What is the point of acquiring unspendable levels of wealth?

[Stoid]

Once you're rich enough to have beautiful homes in NY, Fl, hawaii, Paris, etc, you have the private jet, you have your collection of Monets and pretty much every other material thing you could ever reasonably and actively take pleasure from,and your children have big trust funds - why keep going? unless the only reason is that the continued growth of your wealth is just a by product of activities you undertake for the pleasure of the activity itself (which is what I assume must be true for Warren Buffet, who seems to be nearly indifferent to his wealth), why?

It seems to me that once you've reached the point where any normal human desire is within your means, the only reason you would actively seek to increase your wealth is because you intend to use it to better the lives of other people, or you have an ego attachment to doing so. Why else would you bother?

This relates to another wealth question I've always had: why would you want to live in a place that had rooms in it that you never see or use? (Apart from guest rooms, of course) And how many rooms can you actively be using? How many hours do you have in YOUR day, because mine only has 24 and that pretty much limits the maximum number of rooms I can find useful:

Living
dining casual
dining formal
general entertainment room for dancing
kitchen - gigantic
kitchen - cozy
library/study
office
bedroom
bathroom
gym
movie theatre

Everything else is bedrooms and baths for me and guests, and the number of those would depend on where I was and how much I wanted friends to visit. But apart from this, what else could you need or use? It seems to me that beyond this, all you could do would be to have different hobbies or interests that each have their own room: the art room, the sewing room, etc.

[ultrafilter]

unless the only reason is that the continued growth of your wealth is just a by product of activities you undertake for the pleasure of the activity itself

Either this, or it's the same sort of urge that drives people to aim for the highest score in whatever their game is.

[Cat Fight]

Who gets to decide what is enough? Being able to live comfortably, or being able to buy a new designer wardrobe every week? Going to your favorite concerts or having rock stars perform for you and your friends in your mansion? Going on a tropical vacation or buying an island? It's all relative. If it weren't, there'd be fewer Americans in debt because they would have stopped spending when they had a single TV instead of one in every room.

It takes a very, very special person to have one mindset for much of their life, the kind that can make them a millionaire, and then switch it off at exactly the right moment without feeling like their life's lost purpose. It's a bit like a gambler getting out at the right time. Or anyone who's retired only to feel useless. Or even a lottery winner, part of that lucky minority, who makes sound decisions with their winnings and lives comfortably 'til old age.

It's also worth mentioning that not every seemingly rich person has a real, liquid nest egg. Many of the richest people I know are the ones who worry most about money, whether they're checking investments or comparing themselves to people in their social circle who are wealthier.

[cmyk]

I believe it was Bill Gates who said, "You can only be so rich."

[LouisB]

"Too much is not enough." Said by far too many people to list them all.

[Der Trihs]

Power. Status. The richer you are, the more you can lord it over other people. That IMHO is one reason why the rich person dominated GOP doesn't mind the idea of running the economy into the ground; the rich are hurt less by something like a Depression. They have less money in absolute terms, but the gap between them and the common people is even larger and gives them more power.

[Ronald C. Semone]

The amount of money you have is one way of keeping score on who is ahead in the game of life.

[Der Trihs]

The amount of money you have is one way of keeping score on who is ahead in the game of life.
"He who dies with the most toys wins."

[friedo]

Power. Status. The richer you are, the more you can lord it over other people. That IMHO is one reason why the rich person dominated GOP doesn't mind the idea of running the economy into the ground; the rich are hurt less by something like a Depression. They have less money in absolute terms, but the gap between them and the common people is even larger and gives them more power.

Yep, this is the exact reason why everybody wishes to earn money, and why there are no rich Democrats.

It must be so comforting to be you.

[Shagnasty]

Bill Gates does it because he had to in order to achieve most of his goals with Microsoft. He gives billions away however and seems sincere about it so his is about power but in one of the best possible senses of the word.

