I think most people don't realize just how much money the richest people have. People generally think of normal(ish) distributions like height, where if you're 10% taller or shorter than average, you're a tall or short person, and 40% taller makes you the tallest person in the world. In comparison, wealth has a very, very long tail, making it hard to comprehend.
Here's what I've come up with to visualize wealth in the United States. Suppose you start counting, going up by 1 million dollars every second, and people sit down when you reach their net worth. Most people will sit down immediately. After about 9 seconds, people in the "1%" will start sitting down. Near the 17 minute mark, billionaires would start sitting down. Donald Trump would sit down just before the hour mark. A day later - an hour and 10 minutes into the second day of billionaires sitting down - Bill Gates would sit, followed by Jeff Bezos just three minutes later.
The point of this is there's a huge range of billionaires (analogous to comparing 17 minutes to a day). The 1% hardly even registers on this scale (a few seconds). (I should also mention that there should be huge error bars on reported net worth numbers.)
>The 1% hardly even registers on this scale (a few seconds).
I really wish this point was better understood. The rhetoric around the "1%" has completely missed the point, as the vast majority of the 1% is comprised of our doctors, lawyers, small business owners, and other normal successful people. Pitting the poor and working classes against them makes no sense. The real problem is the 0.00000001% of people who control now half the world's wealth [0].
> the 0.00000001% of people who control now half the world's wealth
This is nonsense. Your source compares the wealth of the richest few people to the net worth of the "poorest" 50% of people. Net worth takes into account debt, and it happens that the half of the population with the lowest net worth has a total amount of debt about equal to its total amount of assets, so its total net worth is almost zero. A little more credit card spending, and an eight year old with a nickel in his pocket will have "more wealth than the poorest half". Needless to say this is not anything like half of the world's wealth. The total wealth of individuals is (according to my quick Google search) something like $250 trillion, and that presumably doesn't take into account wealth held by governments.
It's also silly to use net worth to identify the "poorest". Supposedly Donald Trump had a net worth in 1990 of negative 900 million. Your source's calculation would presumably call him the "poorest" person in the world and his presence would subtract $900 million from the wealth of the "poorest half". Is that sensible?
The richest people are very, very rich compared to most individuals. But no individual has much compared to the wealth of the whole world, and I suspect the share is shrinking. In the 19th century JP Morgan bailed out the US government, rather than the other way around!
A more interesting analysis would be to look at the distribution of total lifetime consumption.
None of these net worth calculations of poor people make any sense. If I take out $100k in loans to get an education, the wealth of the world has increased, but the only thing that's recorded on the ledgers of net worth is that I'm $100k in the hole.
You're not getting my point. Education itself is a form of wealth in terms of increased future earnings; otherwise few would pay for it. That wealth doesn't show up on anybody's balance sheet because it's hard to measure, but it still there. When some millennial says they have negative net worth due to student loans, they're not accounting for the positive value that their education affords them due to the fact they can do skilled labor.
Look at it this way -- if a company A has an EBITDA of $20k/year and company B has an EBITDA of $40k/year, the MBAs will have no problem assigning values to these companies. And companies can increase their earnings by going into debt such that their net worth as measured by these calculations can increase. But substitute a human in, and suddenly everybody has negative net worth.
The "1%" is weird because it simultaneously includes a lot that people didn't want it to and doesn't include a lot that people think it does.
The 1% is roughly half a million in yearly income or ten million in net assets (remember to subtract your mortgage from that!). It is true that this goes beyond the ultra wealthy to largely include "doctors, lawyers, small business owners, and other normal successful people", but that doesn't mean most doctors, etc. are in the 1%.
There's an urban legend that 19% of people think they are in the 1%, but the actual poll was that 19% of people think they would be affected by tax cuts affecting the 1%. I'd like to see a study of what percentage of people think they are in the 1% or soon will be, because I bet it's a lot more than 1%.
So you have a term that was meant to vilify the ultra-rich, but makes the average doctor, etc. worry about being vilified.
Actually, it does make sense. While the ability of the super-rich to affect society is enhanced by their wealth, their ability, and need to do so, are reduced by their small numbers. They do not form the kind of large, broadly homogeneous social group that drives long-term changes in society. The sheer scale of their exceptional wealth also lets them make special, individual arrangements that preclude the need to act en-masse.
The 1% on the other hand, are rich enough to enjoy outsized political influence, but poor enough to retain some economic anxiety, and be genuinely affected by changes to taxation, inheritance, redistribution, etc. And they are numerous enough to form a corporate whole that acts to protect its own interests.
The 1% are the middle managers of the world's socioeconomic hierarchy. They don't possess great power individually, but their collective power to shape the culture is vast, and has a tendency towards toxic outcomes as they attempt to safeguard what wealth they have managed to accumulate.
I prefer to realize that even at ninety billion dollars of personal wealth; the full amount is not actually available; is that the US government would consume it in less than ten days.
Even if we could confiscate his and all similar holders of wealth money we could not pay for government for even a year.
the realization we must have is that this amount of personal wealth is not harming the worlds poor and it really doesn't harm those of us here.
the world has such incredible poverty because of government. Government that does not respect property rights, rights to one's self, nor the product of their work.
What makes capitalist societies work is property rights and it is that incentive which provides the stable society many of us enjoy.
If you want to raise the poorest in the world up you do so by encouraging their governments to respect the property rights of even their weakest citizen. To respect the earnings of those who work.
Yes, I've been learning that this is a fundamental realization to make that the pie grows and the economy is not this fixed sum game where someone grows rich at the expense of others. Thomas Sowell has written well of this topic and I like his perspectives on the matter. Milton Friedman his PhD advisor is fun to watch too on YouTube.
Some Uncommon Knowledge video of Thomas Sowell makes an interesting point about how the real question is not to ask why people are poor, that's the default position he claims. The real question to ask is why is there wealth in the first place.
I'm as pro-capitalist, pro-democracy, pro-make-a-fuck-ton-of-money as you can get... But even I am blown away by the wealth of some of the top billionaires.
Just think about the good that some of that could do for the country. Put it into science. Put it into social welfare systems. I don't care, put it into something!
I don't know what the solution is. The naive comment would be if you make above X billion everything else goes to some re-distribution fund... Obviously that will turn a lot of people off. But the point is, I just don't think anybody needs that kind of wealth.
It doesn't boggles my mind at all, and I prefer Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates rather than more corrupted people.
"All the good you can do with this tons of money" Money at that scale is power. Bezos could give away a little each year to a science institut for example, but it would not work for short term stuff. You are not going to discover 1000x more stuff tomorrow by pouring billions in science. But for a long term goal yes Jeff Bezos could nudge more people getting into science if he wanted that. And that's what he might do for Space exploration / technologies (at least that's what he publicly says) and that is called... Investment.
So which investment is the best ? Who knows ? Who has the power to decide it ?
PS : not spending its own money is NOT throwing it away, it increase power purchase of all others people that uses the same money. Spending it increases money circulation and can cause inflation for example.
PS2 : "I just don't think anybody needs that kind of wealth" who said anyone was given money because he "needed" it ? We don't live in a communism utopia
Capitalism: pro competition, pro markets. Corporatism: anti-competition, Freedom Markets™.
Conflating the two is the biggest failing of modern leftists, such as myself. We can hardly criticize, mitigate our modern winner-takes-all economy until we stop defending it.
The billionaire himself would rarely have a significant pile of cash lying around. Someone somewhere decided to value AMZN at $1,046.00.
They could've done something for the country. They could've put $1,046.00 into science. Cut a $1,046.00 check to a social welfare system. Yet they chose to exchange $1,046.00 for a single share of Amazon.com.
> Just think about the good that some of that could do for the country.
It already has. Bezos has created value for millions of people and businesses, generated huge tax receipts and completely revolutionarised entire industries.
Universities, and I would guess charities as well, tend to liquidate their shares immediately to avoid conflicts of interest. Liquidating that many shares that fast would cause havoc in the markets.
Money begets money through investment, like gravity. In any random distribution of particles you'll eventually have black holes form with gravity.
People with this level of money are equivalent to kings or other monarchs. On some level it really isn't their money at the same time. When he dies, it's not his money any more.
The way I thought about it is that Bill Gates : Donald Trump :: Donald Trump : a wealthy-ish Silicon Valley employee. (This was after a NYTimes article on Trump's true wealth, which was several years before he ran for president.)
Say you have $1M. Then Donald Trump might have 200 times more than you, or $200 M (they were saying he's not really a billionaire). But Bill Gates has 200 times more than him -- $40 B. (And apparently now Bill Gates has $90 B).
