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.

Comments

Re:All I care about is:

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can you make heads or tales of them? Did you read Hillarys or Obamas? Or is it just an excuse for you to be mad at Trump?

You should be more mad at what is going on there. BillG got his buddy WarrenB to get Obama to basically nuke their biggest competitor from orbit and make it look like they were doing a good thing. WarrenB gave BillG a heads up in what to get into. Between the two of them they have locked up about 80% of the rail shipping market in America.

Nope, no wealth inequality here

[rsilvergun]

none whatsoever.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[JoeyRox]

There is wealth inequality but it roughly correlates to an effort and risk-tolerance inequality, outside of the typical exceptions like inherited wealth and some lucky hedge fundies.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[smooth wombat]

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.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[CastrTroy]

The thing is, that if you have money, and you manage it properly, it will just grow. How much wealth is somebody allowed to accumulate? 5 million? 50 million? 500 million? 5 billion? 50 billion. Once you reach that first number, you can make a lot more money simply by making smart investments with your money.

Bill Gates made his money because he owned a lot of stock in a company that started out small and became very big. Unless you seize the stocks that he has, there isn't really much of a way to take that wealth from him. You can tax the sale of those stocks, but that means fewer people will invest because they are unable to realize any gains from investing the money. Do we want to dis-incentivize people from creating the next Microsoft, or the next Amazon, or the next Apple? The fact that you can become ultra rich creates an incentive to build these large companies up from the ground, creating new products, and creating new jobs for the rest of the people.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[somenickname]

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.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[bloodhawk]

why? apart from you being jealous what possible reason is there to impose an artificial limit on what someone is allowed to earn through smart investments? and how would you possibly prevent it? Are you going to start confiscating assets when he hits a certain level?

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[Stormwatch]

Do we want to dis-incentivize people from creating the next Microsoft

Yes, of course. I wish he hadn't created the first one!

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[JoeMerchant]

Apparently, he can't give it away fast enough. That's a problem with philanthropic efforts, if the Gates foundation had a goal to utilize $45B in the next 15 years, it would take a massive operation to administer that - average $3B per year, average 1 FTE overseeing each 10 million dollars per year project, that's full time employment for 300 people for the next 15 years.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[JoeMerchant]

http://www.gatesfoundation.org...

Currently giving away ~$4B / year against a ~$40B endowment, with 1376 employees (no clear statement of employee commitment hours per year).

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[Actually, I do RTFA]

. 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.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Hahaha...maybe you should look into how his mommy helped him start Microsoft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Does anyone really think that if Bill Gates had been told he could never have been worth more than $10 billion, he would have somehow not created Microsoft?

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we want to dis-incentivize people from creating the next Microsoft, or the next Amazon, or the next Apple? The fact that you can become ultra rich creates an incentive to build these large companies up from the ground, creating new products, and creating new jobs for the rest of the people.

The top tax rate was 70% back when Microsoft and Apple were formed.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[no-body]

It doesn't get much better than that.

hmmm.....
Weird - no software patents, skalp CP/M and ...

http://forwardthinking.pcmag.c...
After a couple of years then...

In his 43-page conclusions of law, Judge Jackson's final judgment on the evidence, the judge wrote that ''the court concludes that Microsoft maintained its monopoly power by anticompetitive means and attempted to monopolize the Web browser market,'' as well as ''unlawfully tying its Web browser to its operating system'' -- all in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/04/business/us-vs-microsoft-overview-us-judge-says-microsoft-violated-antitrust-laws-with.html?pagewanted=all)

You need to watch His court depositions, what a hero!

Having control over OS and application software to control and monopolize a market may have been wrong i. e. unlawful, but in the United States, where nothing is impossible, it just wen through after the proven principle "it cannot be what may not be".

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Money is cheap now. But, yes, Steve Jobs and Woz didn't have millionaire parents. But my comment was in relation to Trump (who got a lot of start up capital/connections/cosigning from his dad.) I was just pointing out that Gates could get a lot of those same boosts.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[thinkwaitfast]

Where would Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity, hyperloop, etc. be if Musk was only allowed to keep his fair share of $300k after selling PayPal? Do you think that someone else would have done those startups with the money?

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[Solandri]

The real issue is that society has become so tilted in the favor of the rich

A big part of this (in the U.S.) is the capital gains tax. And no, not in the way you think.

