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

Nope, no wealth inequality here

[rsilvergun]

none whatsoever.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

No biggie

[PopeRatzo]

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

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: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.

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.

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.

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

[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

[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: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:

[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.