And I guess you could extend it further say that an average young person working in retail might have $5K in savings, which is 200x less than the Silicon Valley employee.
So people think that there are three classes: poor, middle, class, rich (Donald Trump). But there is actually another full class above him: the super-rich like Bill Gates.
> say that an average young person working in retail might have $5K in savings
Doubtful. Even if you assume a minimum wage of $10, which is well above the Federal minimum (but slightly below some state minimums), that's 500 hours of wages. That's almost three months of 40 hours work weeks where you put every penny into savings. Before taxes. Before living expenses. The vast majority of Americans have far less than $5k in their savings account.[1]
How much you keep in your bank savings account has very low correlation with savings/net worth. Extremely low net worth people generally keep liquid assets in cash because then they don't need to pay crazy fees to banks. High net who do use savings accounts generally keep very little of their liquid assets in one.
Measuring the size of savings accounts != measuring the size of savings. Brokerage accounts exist. 401k plans exist. Hell, even paying into a mortgage is a form of savings.
Sure... but are you just making a distinction, or are you arguing that the average young person working in retail has any of those things? I agree with the distinction, I'm just not sure it makes any difference in this case.
I like to think about it like this: With a wealth of 92.3B, even earning a moderate 8% net return on that wealth, Jeff Bezos needs to spend $20.2M per day just to not get any richer.
Now I've spent a lot of time daydreaming about how awesome it would be to be rich. One day I added up what it would take to have the most obscene, ridiculously opulent lifestyle imaginable...private jets, presidential suites, chauffers, megayachts, basically anything and everything imaginable that I would possibly want if money were no object. I never surpassed a requirement for more than $20M per year. $20M per day is ludicrous...and that's just what it would take for him to not get any richer.
> One day I added up what it would take to have the most obscene, ridiculously opulent lifestyle imaginable...private jets, presidential suites, chauffers, megayachts... I never surpassed a requirement for more than $20M per year.
Then you grossly underestimated your requirement. The first Google result on the subject of megayachts, for example, tells me that they cost tens or hundreds of millions to build (the record is 600M) and that their yearly upkeep can be on the order of 10% their build cost.
So that alone would eat a good chunk of your 20M. Now consider how much more you could spend on palaces (plural, because they don't move) than you could on your humble dinghy.
Nope. A $30M yacht is more than I would ever want, and with a 15 year loan will set me back around $3-3.5M per year, including maintenance. Nobody buys with cash in the yacht industry.
Yeah, I only included things that I'd actually want. If I didn't want something (like a trip around the moon, or a patek philippe watch), it wasn't included. Maybe I'm pretty low maintenance, but everything I added up seemed unmaintainably ridiculous to me.
If Bezos gave all his money to everyone in the world we would all get maybe $13 or so. If all the billionaires did the same we would all get $1000 or so.
So you are saying the richest still have potential? I mean we can expect the average person around the world to be able to "yield" $500 for the richest person in this global era. That's like trillions for the worlds richest.
I don't speak for your comment's parent, but anytime I see these types of figures, it brings to mind Iain Banks' comment "Money is a sign of poverty" [1]. You'll see rants [2] against this sentiment, but I have yet to find a rant that doesn't essentially deify money. It's just a tool, and if it doesn't help us sufficiently move the needle towards greater human satisfaction (which I believe is very congruent with moving us towards post-scarcity factors), then it is upon us to find another, better tool.
Democratize their companies. control them by employment or by employee or government committee if they are too big. Make the big corporations work for the benefit of everyone, rather than shareholders and owners.
This tends to realign the systems around serving the interests of that one large company, and historically has been a mixed bag. Finland's reliance on Nokia, Russia's on Gazprom and Saudi Arabia's on Aramco was good while it lasted.
For what it's worth US laready has large ownership stakes in such corporations as AIG, Amtrak, USPS, Freddie Mac, etc.
Forbes and Fortune, both of which are cited by Wikipedia. A commenter further down questions their methodology.
Honest question - can anyone refute the claim that it is currently not the point in time when the largest share of wealth is in the smallest number of hands?
That source says that Rockefeller's net worth was $30 billion in current (2014) dollars.
The $340 billion figure is from a semi-nonsensical calculation that is popular because it yields eye-popping large numbers. They figured Rockefeller's assets equaled 1.5% of the US GDP at the time. And 1.5% of the current GDP would be about $340 billion dollars. But assets as a fraction of GDP is not very meaningful. It's like saying if I moved to a country with a small GDP such as Samoa I'd be richer than Bill Gates.
In effect, the $340B Rockefeller number is big because the US economy has grown. The worst part is many websites often confuse the scaled-GDP numbers with constant-dollar numbers, resulting in much confusion.
I would just go for using height like you mentioned, if you, an average person is 6ft tall, someone with a better job than you would be up to a foot taller than you, a millionaire would be tall building sized and a billionaire would stretch into space.
I guessed all of these values, I might do the actual math at some point, but not right now.
I did the rough math. If average net worth in the US is 80k, and bezos is worth $90 billion, then compared to an average 6 foot tall person, Bezos would be ~1300 miles tall; in space altitude from earth, that would be geospatial orbit
Our culture tells us that our motivation to do better (or more) work should be the power to dominate others (being rich is just that).
And that's just what humanity will have to change in the coming years: Change our culture to replace the incentive of domination with humane incentives and values.
Yes we hear in log scale, but why would that be intuitive? Ask someone how loud or soft any sound is - a dog bark, a cymbal crash, a whisper - and you won't get a numeric response. We're used to measuring distances, weights, etc but not volume, aside from the volume knob which goes from 0-100%, and the logarithmic scale is already built in
Both dB and the magnitude system have nothing to do with difficulty, and everything with practicality. The dB scale is defined in terms of air pressure, which runs on a linear scale.
What does that mean? I wouldn't say we hear in any scale. Log scale is an academic construction, it makes things easy to think about, it's not a physical property of hearing or seeing.
The linear scale however is a physical property of the world (photons per seconds for example) and if we change the intensity in a linear way we notice that the perceived change is not linear, but logarithmic.
Hence volume or brightness controls typically aren't linear but logarithmic - people want it to change linearly instead of not at all at the one end and a lot at the other end.
The root of the magnitude system in astronomy can be found in the logarithmic nature of the eye as a sensor as well.
Yes, good point. Perception of some things has logarithmic response. Within in certain ranges, of course.
It's funny because I first imagined the seeing/hearing comment as pitch & color, rather than volume & brightness. Pitch certainly feels somehow naturally logarithmic. But we can hear linear differences as easily as we can hear logarithmic differences. Within certain ranges, of course.
Sure, here you go. I said "within certain ranges" because there are absolute limits on either end. I hope it's obvious to you that the logarithmic approximation is only logarithmic until it isn't. The human visual response to staring at the midnight sky and staring at the noon sun are both non-logarithmic relative to the well lit everyday objects you usually look at. The valid range does not extend infinitely in either direction, and at the ends response ceases to be logarithmic even if the middle of the range works out well.
So, I think no citations are needed to explain basic absolute limits and the simple fact that logarithmic perception is only valid "within certain ranges." But, since you asked for citations, here are some starting points for understanding lightness perception, and how it's not quite logarithmic even in the middle of the valid range.
"All this only scratches the surface of the complexities of eye response to light intensity, but should illustrate well that the common notion of it being described as simply logarithmic is oversimplification, to say the least."
"At first glance, you might approximate the lightness function by a cube root, an approximation that is found in much of the technical literature. However, the linear segment near black is significant, and so the 116 and 16 coefficients. The best-fit pure power function has an exponent of about 0.42, far from 1/3."
If your goal is to be able to plot incomes of a wide variety of people and be able to visually see the difference between poor and average as well as you can see the difference between average and super-rich, then a log scale is the way to do it.
The goal of the comment you replied to, however, is to demonstrate the vastness that orders of magnitude have. It's to compare average people to super-rich, and get a stronger intuitive sense of how much wealthier a billionaire is than the average person, and how much wealthier Bezos is than the average billionaire. Using a log scale doesn't help that goal at all, a log scale actively compresses the range and prevents intuitive physical comparisons & analogies.
But a log scale is interesting because when you switch of scale, you change the meaning of money.
1) First stages of the visualization would show people from country where the money measure doesn't mean anything at all
2) Then powers of ten later it show how disparately "rich" people are in countries where this measure has a little more significance
3) Powers of tens later you see big companies and rich billionnaires like in this article == Money Is Power (Jeff Bezos is not going to buy one billion baguette de pain tomorrow I can assure you that)
4) Then of course you see higher in the scale huge aggregate of macro economics stuff which no one really have control over or understands
Log scales are interesting for lots of reasons, and they are incredibly useful. Everyone here knows that, and nobody disagrees. But you asked why not think about log scale in response to someone who was attempting to demonstrate absolute differences. Log scales are for showing ratios, they are not for showing absolute differences.
