deflation.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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.
He's trying to buy his good name back, a la Alfred Nobel:
In 1888 Alfred's brother Ludvig died while visiting Cannes and a French newspaper erroneously published Alfred's obituary.[4] It condemned him for his invention of dynamite and is said to have brought about his decision to leave a better legacy after his death.[4][17] The obituary stated, Le marchand de la mort est mort ("The merchant of death is dead")[4] and went on to say, "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday."[18] Alfred (who never had a wife or children) was disappointed with what he read and concerned with how he would be remembered.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Nobel#Nobel_Prizes
I have no idea if Gates' primary motivation is altruistic or not, but most people now have a general good opinion of him. Perhaps he got bored with being a capitalist and wanted to solve new problems.
Musk is doing similar things: took his first fortune and used it to build companies that he thinks have important social consequences (energy, transportation, space travel and human extinction). Gates went the charity root.
If I was rich and had money (as in billions) to burn I'd work on improving roads / transportation in Africa, clean water processing and plumbing, the education of girls / women in certain parts of the world, and clean electricity generation. For the latter, I'd be looking into throwing money at small-scale nuclear, thorium, and reprocessing of current stockpiles of nuclear "waste" (which is 99% unused fuel).
Who is it going to be? I'm betting on it being some hospital administrator.
Now you know why he lays off people. It enriches him and his foundation.
I'd be happy if I had just 1% of that in the bank.
He doesn't have $90 billion in the bank and money or stocks are not backed by anything that has value but by speculation. He basically has $90 billion in stocks(monopoly money). If anyone of those company that he has his money invested in goes belly up he loses a portion or all of his so called wealth.
If I'm not mistaken Apple is worth around $8X billion so I have an idea. First, cash it all in an buy Apple. Second, destroy the company. Just sell it all off and clos everything. Next, die happy as the biggest hero in the entire history of the world.
When the currency goes bad where will he be hiding?
It is a big deal to backstab the whole globe with spyware. This is what Bill Gates will be remembered for.
Why do they always compare people's wealth to GDP? People say things like he's worth 50B which is the GDP of Cambodia or whatever. 50B over a lifetime of earning vs one year of a small country. Yeah it is a lot of money, I get that. But annual vs lifetime.
"Give me control of a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws." --Rothschild, 1744
Casteism
In your very diminished mind a scaling tax can't work as a wealth cap? Income tax was one of many taxes used to equalize wealth, and the heaviest used. We have and had others which were changed at the same time as the Income tax (Capital Gains, Estate) but those worked _after_ accumulation.
No wonder you can't name a reference for your position. It's based in delusional fantasyland which does not exist. You should really get on medication for your mental handicap.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.