Warren Buffet is doing the same thing. Accumulating money for himself and other people is his life's work and he is very good at it. He has always lived an amazingly simple life in Omaha, NE for what he has and plans to give most of it away and not to his family when he dies.

Sam Walton, the Wal-Mart founder, was very cheap and simple himself.

These are a few of the richest people in world history and they didn't just blow the money but they needed it to sustain their life's work.

[Der Trihs]

Yep, this is the exact reason why everybody wishes to earn money, and why there are no rich Democrats. Are you under the impression I'm a Democrat? Or like them? They are marginally less awful than the Republicans, that's all.

[Shakes]

People like that get where they are in life by constantly setting goals for themselves.

Once they stop setting gaols for themselves they become depressed.

At least this is the readers digest version of what was said by wealthy folks who have tried to quit with the acquisition of wealth and just enjoy what they have.


Sorry no cite. Just remember seeing this on a program I saw once.

[Unintentionally Blank]

Yep, this is the exact reason why everybody wishes to earn money, and why there are no rich Democrats.

It must be so comforting to be you.

Was that necessary? Not to go off track, but it's jabs like that that are making the SDMB less fun to be around.

Yeah, yeah, don't let the door hit me on the ass on the way out. But what, exactly, elicited that mean-spirited comment?

[Lamia]

I think people who acquire a lot of money and don't spend it are probably see it as a form of security. If they have a lot of money in the bank then if something terrible happens they'll be able to take care of themselves.

[ShelliBean]

Because it's only unspendable to you. To me, it's money I just haven't spent yet.

[Lumpy]

Most billionaires aren't in it for the lifestyle, although that's certainly a perk. The main point of having several billion dollars of net worth is to be able to play the game at the highest levels of finance. By the time you've gotten that rich, you've made a career of running corporations and buying and seling properties worth 10 or even 11 digits. You're one of maybe as few as a thousand people in the entire world whose activities singlehandedly influence the global economy. Maybe some do reach a point where they decide to chuck it all and retire in luxury, or semi-retire and spend their time working with charities, etc. But most simply have been in the harness so long at that point they wouldn't know what else to do with themselves.

[friedo]

Yeah, yeah, don't let the door hit me on the ass on the way out. But what, exactly, elicited that mean-spirited comment?

The mean-spirited comment was elicited by the deliberately stupid blanket generalization that Der Trihs made. Don't worry, though. As a person capable only of binary thought, his feelings will not be hurt by my snideness.

[Der Trihs]

The mean-spirited comment was elicited by the deliberately stupid blanket generalization that Der Trihs made.Translation: I don't feel any obligation to suck up to the wealthy like I'm supposed to, and that apparently offends you. So you throw out insults and accusations ( "deliberately stupid" ), because you don't have any actual counterargument.

[Jonathan Chance]

Yes, a person's available money allows for a certain level of personal comfort. And it's also true that there's only so much one can consume at once. It's the old truism that you can only drive one car at a time, after all.

But, as stated above, money is power and influence. Take the nicest and baddest persons on Earth and they powerless without money. But let them accumulate $50MM or more and they can do a lot of good or bad. They can exert control over companies and governments through their wealth. Or, to spell it out, money buys you influence and influence buys you power. You can control your world that way.

[Ronald C. Semone]

But, as stated above, money is power and influence. Take the nicest and baddest persons on Earth and they powerless without money. But let them accumulate $50MM or more and they can do a lot of good or bad. They can exert control over companies and governments through their wealth. Or, to spell it out, money buys you influence and influence buys you power. You can control your world that way.

How much is $50MM? Please write it out with a bunch of zeroes.

[VarlosZ]

Translation: I don't feel any obligation to suck up to the wealthy like I'm supposed to, and that apparently offends you. So you throw out insults and accusations ( "deliberately stupid" ), because you don't have any actual counterargument.
You didn't make an argument.

You never do.