The point here isn't to say that Bezos will buy a billion baguettes, but it is show to show that he could buy 90 billion baguettes and feed every single person on the planet several times over. There are only a few people who could do this. And, of course, they won't.
EDIT: I meant simply that 90B baguettes would go as far as they go, and 90B baguettes is several times more than 7B people. I was only demonstrating magnitudes in the context of a thread about magnitudes. I am not suggesting that either baguettes or Bezos are a permanent and global solution to world hunger & politics, but either way I can't afford to buy very many people baguettes.
> The point here isn't to say that Bezos will buy a billion baguettes, but it is show to show that he could buy 90 billion baguettes and feed every single person on the planet several times over. There are only a few people who could do this. And, of course, they won't.
Because, even if they did, buying baguettes won't fees the hungry; acquiring food isn't the hard/expensive part, distributing it is. And it's not hard in a “We know how to make it work but have insufficient funds dedicated” way, but in a “we don't know how to do it effectively at any cost” way.
Even if Bezos wanted to feed every person on the planet, how exactly would he be able to do that?? People are controlled by governments, and governments are highly corrupt. They'd probably keep all the baguettes for themselves.
I agree with the first part of the comment, but then if you really think the second part of your comment is true, then I was right to make my comment.
Jeff Bezos CANNOT solve world issues like this (food crisis for our example). This is so silly I don't know even where to start. Theses issues were not solved in our countries thanks to the Jeff Bezos of 1817... What makes you think that giving 1 / 10 / 100 billion dollars would feed Africa for example ? Describe to me all the steps I'm very interested
It seems like you misunderstood my comment and started arguing your own straw man issue. I'm going to pass on that one and stick to the point: using linear scales is more useful for physical analogies and cartograms than log scales. I like log scales, and I, like you, think it's really useful to evaluate rich people and global finances on a log scale in addition to appreciating the magnitudes by thinking about them linearly and using physical analogies. I don't think there's any good way to say what @kens' said using a log scale. So if you agree and acknowledge that linear scales and log scales are both useful, then we agree. If you disagree that linear scales are useful or should ever be used, but you are genuinely still asking why, then I can try to help. If you disagree that linear scales are useful and you don't want to hear about why, maybe we should stop arguing?
Each panel is a financial cartogram that compares things within the panel to each other by showing the amount of money as an area. That's exactly what the top comment was doing -- making an analogy to a physical unit to make the comparison more visceral and intuitive.
You may notice that comparing things across panels is more difficult than the effortless comparison of two categories within a single panel. It's easy to understand conceptually when you study this map that the insurance industry in the US is a lot more money than Kate Middleton's wedding dress. But you don't see visually and immediately how much more money, because they're not side-by-side in the same units.
On a log scale, plotting everyone's income puts Bezos and Gates side by side with very little visible difference, while the difference between someone who makes 20k a year and someone who makes 10k a year has a larger log difference. That emphasizes the ratio of difference, rather than the absolute difference. The log scale completely hides the fact that you could pay 75,000 people 20k a year with only the amount extra that Bezos has over Gates.
You can also give decent salaries to a lot of African people with the 10k difference between the 20K/year person and the 10K/year person... so what's your point :) ?
So you just answered your own question. The absolute difference is worth a lot more. It's better to have the $1.5B difference between Bezos and Gates pay Africans than it is to use the $10k between our two people in poverty, even though one makes more than the other.
Your suggestion to use log scales hides that fact, and shows the ratio of $20k to $10k as visually larger than the ratio between $92.3B and $90.8B. That is why log scales are counter intuitive and not great for physical analogies. You asked, I answered.
We couldn't even put all people on the same linear scale if we wanted to ^^ . It would look like : almost everyone at the bottom, and some people at the top. So yeah, it would be obvious then that the only money we could take is located at the top points.
Nitpicking but... Africa is a big continent, with a great deal of nations, and a large variety of income levels, with some of those incomes much higher than yours.
Hasn't Bill Gates mostly been focused on spending his fortune as effectively as he can on philantropy for the last decade or so? In that light it's more amazing it took that long.
his wealth has barely beaten the s&p 500 since he left though. The growth is more to do with the bull market in general than the specific feats of his money manager
Yes -- especially because just about every diversification strategy being promoted over the past 20 years involves putting money into other asset classes that have under-performed the S&P by large amounts. And the arguments for diversification are everywhere. Hard to ignore them.
Wealthfront, for example, currently cites a 3-year annualized return of 5.67% on its best batch of portfolios (ie tax-advantaged), and a 5-year annualized return of 9.44%.
By contrast, a pure S&P play would have provided 10.09% annualized over 3 years and 15.17% over five. Links are here:
I don't believe BillG had all his money in S&P index funds. But he and/or his managers were able to find other investments that did even better. That's not easy to do, given markets of recent years, as the Wealthfront data indicates.
About one third of managers beat the market. The problem is that there is no correlation between year-to-year performance of managers: the manager who beat the market this year is no more likely to beat it next year than any other manager.
It occurs to me that maybe the way to beat the S&P is to focus on the losers and not the winners.
That is, if you could figure out which listed companies were going to fare the worst and build a partial index fund with the rest, you'd beat the index.
Similar research style to short selling but with less downside.
In order to beat the market, you have to know something it doesn't already know. But eventually, it's (they're) going to learn that, too, so you'll have to learn something new. The only way to keep beating the market is to gather information faster than the "average" and keep up with the information that it has, relative to what you invest in, although usually you can accomplish most of the work in the latter half (beta, IIRC) by watching the market itself. In brief, as Martin Shkreli put it: invest in yourself...
Unexpected takeovers make this much harder than it seems.
For example, Twitter's prospects on its own don't look so great right now. But if that induces you to avoid owning Twitter, you miss out on a quick profit (perhaps even a big one!) if some larger company decides to buy it.
I don't think it's any easier to find companies that will under preform. Apple stock seems over priced right now with P/E:17.66 and not so great growth prospects, but so does Amazon and Facebook and the rest of the S&P 500 when you take a close look.
I wasn't able to find actual data on his performance, what I found is that: "Cascade does not publicly disclose its performance results". If someone has actual numbers I'd be happy to see them.
By managers I mean professional portfolio managers.
Individual investors pretty much all do worse than market.
EDIT: obviously that means there is skill involved. But it seems that professional managers are close enough in skill that luck is the dominant factor.
He's surely been spending many billions of dollars in that time period though, we can't know how much but I think it would be more than enough to be significant.
Aside from the fact that he's been aggressively donating his personal assets to philanthropy rather than accumulating them in recent years, it's very difficult to beat the S&P when you're talking about tens of billions of dollars.
At that scale, the S&P isn't even a good benchmark, because it's not like a single investor can just dump that much in an index fund or even in the underlying companies directly.
SPY and the Vanguard version together represent half a trillion dollars of wealth under management. And that's just the top two. So yes, you can dump that much in index funds.
From other comments: Vanguard's 500 index manages ~500 billion (dmoy), Gates is worth ~100 billion (kevindqc). Even so, Vanguard can't just increase their fund by 20% like that.
Right you're sorta missing the point though. Vanguard outside of the s&p 500 has another 3.5 trillion or something. They could absorb bill gates net worth.
Vanguard's 500 index alone represents 550 billion under management. (It's split into 4+ expense ratio classes depending whether you have 0, 10k, 5m, 50m, 5b or whatever)
matching the S&P 500 with billions of personal assets is reallllly hard. Almost nobody in that position would just put $30B in NEA with Vanguard and wait - not diversified enough.
If you've got $30B in personal assets, it's hard to imagine any investment situation short of the complete collapse of the monetary system that wouldn't leave you as immensely wealthy until you die.
Indeed. I've always preferred using one billion seconds as a way of understanding just how much a billion is (hint: it's 31 and change years).
The average American lifespan is 2.4 billion seconds.
If you were shoveling 100 dollar bills, you could actually do some damage in the relatively short term (you could probably reasonably shovel $5k-10k/10s, or $500-1k/s, so you could burn through a billion every 1.5-3 weeks (assuming you never sleep or eat).
If you were working a 40hr week shoveling hundreds, it would take 6-12 weeks to burn through a billion.
If you were doing the same but with singles it would take 6-12 _years_ to burn through a billion.
So if you started with $30B - it would take between 180 and 360 years to get rid of all that money by shoveling it into a furnace.