Yeah the long-term capital gains tax is 15%, which is lower than many tax brackets. But those tax brackets are graduated, meaning you can be in the 25% or 28% tax bracket and still be paying less than 15% overall. In fact after accounting for average deductions and exemptions, the threshold at which the average American reaches a 15% tax rate is somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000/yr gross income (column T). When William Buffett said his secretary paid more than 15% income tax, that was because he pays his secretary really, really well.

The average effective income tax rate for someone making $100,000/yr (28% bracket) is less than 10%. The average effective income tax rate for someone making $40,000/yr (25% bracket) is less than 7%.

So the capital gains tax is too low for rich folks. But it's also too high (way too high) for low, middle, and lower-upper income folks. This means the tax discourages these people from investing, which is the best long-term way to make money as demonstrated over and over by wealthy people like Gates. Yes it should be increased for higher income brackets. But it'd be more helpful to lower or eliminate it entirely at lower income brackets and thereby encourage them to invest.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[Sarten-X]

He might very well have created Microsoft, then abandoned it when the maximum he could get from it was approaching $10 billion.

Without Microsoft having continued so far, computing would be very different today. If Microsoft had stagnated (Anti-Microsoft jokes elsewhere, please) with Windows 95, and left computing to newer upstarts, I expect we wouldn't have anywhere near the compatibility and interoperability we have today. Even among non-Microsoft OSes, interoperability is a mandatory feature. In contrast, I'm reminded of the pre-Windows days where particular software was written for a particular system, and that was it. Now, we have OpenOffice, Wine, and Samba, all from different projects united in the goal of slaying the Microsoft beast.

Microsoft is certainly no longer the only option, but computing environments are all still affected by Microsoft's legacy. I detest Microsoft's monopoly as much as anybody, but I think the cohesion that came out of it is a good thing, overall.

Back to the point, that's one of the philosophies of capitalism: The more people work (economically, meaning an investment of labor, capital, or advice), the more they should make. Artificially limiting the return on investment disincentivizes the amount of work they will do, which in turn reduces the efficiency of the economy. Limiting Gates' return on his Microsoft investment would very likely have also limited how much he invested in Microsoft, and in effect also limited what Microsoft could contribute to the economy. Sure, Gates would be less wealthy... but so would most others who have been employed by the company.

This assumes, of course, that Gates wouldn't have just continued investing anyway. He seems like he's trying to be a nice guy, outside of business, so perhaps he would have just let Microsoft keep growing, regardless of its return. That's a fundamental difference between capitalism and communism: Communism assumes that all people are good-hearted helpful folks contributing to the welfare of society, and capitalism assumes that everyone is a greedy selfish individual who won't do anything without getting paid. Neither assumption is wholly correct, which is why thought experiments like this one are rather useless at predicting a person's behavior.

Re: Nope, no wealth inequality here

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The OP brought up Trump. The OP said Gates was better than Trump because he didn't have Daddy's money. My response to that (that he in fact did) is what you're responding to.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[Anonymous Coward]

But isn't he kinda like the exception that proves the rule and the reason there's so much interest(hype/fanboys/haters etc) surrrounding him?
Who in the top 100 makes similar types of investments that does not revolve around just securing more money safely?

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[azrael29a]

The problem with socialists is that they are quickly running out of someone else's money. If you like giving money to the poor, start with your own money, and see what it's like to support lazy bums that just want to freeload on the work of others.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[stinerman]

That will be happening shortly. We're either getting a UBI or the people who are unemployable are going to have a lot of free time to break into people's houses and take what they need to live.

I pay a decent amount in federal income taxes. I wish more went to lazy bums.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather my money went to lazy bums, rather than selfish cunts. I don't really see what's wrong with being a lazy bum - it doesn't actually do anyone any harm, especially since there isn't actually enough meaningful labour for everyone to do. Selfish and greedy cunts on the other hand are usually the first to take things for themselves and leave others without. Mine, mine, mine.

Each to there own though, eh?

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[drinkypoo]

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.)

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[drinkypoo]

Without Microsoft having continued so far, computing would be very different today.

Yes, it would be literally years farther forward ahead, which is what the DoJ found when they found them guilty of abusing their monopoly position — right before Ashcroft (under Bush) decided that they would not even get a handslap for it.