[Dangerosa]

The wealthy also tend to view their money as generational. And generations multiply. Someone who is very wealthy will likely make it kids very wealthy. But if those kids have kids, they may only be wealthy. And their kid's kids may only be well off.

Buffett and Gates have said they won't make their kids extraordinarily wealthy on their death. But I'd bet that both of them have set up educational trusts that will fund generations of their descendants.

One of my friends is the great great grandson of one of the wealthiest men of his time. At this generation there is enough money so he has to work to live comfortably, but school was paid for and he isn't likely to starve.

[interface2x]

How much is $50MM? Please write it out with a bunch of zeroes.I would assume that's $50,000,000.

[Unintentionally Blank]

The problem is that it's rarely something that someone thinks 'Hey, I've made enough, I'll stop earning now.'

IIRC it was one of the google guys (Sergei Brin?) Who went from relative abject normal income to 10 Billion in something like _4_ years.

I read about it in an article on a guy who's job is helping people adjust to extreme, unexpected, wealth. Nice job if you can get it!

[Magiver]

The success of most wealthy people can be measured in the jobs they produce. Bill Gates' enormous charitable contributions are dwarfed by the economic wealth he's created for other people. I'm not sure what the op expects him to do as the company grows, refuse the value of his stock?

[Stoid]

What really prompted my question, I think, was looking at the financial pages and thinkingabout various stories of people in the finance industry being dicks wanting more and more and more and utterly disregarding anything but getting richer...

So I guess what I really want to know is...What's up with greed, anyway?

[DrCube]

The more money people hoard, the better. I look at it this way: Money isn't wealth. Money represents wealth I've earned but haven't claimed yet. That's more wealth for the general public floating around out there at my expense. I hate to say it, but it's debtors who are the bad guys from this point of view. They're the ones who got more of the pie than they've actually earned yet.

Don't construe this to mean I hate poor people or something. It's only in the short view that debt is a bad thing, as it gets paid with interest eventually. I don't know if you can say that all money gets spent eventually though. I'm just pointing out that rich misers are a good thing for the rest of us at any given time.

And I don't know how charitable most super rich guys are, but doesn't Bill Gates spend billions of his own dollars on his charity? If he had even more money, maybe he could feed all the starving kids in Africa or teach all the kids in third world countries how to read or something. I'm not necessarily attributing this motivation to anybody, just saying there's always something you can do with more money. I know stuff like that would be a huge motivation for me if I was at a similar level of uberwealth.

[gaffa]

Buffett and Gates have said they won't make their kids extraordinarily wealthy on their death. But I'd bet that both of them have set up educational trusts that will fund generations of their descendants.
There may be many fine human beings who are beneficiaries of trust funds - but I haven't met very many of them. In my opinion, there are few things more destructive to the human soul than waiting for someone to die to get money.

I really don't understand the whole "making more money than one can possibly spend" thing. On the L a few years ago, someone had left a copy of the Financial Times. There was a supplemental section "What To Spend It On". I looked at this thinking "If you need a newspaper to tell you what to spend your excess money on, you've got too fucking much money!"

In the case of Bill Gates, it's the "Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation" and it's run by his father. Without his wife and dad, there is little reason to suppose that Bill would have given a cent to charity. I've encountered Microsoft "charity" while working for the National PTA - and it's an anti-FOSS marketing move.

[Telemark]

In the case of Bill Gates, it's the "Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation" and it's run by his father. Without his wife and dad, there is little reason to suppose that Bill would have given a cent to charity.
Nor is there any reason to suspect that he wouldn't.

[gaffa]

Nor is there any reason to suspect that he wouldn't.
Except that, before Bill met Melinda, he hadn't given anything to charity (other than the previously mentioned "Give charitable organizations one free copy of your software in order to get them as support customers and keep them from from moving to Open Source solutions" marketing drive).