You could literally have a few generations of heirs whose job is shoveling money into a furnace and they would be considered significantly wealthy for most of those generations.
Of course. It's a ludicrous amount of money, you could just keep it in cash and not worry about it. That wasn't in any way the topic of conversation - it was why is it difficult to beat the market (or even match the market) managing that much money for one person as a money manager.
Wikipedia almost always classify every billionaire as philanthropist for no good reason. The only exception is Bill Gates who is trying to make this world a better place.
>The only exception is Bill Gates who is trying to make this world a better place.
I hardly call being a eugenicist "making the world a better place". The Nazis tried it too. They also thought they were "trying to make the world a better place". Bill Gates is a notorius eugenicist.
Are you kidding me? Did you see how many articles there are in that search result? Over 30 at the very least. What I was implying by giving the link was, there is overwhelming evidence, not that I'm lazy, but that people who ask "for a source" are often too damn lazy to even type into a search engine. I might as well have sent a LMGTFY link. I would expect a little more intellectual effort out of ycombinator readers, but I suppose that's how it goes these days. Everyone wants a hand out.
Isn't this site basically run by programmers? Ya'll can't type into a search engine though? I mean really?
Of course there are articles. Of course I could read them. But I could not judge them since I'm not knowledgeable in the subject. For example, I don't know the affiliations of the sources involved, so I cannot judge if they just want to throw some shit at Gates over a decades-long personal feud or something.
Why? What is the return that he will make on his efforts to eradicate polio and malaria?
You could perhaps argue that his work in education will lead to a more capable tech workforce in the future, but even then, the returns won't go to him.
I don't understand what you gain by using the term "philanthropic investing" over "charity" if there are no monetary returns.
Edit: I'm just trying to understand why you think it's more precise to label what Bill Gates is doing as "philanthropic investment" as opposed to "giving money away."
I should clarify that I don't really have a horse in the race; I was just providing an example of why "giving money away" might be in quotes.
For example, consider the following scenarios:
- I pay for my college.
- I pay for my son's college.
- I pay for my niece's college.
- I pay for a stranger's college.
- I pay the university directly so that more strangers can attend.
Most people would be comfortable calling the first "investing" in yourself, and would think it ludicrous to call it "giving money away." Probably still mostly true for the second (though some would have switched camps). What about the fourth?
It doesn't seem like there's a hard line anywhere. Probably just two ways of looking at the same thing, which for me anyway has an effect on how I use my money (I don't want to "give it away" but am happy to "spend it" on making others' lives better).
I am easy to classify as an anti-microsoft zealot and I am convince Gates is doing immeasurable good with his work in Africa against malaria. I haven't really looked into in the past year or so though.
Apparently he is worth 90 billions. Let's assume he has donated 2 more billions in the last 4 years to make it 30 billion. That means he donated 25% of his worth to his foundation. I'm sure he has donated money to other things.
that steve yegge story is...anti-climatic. you mean bezos pointed out he left off data mining and machine learning in a presentation about generalist engineers? what vast and yet cutting insight! ugh.
that story just reeks of the blind idolization that goes on with these people. you see it in musk devotees as well. yes, these people are smart, successful, and driven. but they aren't literal incarnations of comic-esque super geniuses or intellectual gods. they are people who's primary power is their drive.
how about just respecting their drive and intelligence rather than putting it on a pedestal? think originally and don't be some dumb slave that bows down to supposed super intelligence. question whether those people really have the capability to understand a certain novel idea, because they may not. they got to where they are because they followed a path and followed it HARD, meaning there are maybe paths they didn't have time to consider.
Well, this story was posted in 2011 and although Yegge doesn't specify a date, I think it's safe to assume that the story took place years before the blog was posted as Yegge had by then already moved on to Google.
So this means that Bezos was thinking about data mining and machine learning in a presentation about generalist engineers at least 1/2 decade before this became common place.
that still doesn't really hold up. i mean amazon was dealing with massive data a lot sooner than most. it's a pretty natural instinct to think those (not all that young) fields are important. and generally the story makes no sense. yegge acted like it was an obvious thing, immediately saying oh yea i forgot that. how is that alien-level genius at play? bezos may be smart, but yegge's exposition does nothing to demonstrate that. it's hard to believe yegge got famous as a writer.
i didn't reduce anything, there is nothing unfounded (i used this because you said canard but then changed it to banality) about applying "drive and intelligence" to bezos, and yegge didn't present any particulars to even throw out. i am sure there are a lot of interesting particulars about bezos, but yegge's article didn't present any. do you have any you'd like to share?
He happened to be some kind a Robin Hood, taking it from the rich (who could afford buying his software as opposed to pirating it) and giving it to the poor.
I think a shift from apparently grotesque capitalist of the worst sort (embrace-extend-extinguish, FUD, anti-competitive practices, abuse of monopoly and on and on) to a philanthropist of a decent middle-ground sort who still extends his power through philanthropy (such as working to be in the position to dictate education policy and education-related technology through Foundation funding — despite not deserving any say in that field) merits at best a form of respect that remains less than "utter".
Correct. Don't get me wrong, I 100% respect and appreciate what he is doing, not just by giving but also actively engaging in educating the American public about important issues they wouldn't be aware of otherwise. But in being charitable later in life, he is kinda following in the footsteps of people like Carnegie (gave a ton to CMU) and Rockefeller (gave to many places but UChicago is probably the most famous).
Yes, the Carnegie and Rockefeller comparisons apply well. The point is that you should have less than 100% respect and appreciation if you recognize that some of what the Gates Foundation is doing may very well be the promotion of BAD directions in public education… (among other things). I'm not sure enough to conclude, but I think the direction in education that the Gates Foundation promotes may be negative. At any rate, there's no basis besides wealth that Gates should have any influence in our educational system.
Whoa. What "bad directions" are you referring to? If you are going to make accusatory claims, do be specific.
Bill Gates is a luminary who created the largest software development company known to man. I will give him the respect to hear him out about any subject he feels he can contribute in.
If you think that Microsoft being the largest software company is proof in itself that Gates should be listened to on any subject other than building large businesses or technology related to his expertise, I think you're being intellectually reckless.
Microsoft's impact on the world has been overall negative in my view compared to the likely counterfactual of a world-without-Microsoft, but that's too speculative to get into. It's undeniable that Microsoft got big more on the effectiveness of how it played the game of business within our social/corporate/government/market system than on the quality of the products.
The only bad direction I can really think of in public education is teaching things that are not based in fact (ie, creationism), I'm not sure what bad directions OP is referring to but my guess is they would relate to things most of us would actually consider to be very good.
What a crazy jump. You would guess I'm a creationist or want some other sort of similarly bad mis-education?? Why would you automatically assume that whatever the Gates Foundation is funding, it must be the best education? I suppose if you can't think of any bad direction besides creationism, you must be someone who never thinks much about education.
Education isn't just a matter of what information is presented, it's about how it's presented and all the complex issues around that.
The point is that there's real complaints from actual educators about the views on education that Gates Foundation promotes, including the whole overemphasis on testing and more… I'm not certain of all the details, but for an example:
No worries, I should have been more specific initially.
But if Gates was just doing everything great for education, we can still question the concept that wealthy business owners have the power to influence things like science and education. This is one of the more subtle yet still troubling aspects of wealth inequity (of the capitalist sort in this case).
I grew up in Seattle. I remember my mother constantly complaining that Gates was always trying to drive public school policy but in the end sent his kids to private school. It does seem like a breed of hypocrisy to claim how good your education program is, but you won't put your own skin in the game. Also makes you feel like a guinea pig.
This logic is very flawed IMO. You can aspire to make changes without having to change personal choices and opinions. e.g. developed countries provide aid and assistance to developing countries all the time, would you suggest they deliberately reduce their standard of living and erode their institutions to not appear "hypocritical".
There is a good documentary by the name Poverty, Inc that explores the west's approach to foreign aid. It is currently on USA Netflix if you have that. It convinces me that our current approach to foreign aid is flawed. In most cases it hurts more than it helps.
I do wonder if not having anything on the line contributes to our blind spots in this area. If something doesn't affect us, it takes much longer to realize when things have gone very wrong.
Sure, someone who says "Do as I say, not as I do" can have good advice, but at the end of a day, a doctor who wont take his own medicine is suspect in my mind.
Although in this day and age it seems to be one of the very few ways one individual can make a difference. It saddens me, but probably easier for a man to take advantage of the system and become absurdly wealthy in order to do good for the world than it is for that man to change the system itself :/
Seems like "dreams" in the broad tech community have done pretty well on the whole. This whole site is kinda dedicated to them.