If Microsoft had stagnated (Anti-Microsoft jokes elsewhere, please) with Windows 95, and left computing to newer upstarts, I expect we wouldn't have anywhere near the compatibility and interoperability we have today.

What? You are clearly clinically insane. Microsoft has always been the enemy of compatibility and interoperability. They create their own garbage protocols and APIs when the industry already has protocols that do the same thing. They buy out companies making cross-platform software and terminate or deprecate the non-windows versions.

Even among non-Microsoft OSes, interoperability is a mandatory feature.

If only you knew what "Open" meant. Hint: It has nothing to do with the OSI. Openness was a central feature of Unix since time was time. It meant documented (often with source access) and thus interoperable. Microsoft is the odd man out here. Source access is extremely limited; only governments have complete source trees.

In contrast, I'm reminded of the pre-Windows days where particular software was written for a particular system, and that was it.

Less Windows software is cross-platform than software for any other platform except perhaps the Macintosh. Another central feature of Unix is portability. It's also a central feature of C. But Microsoft creates their own specifically non-interoperable garbage APIs to the detriment of all, like Direct3D.

Now, we have OpenOffice, Wine, and Samba, all from different projects united in the goal of slaying the Microsoft beast.

Yes, those are all projects which exist only because Microsoft is hostile to compatibility and interoperability. You don't even understand your own argument.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[WhiplashII]

No, the real problem with socialism is not the harm it does to the economy due to the direct action of taking money from savers and giving it to spenders. That is bad enough, but the true problem is that those transfers due terrible things to the human psyche:

http://econlog.econlib.org/arc...

If you change the reward structure of society and make it random, moral behavior stops. If you take from workers and give to non-workers, not only do people stop working they also start stealing, raping, and killing at higher rates.

Socialism is the death knell of human societies.

On a side note, the intuition that transferring money from the rich (or savers) to the poor (or spenders) helps the spenders is false. It seems true because if you personally steal money from someone, it does make you better off. But the fact is that if everyone like you stole a million dollars from the Fed, the number of pizzas you could buy would not change. The number of pizzas being created per year cannot fluctuate that easily, but the price can. So when you take money from savers and give it to spenders two things happen:

1) There is inflation of the prices of things the spenders like to buy in order to soak up the money (you haven't increased supply, you haven't changed demand, so the only thing that can change is the price)
2) There are fewer savers, at the very least because you have confiscated some savings. This means fewer jobs available.

So, socialism is not good for anyone, even those it supposedly helps!

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[lexman098]

You start by taxing the hell out of capital gains. When people end up with millions more than they even want to spend, they'll invest it regardless of the tax rate. You have to keep up with inflation somehow, and really there's nothing else you can do with it.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[Alomex]

His dad wasn't on the board of IBM. His mom was in the board of a charity where she had met the chair of IBM. Even so, IBM wanted CP/M but Gary Kildall blew up the deal, only then did IBM approached Bill Gates and asked him if he could provide an OS for the new IBM PC.

Sure, the connection did help, but it wasn't pivotal to the deal. They were already in talks with Microsoft to buy Microsoft Basic which was the standard back then, shipped with all personal computers from all makers. They offered Microsoft the MSDOS contract before the chairman realized he knew the mom of the kid in charge of the company.

Using personal connections to get business is standard practice, any business owner will tell youu about business they got because of some personal reference. You still need to have the record to back up the personal connection. Just because I know the owners of Google does not mean I am about to get the contract for Chrome OS.

So let's recap: Bill Gates had already founded a company that was shipping the most popular basic interpreter at the time and had already been offered the OS contract for the IBM PC before someone high up at IBM realized that he was "Mary Gates' kid". Out of this he made a 90 billion dollar fortune.

Cheeto Jesus on the other hand got a million dollar from his dad, before he had succeeded at anything and parlayed it into four bankruptcies and a heavily leveraged "fortune" that is so huuuge he's not willing to show his tax returns.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[BaronAaron]

You and I might be able to run out of money but society can't run out of money. At this point it's just a electronic ledger controlled by the Federal Reserve. Creating more money is simple as adding some zeroes to a column in some fancy Excel sheet. This happens all the time, but currently it's put into circulation through loans to corporations. A top down approach.

Giving money out to individuals through some sort of UBI system would be a bottom up approach. That money is going to be spent on goods and services from companies anyway. Also taxed the whole way back up. The trick is obviously doing this in a way that doesn't drastically increase the rate of inflation.

