Bill Gates again world's richest, tops in US for 20th straight year

"Money can't buy you friends, it just buys you a better class of enemies."

Whose money again?

The money Bill is liberally scattering about the world is OURS. It's the money he took from us in extortionate licensing fees for his omnibotched software and marketing juggernaut. It could have been spent on better design, coding and testing, which would have saved hundreds of millions of people hours and years of frustration, as yet another feature fails, yet another program crashes, yet another document disappears. If I only had back the time I've spent waiting for his bloatware to boot, I could take the summer off!

It's a debatable point of ethics whether the ends justify the means here: whether in screwing us all over for decades, Gates has done a "good" thing by imposing on the world just-about-adequate software and non-fatal stress levels while accumulating a war-chest for legitimate philanthropy. Nonetheless: it's our cash he's spending.

I think the trick is that money tends to pool in places where there's already money. Anyone can start to make this pool if they have enough money to dig the hole a little to start with. The problem is that they amount of money you need to make to start to have a pool is constantly going up with inflation. And because of the nature of inflation at the moment, it's closing on people that currently have small pools and forcing them to use those pools for routine expenses (such as replacement white goods, car maintainance, etc.) because their day today expenses are starting to lap at their toes.

I once had a friend who was [is] a multimillionnaire

When I bent down to give £1 to a beggar, he stopped me, saying "What are you doing? I didn't get rich by giving money to beggars!"

(PS: He had inherited all his money the year before when his father passed away)

Bill Gates and taxes

Bill Gates has promised to give away all his money. But his fund is making more money than it gives away. His fortune is increasing, not decreasing. Something does not add up. His fund has donated something like $20 billion which is quite impressive, but that amounts to something like $1 billion a year, during these 20 years. That is nothing. If BillG can get away with donating $1 billion every year, or pay taxes - which will save him the most money? Starting a charity fund, of course.

And those charity funds has much lighter taxes. So BillG can be said to do some advanced tax planning, to get even richer. Coincidentally, he IS richer than ever before. There is no way BillG is going to give away all his money, he has fought too hard to get them.

It is like Gene Simmons in KISS, who also promised to donate all his money. Some say Simmons is the epitome of greediness, there is no way these people are giving away their money. It is lip talk, and does not mean nothing. When BillG dies of age, his fortune will be bigger than ever, and he will never had donated all his money. But he is not here when we declare him a liar.

What is most probable? Bill Gates lies about donating all his money, and intends to get even richer, or he really means to give away all his money? Have you seen his track record and studied his business ethics? Have you every trusted him? Do you trust him now?

BTW, have you read about the world's richest families? Why all this talk about the worlds richest person, and why not talk about the richest families? These richest families have amassed their wealth for centuries. Bill Gates has amassed his wealth for a few decades, and he is extremely poor in comparison. These rich families work under the radar and is secretive and thrives when we talk about the "richest man on earth" so they dont get attention. Google and read about them, you will be surprised, there are some fantastic stories: Rotschild, Rockefeller, Guggenheim, etc - all with heritage from Germany, with german sounding names.

Whats wrong with keeping a much smaller fortune and spreading the wealth within your company and its employees? If more companies did this the world would be a much better place and the wealth would be shared equally

According to the UN

Bill Gates fortune is bigger than the GDP of Moldova, Albania, Tuvalu, Montserrat, Nauru, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Maldives, Palau, Burundi, São Tomé and Príncipe, Cook Islands, Anguilla, Micronesia Federated States of, Ghana, Swaziland, Tonga, Montenegro, Suriname, Dominica, Comoros, Samoa, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Zanzibar, Vanuatu, Grenada, Solomon Islands, Guinea-Bissau, British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Seychelles, Chad, Somalia, Antigua and Barbuda, Liberia, Gambia The, Saint Lucia, Cambodia, Djibouti, Congo Republic of the, Belize, Brunei, Bhutan, Cape Verde, San Marino, Central African Republic, Paraguay, Greenland, Lesotho, Guyana, Eritrea, Cameroon, Aruba, Latvia, Jordan, Sierra Leone, Cayman Islands, Andorra, Togo, Fiji, Netherlands Antilles, Barbados, Mauritania, Uruguay, Myanmar, Guinea, Timor-Leste, Monaco, Kyrgyzstan, Malawi, Bermuda, Liechtenstein, Rwanda, Niger, Tajikistan, Kosovo, Haiti, French Polynesia, Oman, Benin, Nicaragua, Bahamas, Laos, Mongolia, Palestinian Territory, Zimbabwe, Malta, Madagascar, New Caledonia, Burkina Faso, Armenia, Macedonia Republic of, Mali, Mauritius, North Korea, Papua New Guinea, Namibia, Mozambique, South Sudan, Iceland, Georgia, Senegal, Jamaica, Congo Democratic Republic of the, Equatorial Guinea, Botswana, Honduras, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nepal, Afghanistan, Zambia, Uganda, Trinidad and Tobago, Estonia, El Salvador, Tanzania, Bolivia, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Cyprus, Turkmenistan, Bahrain, Ethiopia, Panama, Libya, Yemen, Kenya, Macau, Lebanon, Costa Rica, Serbia, Lithuania, Uzbekistan, Tunisia, Guatemala, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Belarus, Dominican Republic, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Luxembourg, Croatia, Azerbaijan, Syria, Ecuador, Cuba.