Conversely, have you thought about all the third world disease deaths the guy's money has prevented?
To be clear: I was in the anti-MS camp from way back when that means "OS/2" instead of Linux. I was no fan, and still don't use their software for anything meaningful. But "dreams destroyed" is a bit much.
Well, maybe your dream didn't get destroyed. But bill gates and Microsoft's business practices killed real businesses. This is not my imagination, please read up the history. Those entepreuners dreams were destroyed by an unethical company. Maybe you don't think it's a big deal because winners take it all and can define what is good for the world?
> But bill gates and Microsoft's business practices killed real businesses. This is not my imagination, please read up the history. Those entepreuners dreams were destroyed by an unethical company.
That's, frankly, a pretty small price to pay. Entrepreneurial dreams are a dime a dozen, and many (most?) of them don't even have a good social impact. Some individuals whose dreams were "crushed" may feel sad, but unless we're talking about people losing their livelihood and ending up in poverty because of Microsoft, it's not even on the map compared to what Gates is doing now to help the world.
> Maybe you don't think it's a big deal because winners take it all and can define what is good for the world?
I think it's less of a big deal because I'm in my 40's now and think about the common good in broader terms that encompass poverty and development and not just my parochial interests as a young hacker, yeah.
I look at it this way: the entire industry was utterly cutthroat (still is, in many ways). If Bill Gates/MS didn't do what they did, I believe another company would have. That doesn't mean they are utterly innocent, but in terms of effect on my life, I'm not convinced an MS-less life would be that different.
On the other hand, if Bill Gates doesn't spend money curing diseases in the third world I'm not at all convinced that someone else would come along and fill in that space. After all, they could very easily match him today with all the work there is to do.
I'd estimate he set the software world back about 5 years. Hard to estimate what the result of that was, but it's probably pretty bad. His post retirement work might have made up for it by now. I'm willing to consider him breakeven.
"He wasn’t saying 50 percent for the Russian government or the presidential administration of Russia, but 50 percent for Vladimir Putin personally. From that moment on, Putin became the biggest oligarch in Russia and the richest man in the world, and my anti-corruption activities would no longer be tolerated."
There's a LOT of people that are richer than Gates or Bezos, but many don't have their fortunes personally tied or traceable to them.
I've been told that Arab sheiks in Saudi Arabia and the UAE laugh at the claims of Gates or Bezos or Slim being the richest person in the world. Same would happen with the Russian plutocrats, and whomever controls Chinese companies at the moment. There are other strange arrangements like Ingvar Kamprad and IKEA (which is supposedly a nonprofit but Kamprad is effectively a dictator and uses company funds for whatever he wants).
This is very true. For example I have some family friends that would easily crack into the low end of the Forbes billionaires list but they operate their business legally in the islands south of America (sorry for vagueness, it is intended). No one has ever come knocking from Forbes and they like it that way.
A family I grew up with has a net worth of ~$20B but it's layered through hundreds of LLC's. Easy to understand the truest wealth figures avoid publicity the most.
Two other families nearby hit the ~$2B range but you'll never hear about it unless you're floating on a boat when their name comes up.
Bulk of the worlds wealth is held by unknown(or at least non-famous) people. Anonymity and low key profile helps them escape being in spotlight. Being invisible to tax agencies, crime rings and mobs among masses is far more preferable than having a celebrity profile and a photo on forbes.
Also its easy to bequeath your descendants wealth easily that way.
The Forbes methodology rules ranks individuals rather than large, multi generational families who share fortunes.
A WikiLeaks document mentions lots of behind-the-scenes ways that the arab royals siphon money. So I guess it's impossible for Forbes or anyone to know their true net worth:
asset liquidity matters though, right? amazon or msft stock are highly liquid. stolen renaissance paintings, giant palaces in the middle of a desert wasteland, and hereditary claims to mineral rights are not very liquid assets.
Not really -- if you are in control of Oil wealth you are most likely part of a family that runs a country. Your fortune is dependent on staying in power and in favor of the patriarch. If there were to be a cultural revolution, uprising or falling out, you can't jump on your g6 and fly to whatever western country you pick and bring your oil with you like you can with stocks, bonds and other globally traded holdings.
If you are in control of Oil wealth because you are part of a family that runs a country, you most likely already own stocks, bonds and importantly real estate in a number of safe countries, so you can flee there when your dynasty is toppled.
when pumped out of the ground and put into the holding tank of a giant ocean-going ship it sure is.
but I was referring to hereditary mineral rights, which is really more about political power and the (very expensive) maintenance of an oppressive regime. those mineral rights eventually convert into oil on tanker ships but it's really incredibly precarious and a single political shift (internal revolution, invading army, etc.) makes it all vanish in a heartbeat.
the amount of oil-on-ships wealth that an Arab tyrant has on hand at any given time is relatively modest. most of the wealth is future claims to continue selling that oil, and that's not a very liquid form of wealth at all.
If it is, it has much more to do with the determined efforts of the world's oligarchs to hide their fortunes from public scrutiny than it does with Western "solipsism". An excellent example of this is the New York Times's investigation into the phenomenal wealth of the family of Chinese PM Wen Jiabao, which led the CCP to order the paper blocked in China.
You actually cannot take that content at all, since the leaders in "that part of the world" are so fearful of such coverage that they censor it entirely.
Didn't you know about the new warfare that western governments employ ? Create unrest in a country by printing fake news, thereby topple the government. Much cost effective than weapons with less world attention.
This kind of thing is a reminder that money, wealth, ownership and related concepts, aren't really real. They're cultural constructs, abstractions, rules....
Anyway..... abstractions sometimes fray at the extreme ends. The concept of property doesn't quite apply to Putin.
Years ago, I had a conversation urban planner mate about some building that couldn't be changed (preservation) or used (building codes & safety). I argued that this makes it public property Him -'You can't just take property off someone'. Me - 'We already have, haven't we?' He couldn't get his head around my meaning.
Around here (Ireland) landowners often "own" roads that border their land. This ownership amounts to a responsibility for cutting hedges and paying taxes on it. They don't (I think) have any rights to it that others don't.
Ownership is a set of rules about what an owner can do with something. If you own an apple, but aren't allowed to eat it, gift it, etc. do you really own it?
Does the King of Saudi Arabia (another candidate for wealthiest man) "own" everything in the country? I think he has the legal right to do anything with any thing. Does he own all "public" assets controlled by the crown, like Saudi Aramco (valued somewhere between $1trn and $10trn)? If not where's this distinction?
>Does the King of Saudi Arabia (another candidate for wealthiest man) "own" everything in the country? I think he has the legal right to do anything with any thing. Does he own all "public" assets controlled by the crown, like Saudi Aramco (valued somewhere between $1trn and $10trn)? If not where's this distinction?
That is an interesting point, but in terms of the Russian Oligarchs I think part of the distinction is they are (and have been) attempting to export that wealth and diversify it so that if they do lose power they will still be insanely wealthy. Maybe not 200bn wealthy but still massively wealthy. That is why the Magnitsky act is so important [1], because it makes it harder for them to move their money out of Russia. Granted a lot of wealth is coupled with control over natural resources and industry, but the more I read the more I realize Russian (like probably chinese and US as well) money is everywhere and much harder to track. The Saudis I'm sure do the same things in terms of investment, but whether they do so with as much secrecy and in avoidance of sanctions I'm not sure.
> That is an interesting point, but in terms of the Russian Oligarchs I think part of the distinction is they are (and have been) attempting to export that wealth and diversify it so that if they do lose power they will still be insanely wealthy.
I don't see how that's an actual distinction because the same thing applies just as well to the house of Saud and Saudi Arabia in general. Do you honestly think the house of Saud didn't put a bit of wealth aside for the unlikely event they might be removed from power?
For whatever reason, it's become acceptable to just assume that certain countries are "ultra corrupt" while others are supposedly "corruption free". In reality, none of this applies because, in reality, the practices of corruption just differ from country to country depending on the local laws.
Corruption always finds a loophole and in many places established forms of corruption are not even recognized as such. Case in point: Germany
How many people would think Germany is a country ripe with corruption? The super punctual, super correct, super bureaucratic Germans could never be corrupt, right?
Well, Germany was among the last countries who ratified the UN convention against corruption, as a matter of fact, it was the last EU country to ratify it. It took German parliament 11 years [0] to ratify that UN convention against a lot of opposition. High profile German politicians publicly complained that if the UN convention was ratified it would be impossible for them to keep working like they've been working.
That's quite long and vehement opposition against something that would usually just be regarded as the sensible thing to do, I'll leave the reasons for that strong opposition up to your imagination.