Bottom line there needs to be some sort of balance in, not how we redistribute wealth, but in how we distribute the opportunity to gain wealth.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[MrVictor]

Or we can fix the actual problem instead of going for the UBI band-aid. Just tear up all the free trade agreements and tariff imports so all the unemployed/discouraged will be able to find jobs again. Fences make good neighbors.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[Actually, I do RTFA]

He might very well have created Microsoft, then abandoned it when the maximum he could get from it was approaching $10 billion.

Microsoft was a public company. Even if Gates quit, someone would still have pushed it forward. And I doubt he would keep his $10 billion after the shareholder lawsuit if he said, "I got mine, shut it down." Heck, I would imagine that the purchase of shares would include golden handcuffs to prevent him stepping down at all.

Back to the point, that's one of the philosophies of capitalism: The more people work (economically, meaning an investment of labor, capital, or advice), the more they should make.

That is not one of the philosophies of capitalism I've ever heard of. Capitalism is the idea that private capital, invested for reward, is how the means of production should be allocated. It's completely disconnected from how much work pays. Also, investing capital is not work.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[Rising Ape]

wealth equality? doesn't that mean taking my money and giving to some dumb lazy bum? I'll take wealth inequality thanks very much

If you start with a couple of million, you get easily invest it to get greater than the average person's income from a full time job, except without having to lift a finger.

How's that for being a "dumb lazy bum"?

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[Sarten-X]

I think you missed my point.

Yes, there were standards without Microsoft. There were a lot of them, usually competing and incompatible. Sure, they were open, but vendors still usually picked one based on their own technical preferences, leaving a lot of work to actually achieve interoperability between systems who chose competing standards. Lots of jobs for the programmers writing interface layers, but utter crap for actually making progress.

Microsoft's monopoly forced everyone's hand. Microsoft's way was rarely (if ever) the best way, but it was a clear and well-trodden path, and anyone doing things Microsoft's way could have a reasonable chance that others would follow suit.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[Coren22]

FYI, 1% of 330 million is 1.55 million. Pointing out how many people are in the 1% makes you look like you fail at math.

The current GDP per capita is $53k, if everyone got the same amount of money, that is how much you would get every year right now (it would be far less, but this is a good example). Now, if you think that is a raise, perhaps you should go out and get a degree, or work hard in a technology field and start earning more money. I almost make double that amount, and I would not say that I am well off, but it puts me in the top 5% of the US.

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[Coren22]

Forgot the link:

https://www.google.com/search?...

Re:Nope, no wealth inequality here

[iggymanz]

the same investment return rates are open to anyone as to person with $2M.

if you have degree that leads to six figure salary after 10-15 years, no excuse not to have 2M in retirement account.

did he win the Powerball or something?

[turkeydance]

i should've bought a ticket

Re:Who knew philanthropy increased net worth!?

[bloodhawk]

he actually is giving a butt ton to charity at an ever increasing rate, he still has investments though and those investments are currently growing at a faster rate than he can give it away (without actually flushing down the dunny).

No biggie

[PopeRatzo]

I am also worth $90 billion, give or take $90 billion.

Re:No biggie

[sysrammer]

Sad that most of our working lives sum up to little more than a rounding error.

Re:All I care about is:

[the_Bionic_lemming]

I don't get why Canckles email thing is an issue - the moment any type of crime is mentioned, the current failure will pardon the next failure.

It's really a non issue. Not because she isn't a criminal, it's just that the criminals are in charge.

This is the Daley machine nationwide. Until we crack down on all government criminals from city to state to nationwide, our votes won't be counted.

Re:Who knew philanthropy increased net worth!?

[bloodhawk]

fucking retard, learning how investments works. If you give away 40 billion (approximately what he has given so far) and earn 60 billion your net worth grows. would take you all of 10 seconds to search on the web to see what he does for charity and the millions of children he has helped.

Re:Yey for worlds richest man

[UnknownSoldier]

I would.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
* http://skeptics.stackexchange....

Anyone only needs to study the history of MS to see how they -effectively- drove tech company after company out of business.

Stac Electronics, Borland, etc.

Batten down the hatches - a bubble's bout to burst

[RichPowers]

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...

Re:All I care about is:

[EEPROMS]

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.