Another anecdote about my rich friend

I was staying (quite happily) at a youth hostel, when my multimillionaire friend came over and insisted on me coming over to stay with him at his massive apartment on street X of city Y in country Z.

When I arrived, I saw a computer open on the table, and he asked me to get stuck in immediately writing essays for him as part of his application form to go to Harvard. So I understood the purpose of the invitation. My friend could hardly string two words together on paper. His father had donated money to Harvard during his lifetime, to pave the way for his son to study there. But Harvard required an application form to be filled. And part of the form involved writing 10 essays about various things one had done in life. I sat down at the computer and began working immediately. I did string out the essay writing over a number of days, though. To make it worth my while. But that was a mistake.

There were 3 bed sheets in the house: 2 for my friend, and one for me. I could choose whether to have it on the mattress or use it as a cover. This was not really an improvement over the last time I had stayed in one of his other houses (a building with some 20 apartments, many empty, and his apartment itself had half a dozen bedrooms and bathrooms), when I was offered the sofa and a blanket. On that occasion, the cleaning lady had muttered something rude about my friend and had brought me a pair of sheets and a pillow with a pillowcase.

For five days, I could not have a shower. The weather was cold, and for some reason, there was no hot water. It didn't seem to bother my friend, though. I was young so I decided to tough it out and just wash the bits that absolutely had to be washed. Until one day, when, having had enough of freezing, I found out that there was a secret water heating on/off button which he would switch on for himself, and then turn off after he'd had a shower.

The huge kitchen contained no cutlery. The only food and drink in the house consisted of around a fifty to a hundred bottles of mineral water, which I was told were reserved for him. Whenever I bought something to eat, and put it in the kitchen, I often found it finished behind my back.

One day, after the essays were finished, my friend invited me to the restaurant. I was amazed. I was careful to eat very little, to avoid him having the burden of paying too much for me. At the end of the meal, he paid for his share, and then, when I had realised that the invitation was only to enjoy his presence, not for a free lunch, and had accordingly paid for my share, he took 2 sweets from the plate where the restaurant kept sweets to offer to its patrons after meals, and he handed them to me. He swiped all the other sweets into his pockets.

Other anecdotes available on demand!

U.S. President Obomba Wants it All!

Here in the U.S. we are hearing grumblings over "the rich have too much!"

It surely is only a matter of time when Obomba and his ilk will announce a new government "program" of siezing, then redistributing these bloke's wealth, couching it as some sort of "social equality" plan.

You do all realise that if you were to liquidate all assets across the world and distribute that money equally across the entire population.... and then come back in say 100 years, the distribution of wealth would be back to the same as it is now.....

Well at least we can take solice in the fact...

...that right now it won't cure him of certain illnesses. Look at Jobs as case in point. You can't take your money with you. So spread it around to some of us poor plebs why dontcha!

Net worth only doubled?

Given that the cost of things, at least since the 80s, has roughly doubled every ten years (that £200 VIC-20 from 1981 would cost about £800 now if nothing else had changed), then a 2x increase in net worth in the same ten years is only keeping pace with inflation. I'd consider that quite disappointing for the individuals concerned (although clearly some of them have outrun that by quite a margin).

"The rich get rich and the poor get children"

Well, then who's richer at the end, what do you think, dear?

Question

If billions of dollars are just sitting in bank accounts collecting interest, rather than being spent and circulated by thousands of people everyday, how good is it for the economy?

Money seems to adhere to physics

as has been said, the more you have the more seems to be attracted to it, rather like gravity

That said there are plenty of examples of people ( mainly sports people) with gobs of money ending up really poor due to crap decisions and also leeches.

however, there are numerous stories and examples of how those with means maintain their wealth, loopholes, trustfunds etc.

I think a general consensus is it is fine to make a metric shit-ton of money, however, the more you make above a certain level the actual less of that you need and the more good it could do providing services for society.

I think too there is a general feeling of animosity towards say a CEO who is paid massive amounts of money and bonuses etc when a company is either not doing great, has cooked the books, or generally shafted over a large amount of regular people who live on the line.

I hope to be one day part of the rich elite, but so does many other people, the funny thing is they tend to vote representatives in who sell them on that dream and change the laws accordingly to benefit the current rich all the while telling them that it will be benefitting them when they get rich if they just work really really hard for bugger all pay now ( and probably till the day they die) as a buddy once said "sell the sizzle not the meat"