For a case in point, there's a high profile (potentially involving the PM) investigation ongoing about a kickback paid by a German shipbuilder to Israeli Navy/Government buyers in order to secure an order for submarines.
But... I don't agree with your leanings. All countries are corrupt to some degree, but degrees do vary. I think it dangerously lends to extremism, thinking of issues of corruption in either-or terms or some close proxy.
Well, the best case in point in that regard is having a finance minister with a well-known past of money laundering (Schäuble) and a former, well renowned, Chancellor valuing his back-room dealings more than his duty to the country (Kohl's Ehrenwort).
Like many other German corruption scandals, these were never properly investigated/charged. With time people simply forget about this kind of stuff, but it happened and it very likely still happens because getting caught before didn't have any real consequences for them, so why would they stop?
> All countries are corrupt to some degree, but degrees do vary.
Indeed, but the practices of corruption also vary, often dictated by culture, so how does one really "measure corruption" in such a way that it's actually comparable? Imho that's quite a difficult, if not impossible, task because it involves a lot of subjective value judgments.
On that I agree completely. :) Lists, scores and rankings might be useful for generating political pressure but they’re measuring the unmeasurable, for practical scenarios. I also agree they are probably culturally biased, as I think you might be implying.
> That all changed in July 2003, when Putin arrested Russia’s biggest oligarch and richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Putin grabbed Khodorkovsky off his private jet, took him back to Moscow, put him on trial, and allowed television cameras to film Khodorkovsky sitting in a cage right in the middle of the courtroom. That image was extremely powerful, because none of the other oligarchs wanted to be in the same position. After Khodorkovsky’s conviction, the other oligarchs went to Putin and asked him what they needed to do to avoid sitting in the same cage as Khodorkovsky. From what followed, it appeared that Putin’s answer was, “Fifty percent.” He wasn’t saying 50 percent for the Russian government or the presidential administration of Russia, but 50 percent for Vladimir Putin personally. From that moment on, Putin became the biggest oligarch in Russia and the richest man in the world, and my anti-corruption activities would no longer be tolerated.
What does he mean "appeared that Putin's answer was"?
> What does he mean "appeared that Putin's answer was"?
Well, clearly, he wasn't in the room for the meetings and it's not like there are published minutes, so the answer must be inferred from external evidence. So the claim is that the visible behavior f actors and flows of business suggest that Putin has been granted control, if not on-paper ownership, of half the business of the various Russian oligarchs as payoff for not destroying them each individually.
That's the implication but what exactly did he observe that led him to say that? It's an awfully big claim and very little is given to back it up. It may not be possible to show us all his tax returns or bank statements but there should certainly be more than that it "appeared" to be Putin's answer.
Did Putin become drastically richer in the following years while the oligarchs became poorer? In what way?
Nobody has managed to prove Putin is sitting on the claimed wealth and Putin / his circle has denied it. I seriously doubt anyone is going to step forward with the evidence necessary to prove it, for obvious reasons.
What is known publicly is certainly an indication that he is criminally wealthy. I can't find the reference right now, but there's a Russian bureaucrat close to Putin that makes a small salary, yet he has a large villa in Italy and many other properties, totally many millions of <insert currency> of net worth. There was even a Russian citizen that was documenting and publishing the info and using drones to video him at his Italian villa. I wish I could find that link, it was fascinating.
Putin doesn't need to be personally wealthy. He's got the largesse of the Russian government at his disposal and a populace which has been conditioned for generations to support the person in power.
I don't believe it. Is he rich? Without a doubt. Is he "richest in the world"? Not a chance. Three letter agencies from all over the world would be all over such juicy evidence given his lack of compliance with the wishes of their governments.
That's what you get for stealing from Putin. What you've failed to explain is why would Putin essentially steal from himself. He's more or less the Tzar, and he can take whatever he wants whenever he wants. I doubt he even remembers what money looks like.
That is a fairly simplistic viewpoint reality is a bit more complicated. Also to understand the psychology you would have to grow up in Soviet Union or something similarly f@#ed up.
I wonder at what point the world's richest will no longer include those philanthropically inclined like Buffet, Gates, and Bloomberg and will be dominated by the likes of Bezos, Slim, and Ortega. (The jury is still out on Zuckerberg and his dubious initiatives)
Our global economy is trending towards benefiting only the most ruthless, even at the very top.
Lots of billionaires (most?) become more philanthropic after retirement. I don't think we're at a risk of this changing as even the most self-centered billionaire would find more value in spending their money on their legacy rather than buying 10,000 Ferraris.
Guys like Buffet, Murdoch, Bloomberg, Carlos Slim, etc don't retire. Some may redirect their efforts, but that's the point. The most ambitious continue building their empires.
Nitpick: A high-end Ferrari (and other high end supercars) is well in the millions. You aren't going to see these at your local showroom because they aren't available. They are only offered to folks that already own Ferraris and are Ferrari enthusiasts.
For example - Bill Gates could not buy a Ferrari LeFerrari (from the factory) because they would not sell it. Obviously there is a healthy second hand market - which Ferrari also tries to limit.
I was just using the price range provided when I google "ferrari price". The number range passed a sniff test so I picked the highest one and ran with it.
Your numbers and sources are clearly better.
Are there even 10,000 of those "hyper-cars" out there to be bought?
10,000 "brand new" cars available in 2017? I don't think so. 10,000 models ever made? probably.
Generally these cars are very limited production runs starting at 500 examples for the "common" ones (seriously) down to single digit numbers models for the very very exclusive ones. The Lamborghini Veneno Roadster is a recent example: http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/g4107/lamborghini-venen...
This probably does not change Bill Gates' enjoyment of day to day life, or lack thereof, whatever the case may be. It depends on whether Bill Gates is obsessed by these kinds of facts, or whether he can enjoy life without a tiny hand size measuring contest.
Hear hear. Bill Gates is trying to kill malaria. He doesn't care about having the biggest number next to his name when he dies. He wants to be the guy who's known for killing hunger in Africa.
Frankly, I'd love if Bill Gates had nearly zero at his death.
How amazing would it be for a man with that much wealth to set some aside for his children, whatever he thinks establishes their life and his duty to them, and then make it his goal to have nothing by the time he dies.
Set up foundations to kill hunger, diseases, etc. But as death approaches and the years drag on, really ramp up the giving.
"Bill Gates: Net worth $0" would make an amazing headstone for a man who spent the latter part of his life giving.
I thought about that a while back and I'm sure he'll setup some fund somewhere for them in case something happens to as a secret safety net. With their names and education alone they should be pretty well off, though.
I would give my children way more that 0.01% of my wealth if I was in his shoes. I would raise them to be respectable stewards of my wealth so they can grow the wealth and continue giving to charity long after I'm gone instead of ending everything within one generation.
True, perhaps that's the "best" way to do it - but I think I'd leave that up to my children. If they wanted to live the charitable life, work for the people so to say, then by all means.
But by default, I'd not want to put that burden on my children. In a perfect world (for me), I'd give them enough that enable them to do whatever they want, selfishly. I don't mean selfishly in the negative sense.. but from my perspective I'm giving them a gift. I want them to have a life without fear, worry, or struggle. If they wanted to live their entire life relaxed and on the beach, so be it - that's my gift to them.
If, instead, they wanted to manage billions of dollars, focusing on making money to give money like a non-profit, then great! But that's not a "gift" I'd give anyone, more of a job, from my perspective.
This is actually a shame if Bezos doesn't do anything good or interesting with it. Seeing piles of money go back into the money making game is sad compared to what a pile of money does in the hands of a Gates or Musk.
Thanks I forgot about that. Now I can use cognitive dissonance to believe I am helping space flight progress and continue to feel good about my prime subscription!
I think it's fantastic. So many logos have gone from an old-timey and colorful scheme to something simple and monochromatic. I'd be very happy to see such a revival.
That would a Trump joke. He doesn't seem to be offended by penis size jokes, but seems oddly sensitive about jokes regarding the size of his (tiny) hands.
Money frankly is irrelevant beyond a certain point (and most of it is in the form of share holdings anyway).
I'd be more worried about the power/political influence these individuals wield. There is generally an incestuous coterie of the rich that one gets access to after a certain point, where the destruction of freedom is lubricated with champagne and caviar. Bildeberg/IMF/WTO/G20 etc. are symptomatic of such cabals of corporatocracies and their retainers in the state apparatus that wield power over the world.
I cant entirely decide if I find that graph [1] more impressive or terrifying. Look at the time scale and the speed at which Bezos' net worth increased, while starting at the already insane point of 30 B.