Go one better!

[Okian Warrior]

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.)

Other admirable traits

[Okian Warrior]

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.

Re:Other admirable traits

[4im]

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.

This! I wish I had mod points. Crime obviously does pay. Donating parts of the ill gotten doesn't make the crime go away.

Re:Other admirable traits

[stdarg]

Oh yes Gates is real gangster. Why, one time he even bundled a web browser with his operating system!!!! I don't know why he isn't rotting in a prison cell right now. It's all blood money I tells ya.

Jesus Christ you people sound stupid.

Stay off the slippery slope

[s.petry]

"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.

Re:Stay off the slippery slope

[Procrasti]

Instead of a wealth cap, which removes the incentive to provide value to society, perhaps a wealth tax should be levied on wealth beyond a certain level.

A 1%/year tax on net wealth would encourage productive use of wealth, so that wealth then necessarily benefits society.

There are good justifications for this, because wealth is protected by the state and the people, and so those whose wealth we are protecting, should pay for that protection, and about 1% flat wealth tax beyond a reasonable amount (maybe $2M, or whatever puts you in the top 1%) makes sense.

Furthermore, a wealth tax, along with a small UBI, means that the a wealthy few can support a large population, providing for their desires in accordance with the free market, as the AGI revolution replaces almost all jobs with capital.

I propose that a wealth tax and a UBI are the closest practical implementation of lump sum transfers specified in the second fundamental theorem of welfare economics.

Re:Stay off the slippery slope

[Procrasti]

(Ignoring your views on windows for a moment here). Let's say we capped Bill's net wealth at $1B, once he got that $1B, he could have dismantled MS and stopped development of Windows entirely. There's no incentive to continue with a wealth cap, so why not?

No, wealth is the incentive capitalism uses to provide value to society. Every trade provides a benefit to both the consumer and the producer, or otherwise, they would not participate in that trade.

However, there do exist economic rents, monopolies form, and wealth trickles up in reality. A wealth tax stops wealth from being hoarded in unproductive ways, and addresses these unfortunate facts of the real market. Productive wealth provides goods and services to the rest of the population.

Now, I'm sure you're a socialist or something who has never actually studied economics. I recommend you take an online course in the fundamentals of microeconomics. Once you can mathematically prove the first and second fundamental welfare theorems, then I will look forward to any arguments you have with my statements. Until then, I think you are following feels over facts, and as good as your intentions may be, that road leads to dark places, starvation, poverty and death.

A wealth tax, UBI and some adjustments to income and capital gains taxes can provide both the required incentives for those who chose to chase wealth, while making that pursuit a benefit to all, especially in a future where almost all jobs become redundant in world dominated by AI and robots.

Re:Stay off the slippery slope

[Andtalath]

It's not 90 billion USD in wealth.
It's 90 billion USD in assets, most of them are "at work".

Re:Stay off the slippery slope

[drinkypoo]

We don't need a wealth cap. All we need is to eliminate tax dodges like the Gates Foundation; its first job is to make more money, its second job is to spread strong IP law to developing nations, and its third job is to make Gates look good. It is exactly like the Rockefeller foundation. We should also have a steady and useful rate of inflation which discourages hoarding cash. If you want your money to not lose value, you should have to invest it in something with value. That is how jobs are created.

Re:Stay off the slippery slope

[stdarg]

The funny thing is both of your points are completely incoherent because Gates isn't hoarding anything. Unfortunately I haven't read The Republic so I'm not sure if your misuse of the word "hoarding" is a fatal flaw in your argument, or merely funny.

Re:Stay off the slippery slope

[s.petry]

Horse shit! Read US History from 1776 to Present. Since we began to track the _personal_ income tax, the through the first 70 years of so of the tax, anything over a million dollars in yearly income was taxed Federally at 90%. We had boom after boom in this country with a wealth cap, and Wealth Disparity in the US was one of the best in the world improving steadily year after year. Since we removed the cap (thanks Dick! Nixon that is) we have done nothing but go in the opposite direction. A _reasonable_ wealth cap does not give any disincentive for gaining wealth, it does however diminish the narcissistic behavior which has become commonplace.

So now you are 0 for 2 in references, and 2 for 2 in spreading bullshit. Care to provide an economist who backs your view sanely? If not, I assume you are just a troll.