They're currently pegging Gates at sitting on $43 billion in cash out of his $90.8 billion total fortune. His investment vehicle, Cascade, is well known; I assume that's one way Bloomberg is attempting to keep tabs on the cash level. I've occasionally checked Bill's numbers on the Bloomberg Billionaire's list, I don't recall his cash level ever being so high. You can essentially guarantee that if the $43b is even remotely accurate, nobody else on earth is topping that (save for an extraordinarily rich leader / royalty, but even then $43b is immense).
Most of the richest billionaires have their wealth heavily tied up in one or a few businesses. Gates, among the hyper billionaires, is rare in the sense that he's basically sitting on a giant investment portfolio at this point, meaning he can turn most of it to cash dramatically easier than his peers.
Berkshire Hathaway is really just a bunch of separate businesses tied together by Warren Buffet and the quick access to the pile of cash Berkshire Hathaway has. Exception proves the rule I guess.
I used to work a night shift in a cash depot that routinely stored over £200m. It was famously the subject of a heist, and the robbers only quit at £30m because they couldn't fit any more in. That was a lot of money.
I feel like it might be fun (though ultimately utterly utterly worthless) to make a kind of 'best guess' one. I have genuinely no idea where one would start...
Are you kidding? (..not being sarcastic). Drug lords don't strike me as having quite the wealth that Gates has. Hell, I'd even assume drug lords pale in comparison to some oil Princes, but at least that's a more even comparison perhaps. Gates just has so much money that it's nearly beyond comprehension.
But, I don't know any of this, just speculating. Do you know more?
> Drug lords don't strike me as having quite the wealth that Gates has
Escobar at his height had an estimated wealth of $30bn - with inflation that is very much in the same ballpark.
And he had a huge share of his wealth in cash - you might know the anecdote that his operation spent $2,500 a month on rubber bands to bundle up cash...
Nobody knows what the wealth of today's global drug kingpins is, but I would be surprised if El Chapo Guzmán weren't worth tens of billions.
> Escobar at his height had an estimated wealth of $30bn - with inflation that is very much in the same ballpark.
Wow, that is very shocking! I frankly thought there was too much chaos to obtain >$10bn. Hell, I'd even be impressed with >$1bn. Guess I don't give them enough credit, and I also give countries ability to manage the crime lords too much credit.
He's talking about liquidity rich as in cash rich. Bezos and Zuck have a majority of their wealth in stock. Pablo Escobar supposedly made 10+ billion a year, mostly in cash. I'm pretty confident the person holding the most cash in the world is a drug lord or criminal. Anyone who's worth 100m (via legitimate means) would not be holding that much cash
Holding your money in cash can be an extraordinarily good idea.
See: 2007-2009.
Gates for example, is dedicating his wealth to important causes such as eliminating malaria. If he does something foolish and rides a massive stock market bubble back down while he's fully invested, that could mean $30 or $40 billion less for attacking such problems in the next 10-20 years (there's no guarantee the market will come back to these levels soon, it could take a decade or multiple decades).
If the market drops and stays low, he could easily be put into a situation where it's again time to perform some asset liquidation for funding purposes for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. That is, those market 'losses' would become non-recoverable at that point.
Sitting on $90.8 billion as he is, there is a good argument to be had given how high this market is, that that's a vast amount of money for him to distribute versus his age. He has N time left in his life, and an incredibly sum to dispose of yet and he isn't making nearly enough progress on that front versus his standing wealth.
Between Gates & Buffett, and assuming modest growth in their current wealth levels, the Gates Foundation has to figure out how to productively distribute perhaps $250+ billion yet over 25-30 years. The target was to do so in Bill / Melinda's lifetimes, then they shifted it to within a decade or two of their passing. That's not going to happen, they have too much money and can't dispose of it fast enough.
The stock market presently trading at an extremely elevated multiple is not subtle (much less while simultaneously US GDP growth is averaging historic lows, and global growth is just OK). Simply put, stocks have soared without the earnings to support the move, it's overwhelmingly multiple expansion.
It doesn't require a magic 8-ball to be prudent and lighten up after the S&P and Dow have tripled from the bottom in 8 years.
And yet Walmart is still much larger than Amazon. In 2015, Walmart had sales of about $508 billion, while Amazon only had $83 billion. AMZ barely cracked the top ten:
The difference, of course, is that Bezos controls a much larger portion of AMZ than the Waltons control of WMT.
None of them are anywhere near John D. Rockefeller, who had an inflation-adjusted net worth of $392 billion, equivalent to 1.5-2% of the entire U.S. economy at the time.
I was surprised by this. Anyone know the levels of philanthropy of Bezos vs Gates? I've ready many times of the great work and resources (money and otherwise) that Mr Gates has contributed to many causes.
A lot of rich people have decided the best thing for them to do is get as much money as they can and leave it to a worthy cause after they die. That is they spend their life investing and reinvesting, overall doing what they know best: making more money. Often it takes money to make money, and by not giving it away now when an opportunity to invest a lot of money comes up they have that money where as if they had donated it they wouldn't have it to earn more. When they die the amount they have to give is then overall much greater than if they had given away large parts of it.
I don't know that I agree with it or not, but that is the thinking and it isn't completely unreasonable.
Note that Bill Gates has been getting a lot of money from Warren Buffet and other rich people. I don't know the break down (it is likely public information: I just don't care to look it up), but it isn't fair to say Bill Gates is working on his own, though he is clearly giving his valuable time.
> A lot of rich people have decided the best thing for them to do is get as much money as they can and leave it to a worthy cause after they die.
Yeah I don't know about that. The majority of rich people decide what they want to do is make as much money as possible and distribute it to family members. It's there money so obviously they have the right to do just that.
I have a lot of respect for Bill Gates in that he has chosen to be as effective with his money as possible in positively impacting the world. I believe he has committed to giving away 99% (or 99.9%?) of his money to noble causes before he passes. As well as inspiring others to make similar pledges.
The problem with this theory is that it disregards opportunity cost. This is what I don't get about everyone that lionizes Gates and everything he has done with his billions. Those billions came from depriving others. What would those at Netscape have done with the extra billions if they hadn't been forced to sell for a fraction of what they could have become? What would those at BeOS have done with their money if Microsoft's illegal OEM deals hadn't made them fail? What would all the businesses who were forced to spend money they didn't have to on Microsoft software have done with it if it hadn't flowed to Microsoft instead?
Microsoft's business practices, in my view, introduced greater inefficiency into the software and business ecosystem. They were a parasite that drained resources from every healthy business "organism" and no amount of philanthropy can make up for the opportunity cost paid for Gates to amass his wealth.
Look up the "Windows Tax"...Microsoft earned billions forcing their software on people who most certainly did not want it. They used underhanded tactics like illegal bundling, abusive OEM contracts and intentionally obscured file formats to edge out better competition. Given how well documented their history is, I'm not sure how anyone can claim that Microsoft is just giving people what they want without being completely ignorant of what happened in the 90s and 00s.
I remember that era well. There were always plenty of machines available that didn't pay the so-called "Windows tax". I know. I bought (and installed Linux on) many of them.
You know what? The number of people (again, including me) who didn't want Windows? That was a rounding error, dude.
You're missing half of the Windows tax. It wasn't just charging for licenses that didn't end up getting used. It was also about forcing OEMs to choose between offering Windows and any other OS. It killed BeOS and had a chilling effect on anyone else building an OS that they intended to charge money for. That left Microsoft's only competition being Apple, who made their own hardware and didn't care about selling Windows machines and open source operating systems, which could never get UI right enough for mass adoption.
So yes, many of those machines sold with Windows pre-installed didn't have another operating system, but that doesn't mean that if Microsoft hadn't broken the law (those contracts they forced on OEMs were illegal) that people would have still chosen to buy those computers with Windows pre-installed. I consider people who were forced to use Windows because of the lack of alternatives killed by Microsoft's illegal business practices to be similarly paying the Windows tax.
Had BeOS gotten any reasonable market share, it would have quickly become a huge threat to Microsoft. It was miles ahead of Windows in terms of quality and some of its features are still, 20 years later, better than we have in current operating systems.
I'm already regretting getting into an argument with a zealot, but to be blunt: you are simply incorrect.
People (especially the kind of people who installed alternative operating systems) could, and did, assemble their own machines without paying any "Windows tax". At all.
Yes, some manufacturers cut a bulk deal to bundle Windows with complete systems.
No, that didn't make it impossible (or even particularly difficult) to avoid the so-called "Windows tax".
BeOS didn't even run on Intel hardware at first, btw.
When I used BeOS (and I have used it, hands-on... have you?) it only ran on PPC machines. The port to Intel happened after the Return of Jobs and the decision to use NeXTSTEP (which became OS X) for new Macs. That's what killed BeOS, not the "Windows tax". The port to Intel was a late desperation move.
I'm tagging out now. I have better things to do than rehash a war that was over 25 years ago.
OMG...are you intentionally trying to be obtuse? This isn't exactly controversial stuff I'm talking about. There was a lawsuit and Be is very much on the record about Microsoft's tactics.
Do you even understand what OEM means? It has nothing to do with user-assembled machines. Yes, the minority of people who built their own systems could avoid the Windows tax. If you want to talk about a rounding error, that's basically the definition. We're talking the full systems that had Windows pre-installed. In order to not violate their OEM licenses with Microsoft, the only way those vendors could ship BoOS pre-installed was to dual boot with windows and give users absolutely no indication that BeOS was installed.
Get your facts straight before you start calling people names.
Ignores citations supporting the point he's arguing against? Check. Fails to provide citations supporting his own argument? Check. Excerpts individual lines of a comment to argue against a point that wasn't being made. Check.
Congratulation, sir, I humbly admit to being trolled. With a little improvement, you might convince me you're human and pass your eponymous test.
Anyways, I'm done arguing events and facts I experienced first hand with someone so intent on ignoring what actually happened.
Maybe, though I'd generally trust a smart guy to spend their money better than a bunch of random people who could be shopping at Wal-Mart and buying a Hummer for all we know...
From the article
" Anyone who joins Prime shops in retail stores 10 percent less, and that number will keep accelerating as Amazon adds more inventory.”
Id love to know the analysis on this.
I deliver to amazon addicts and prime-ers. Although, yes, they order often (5-6 days a week) the volume of items by count is tiny compared to a shopping cart at a store.
So to understand how much money he has let's say Jeff Bezos is walking in the street and sees US$42,000 laying on the ground. He is so rich that it's not worth for him to stop and get the money. It's like you and me seeing a 10 cents coin on the ground. That's his life.
So when do we think Bezos will go on the typical billionaire philanthropy track? Actually, a better question is probably will he even? At Bezos' age, Gates was already in a backseat role with most of his non-philanthropic ventures. Though he shares some similarities with Gates, he shows no signs of stopping. He seems actually content with Amazon eating the world, and I don't think it will be a net positive for humanity.
> He seems actually content with Amazon eating the world, and I don't think it will be a net positive for humanity.
You mean Bezos? Well of course, he's CEO of Amazon and I don't think the board or shareholders would tolerate him saying "this is such a good idea that would make us tonnes of money, but we'd better give the opportunity to someone else"
I'm actually kind of amazed that Amazon has managed to plow so much money into their business without shareholders throwing a fit. The usual modus operandi of activist shareholders now is to get the company to pay out as much money as possible to shareholders while investing as little as possible into R&D. They've even managed to squeeze Apple into stock buy backs! Amazon seems to have avoided this and is thus able to invest lots of money into their business units, and look at how it's paid off for them (amazingly well).
Regarding Amazon eating the world, I'm not that concerned about it honestly. If Amazon starts acting like a monopoly, regulators will step in and force them to divest from certain business segments. If Amazon gets lazy and starts charging people higher prices or offering a more limited selection, then people will vote with their wallets and order from somewhere else.
So on the whole I still see Amazon as a net positive. They're pushing the rest of industry to innovate in ways we haven't seen before (logistics, online shopping, cloud services, assistants) and this is a win for consumers.
Sure, there's been some high profile bankruptcies/fire sales from competitors who haven't been able to adapt (e.g. Sears in 6 months), but I have to ask: do you really want to prop up companies that cannot compete in the market? That doesn't make sense from a consumer or economic perspective.
No investor pushes for more money back when the company can get a better ROI than the investor. Apple buybacks are a result of not having any better ideas on what to do with their cash stockpile.
I keep an unofficial[0] representative "Death By Amazon" google portfolio. current companies tracked, against AMZN:
KSS M DDS ZUMZ SSI JCP JWN ASNA BKS TUES BGFV FRAN BKE KIRK SMRT GCO FIVE SHLD BURL BBBY SPLS APRN
1yr (excluding dividends):
amzn + 42.90% (even excluding today still +39%)
deathByAmzn - 25% (today also up... hmmm).
For what its worth, AMZN isn't the whole story of retail. There's a PE story there too [1].
[0]: There's an official one out there if you google, but I disagree with some of it. I exclude Walmart because its a big enough competitor to survive, as an example. Also i don't have a desire to track 54 stocks for this purpose.
As far as I understand, at best you can subtract your donations from your income, so you won't have to pay income taxes on those donations. Even if you can subtract the donation directly from your taxes, you still lose the same amount of money.
Either way the philanthropist loses at least as much money as the taxes he would've paid without the donations.
This is wonderful news for humanity, in the long term. Bezos is dedicated to expanding humanity into the solar system in a more sensible way than Musk is. O'Neil cylinders are really the way to go for a lot of reasons, and that's the vision that Bezos is dedicated to. More money for that is fantastic.
I just wish there was a Bezos/Gates-level billionaire who care as much about life extension via SENS. That's the only thing of equal importance I can think of that needs long term vision and financial support.
Why not? These billionaire capitalists don't force people to work for them nor do they force people to buy their products and services - but people do in large numbers. A sort of democratic vote against your submission. Are the people who don't buy into their products suffering in some way? Explain!
What a strange condition. Why not I want to live in a world where people aren't hungry? What about a world without suffering? A world without conflict and scarcity?
If iPhone manufacturing is your only gripe with this world we find ourselves in, I'd say we've got it pretty good.
pretty much every technological advancement and the quality of life improvement that came with it is through capitalism. There's a reason that Cuba and Soviet Russia were basically trapped in time
nearly all technological improvements are built, at their core, on work that was done by publicly-funded research or volunteer/non-profit work. the internet is a good example
people aren't equal so you're going to have inequality unless you regulate things so everything is equal outcome, in which case you will end up with a failed civilization due to there being no reason for talented people to work hard because they get no benefit for doing so.
theres a difference between inequality in the sense of "a junior developer makes 60k, a senior developer makes 100k" (what you're talking about, and which is totally fine) and the inequality that actually exists, whereby a small number of extraordinarily wealthy people control a massive proportion of wealth while those in poverty lack access to food security, healthcare, childcare, the basic necessities of life.
>whereby a small number of extraordinarily wealthy people control a massive proportion of wealth while those in poverty lack access to food security, healthcare, childcare, the basic necessities of life
May be a more important question is why those people lack those things you mentioned. If for instance Bill Gates/Jeff Bezos never existed, would it make those poor people richer? You are not addressing the problem when you simply vilify the rich as the cause of the poor's woes. Your argument is intellectually dishonest and I think it stems from unnecessary envy.
I agree. Don't forget Amazon still has so much it's doing with its current projects. Bezos has been really impressive. If you haven't read The Everything Store, you should get it - great book.
I think there is no more or less sensible way. The only way is the way that actually works. Right now non of the options are viable. Going to Mars won't make humanity interstellar species because there are much more serious issues to solve than just going there, starting with the lack of geomagnetic field. If we want to change that we need to build space stations with artificial gravity and geomagnetic field so that people living on it are safe. This is probably a better option than trying to go to a desert planet without geomagnetic field.
Kind of surprised to see this so upvoted, I was under the impression that "top N richest people" articles only impress kids and the immature. Don't have a source for it but I'm pretty sure people with more than a few hundred million in the bank couldn't care less if they're richer or poorer than someone else, as they haven't made their fortune by worrying about frivolous things. But that's just me.
I find it weird to report on this like it's a race or competition. His net worth bump right now is entirely due to rash market speculation and the recent tech bubble. When the crash comes (and it will), AMZN could easily be down to $500 in a week, and he'll just be insanely rich again.
And the tech stock market crashed in 2000-02. We're back on a rebound, especially in the past 5 years. Bubbles burst, it's literally the one reliable law of markets since the advent of joint stock companies.
Here's what I've come up with to visualize wealth in the United States. Suppose you start counting, going up by 1 million dollars every second, and people sit down when you reach their net worth. Most people will sit down immediately. After about 9 seconds, people in the "1%" will start sitting down. Near the 17 minute mark, billionaires would start sitting down. Donald Trump would sit down just before the hour mark. A day later - an hour and 10 minutes into the second day of billionaires sitting down - Bill Gates would sit, followed by Jeff Bezos just three minutes later.
The point of this is there's a huge range of billionaires (analogous to comparing 17 minutes to a day). The 1% hardly even registers on this scale (a few seconds). (I should also mention that there should be huge error bars on reported net worth numbers.)