Re:Stay off the slippery slope

[Procrasti]

I don't need an economist, because you prove you don't know what you are talking about.

That's not a wealth cap, it's an income tax. The high rate makes it an "effective" INCOME cap, but that has nothing to do with wealth.

Wealth is your total value (holdings minus debts), while income is a delta to wealth.

Income caps aren't fantastic ideas either, (note it was a high but progressive tax, and not an actual cap), but you shouldn't confuse income with wealth.

Re:All I care about is:

[rogoshen1]

What is manslaughter?

Uhh...

[easyTree]

(Warning: may be paywalled)

Warning: It's a waste of everyone's time to post something that can't be viewed.

Re:And Hillary has a lyinhilary doll?!

[davester666]

Mainstream media is hiding the fact that Trump is the president of NAMBLA. Lots of people know, but are too afraid of what Trump will do to them.

Re:All I care about is:

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

Re:All I care about is:

[stealth_finger]

non intentional killing

so just imagine

[fche]

a beowulf cluster of bill gates' fortunes

Re:Batten down the hatches - a bubble's bout to bu

[misexistentialist]

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

Re:All I care about is:

[kelemvor4]

Meanwhile Hillary broke the law... No, she didn't. She was careless. Being careless is not illegal.

There's thousands of folks in prison who will be excited to hear they have been exonerated because they didn't mean to do what they did! In fact, there are people in prison right now for leaking classified documents accidentally. However, they weren't extremely rich and powerful...

Being careless IS illegal if you commit a crime in your carelessness.

Re:Greedy Fuck.

[gtall]

No, no, FU is the "type" of money a billionaire has. Incidentally, most of money billionaires have is not money in the sense you are thinking of it. It is tied up in investments and such. Think Bam-Bam Trump when asked about his net worth...enormous...he cannot tell you how enormous it is, it is that big...unless he was forced into translating it into actual cash, then it would be quite small, unlike for real billionaires.

Re:So what?

[drinkypoo]

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 problem is that the money is being used to do evil. Gates is investing in businesses which are killing the people he's claiming to be helping. As it turns out, you do have to be self-sacrificing to help others.

Re: Yey for worlds richest man

[drinkypoo]

You should hate the game not the players.

The game can't go one without the players. The most powerful players have paid to have the rules changed. You can't hate the game without hating the players.

American capitalism has seen much worse in the past 200-300 years than Gates.

Let me just stroll up and give you a stab wound on the premise that it's better than being shot in the face.

Microsoft is actually a rather decent company in the end.

The DoJ said differently. They said it abused its monopoly position in basically every way possible.

I'd be much more worried about the startups of our latest ongoing IT bubble.

I'm more concerned about large, entrenched companies proven in court to be harmful.

Those guys want nothing more than money and power.

And you think BG is a nice guy? What a moron you are.

Re:who cares, he doesn't share unless you run Wind

[Gamer_2k4]

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.

Re:Yey for worlds richest man

[Alomex]

Driving your competitors out of business is not a crime.

I followed MS quite closely and they beat many companies fair and square in the market place. Their first questionable kill was when they built incompatibility directed to DRDOS. This seems to have marked the beginning of a transition on how MS operates, not long after they did STAC and many other questionable deals in which they were using their size to get an advantageous position rather than technical quality.

Re:Batten down the hatches - a bubble's bout to bu

[swillden]

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.

Countdown on to the world's first trillionaire

[Applehu Akbar]

Who is it going to be? I'm betting on it being some hospital administrator.

Re:All I care about is:

[GLMDesigns]

Please. Running your own email server so as not to keep a trail of documents is legal?

OK. Say it is.

Is it ethical? Is it something acceptable to you?

Re:All I care about is:

[BringsApples]

It's what a few cops do, and get charged for.

Re:All I care about is:

[BringsApples]

Hell, I hope so. I do it at my house. I do it so that google and/or anyone else cannot read my email. Seems totally ethical to me. But then again, I'm not a professional politician, working for the public.

my proposed financial plan

[slashmydots]

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.

Re:So what?

[clodney]

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 problem is that the money is being used to do evil. Gates is investing in businesses which are killing the people he's claiming to be helping. As it turns out, you do have to be self-sacrificing to help others.

You keep posting this same link like it is some horrible smoking gun, but all the article says is that the investments of the Gates Foundation don't follow the same principles of the charitable works the foundation does. That is disappointing, but hardly counts as killing people. Or at least, if that is killing people, anyone with investments in S&P index funds is equally culpable.

The Gates foundation directly spends billions on philanthropic causes that are widely agreed to be legitimate and useful. It also invests in companies that are polluters or have unsavory business practices. Gates has put a ton of money into childhood vaccinations and in developing treatments for diseases where there is no money to be made. How many other charitable goals are they required to sign on to?

Re:All I care about is:

[GLMDesigns]

:-)

good point.

However politicians pass all sorts of compliance laws. Among the purposes of these laws is to ascertain who did what when; who knew what when. Running an email server to bypass compliance regulations is not ethical. (Although it may technically have been legal for the S of S. I'm not an attorney so I don't know how the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed.)

Running the email server out of her house was clearly done to circumvent compliance and FOI requests.

Re:Greedy Fuck.

[zenlessyank]

Please don't make excuses for greedy fucks. It puts you in a bad light.

Re:And Hillary has a lyinhilary doll?!

[davester666]

True, but Trump has a nude picture of Marlon Brando as a child as his phones background image.

Re:All I care about is:

[Coren22]

From https://www.fbi.gov/news/press...

Our investigation looked at whether there is evidence classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that personal system, in violation of a federal statute making it a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way, or a second statute making it a misdemeanor to knowingly remove classified information from appropriate systems or storage facilities.

Yes, being careless with classified information IS illegal. Perhaps you would like to argue with James Comey about what is legal and not? Unfortunately, because Hillary is well connected, and wealthy, no prosecutor would take the case, it doesn't make it any less illegal. This on top of the official records act laws others mentioned.

Rothschild

[NewYork]

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

Re:Medicate

[Procrasti]

Actually, UBI has been proposed many times by many high profile economists, you should be able to find these yourself. Yes, there are economists and economic thinkers from a long time back that advocate wealth taxes, or similar, or partial implementations of it. You should be able to find these too. I'm not going to help you because you come across as rude and ignorant.

No amount of income tax, no matter how progressive, or capital gains tax (also a tax on deltas), etc, can act as a wealth cap. Simple logic should prove this to you. A multi-billionaire dies, his son inherits 10 billion dollars, you apply 99% tax to anything over $1 income or capital gains made on everyone, and your guy is still a multi-billionaire for life. It just makes sure that the poorest, no matter how much skill or value they ever bring to society, can never make more than a small amount of savings. Is this your aim? If not, you haven't thought through the problem.

Estate taxes are somewhat similar to wealth taxes though, except they apply only once, when a rich person dies. So, the rich person will be rich forever, no matter how little he brings to society. His children will be rich too, but some tax goes to the state, to make up for their 'unearned' income.

A wealth tax is more like a continuous version of an estate tax, that happens throughout the person's life. However, an estate tax does not encourage behaviour of making wealth productive on the individual. Mostly it encourages the creation of trust funds and such to avoid the tax for the benefit of their offspring. A wealth tax means that a person must invest their wealth (on average) in a productive (and therefore beneficial, under the assumptions of a free market) manner, at all times. The idea is not to disallow, but to discourage, large amounts of wealth to only be a benefit to the holder of the wealth and not society in general. A wealth tax makes it a benefit to society in general.

Let's say you have a $2B luxury mansion property. You live very well on it, and make a tiny bit of money so you cover all your spending, but only the minimum. You die, and your child inherits it, but has to pay tax, we give half of it to the state, leaving the with a $1B luxury mansion property, and that person can make a tiny bit of money off of it to cover their spending, but only the minimum. Pretty much that $1B worth of WEALTH, is locked up by one person to the exclusion of everyone else for their entire lifetime. For that one person it is great, but for everyone else, it provides nothing.

In a 1% wealth tax scenario, that $2B mansion better be making at least $20M/year to cover it's taxes, which benefit society directly, or it is a losing proposition and should be sold to someone who can make productive use of it. Also, over the average lifetime of a human being, they will pay the equivalent of an estate tax for that wealth, but the difference being, wealth would have been (more likely) to be used productively, and more efficiently, over that time, rather than simply hoarded.

Now, you see if you can find the economists who have proposed these ideas before. Okay?

Re:All I care about is:

[The Relentless]

MansLaughter is the funniest homicide!