[Mr. Excellent]

For myself, the appeal would lie in the power to reshape the world (or part of it) as I see fit. With enough money, you can build schools that *work* in inner-city neighborhoods, or lobby Congress relentlessly to give DC the vote, or pay top-notch developers to build workarounds that Chinese grandmothers can easily use to circumvent the Great Firewall - whatever you want. I couldn't stand to do the sorts of work required to get that level of wealth, and so I'll never have it - but if I won the lottery, I could absolutely spend "unspendable" amounts of money, and more besides.

[Mr. Excellent]

Except that, before Bill met Melinda, he hadn't given anything to charity (other than the previously mentioned "Give charitable organizations one free copy of your software in order to get them as support customers and keep them from from moving to Open Source solutions" marketing drive).

Come on, this seems a little unfair. Regardless of whether or not Bill Gates has *always* been committed to charitable work, the fact remains that he has chosen to give massive amounts of money to his foundation, and it's doing genuinely good work. This is worthy of a lot of respect, I think.

[Czarcasm]

[Moderator Admonition]This is neither Great Debates or The BBQ Pit, and the next poster that strays over the line(or jumps over it, for example posts #9 and #17) will get an official warning.[/Moderator Admonition]

[msmith537]

Homer: Mr. Burns, you're the richest man I know!
Mr. Burns: Yes. But I'd give it all up in a second for just a little more.

[Unintentionally Blank]

Come on, this seems a little unfair. Regardless of whether or not Bill Gates has *always* been committed to charitable work, the fact remains that he has chosen to give massive amounts of money to his foundation, and it's doing genuinely good work. This is worthy of a lot of respect, I think.

This. Just about the only person that could tell if Mr. Gate's contributions were genuine is his therapist, doctor-patient confidentiality prevents him from speaking on this matter.

What matters is the end result. The end result is: Mr. Gates has spent more money on helping others than any other person in written history. This is a guy who's on record saying he expects to give away the bulk of his money.
(cite: http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/GlobalHealth/story?id=1286093 )

[gaffa]

Come on, this seems a little unfair. Regardless of whether or not Bill Gates has *always* been committed to charitable work, the fact remains that he has chosen to give massive amounts of money to his foundation, and it's doing genuinely good work. This is worthy of a lot of respect, I think.
The OP is about the motivation of people like Bill Gates to acquire monumental wealth. Before he met his wife, he concentrated all his energy on getting more, and as a side-effect crushed any number of more innovative technologies and (again, IMO) held computing back 20 years. Maybe I'm alone in remembering genuine innovation like Go's PenPoint and how Microsoft crushed it with their stillborn "Pen for Windows", and destroyed that whole sector for a decade.

It's a pet peeve of mine when non-geeks hold Bill Gates up as some sort of geek ideal. He's an obsessive-compulsive businessman, and a barely competent programmer. All his successes have been in getting the better of others in business negotiations, not superior technology.The Google guys are examples of the "Geek Ideal", not Bill. I can only imagine Melinda goaded Bill into charity via some sort of Lysistrata thing.

How much good is necessary to counter a life's work worth of bad? I don't know, but in Gate's case I'd have to say "Not enough yet".

[Stranger On A Train]

Homer: Mr. Burns, you're the richest man I know!
Mr. Burns: Yes. But I'd give it all up in a second for just a little more."Rosebud."

Stranger

[Desert Nomad]

There may be many fine human beings who are beneficiaries of trust funds - but I haven't met very many of them. In my opinion, there are few things more destructive to the human soul than waiting for someone to die to get money.

Almost everyone inherits something from their parents, grandparents etc. A trust fund is a good way to transfer the wealth for a lot of tax reasons. Just because you are a trust fund beneficiary does not mean you are set for life. What if you only receive $10,000?

Sure it's a lot of money, but it will not let you retire and live off the interest.

[Markxxx]

People like Gates, got their riches because earning money was a side line to their work. Gates wanted to put his Windows O/S all over the world. That was his goal and while he was doing this, he made a truckload of money.

So if Bill Gates's goal was to get Windows O/S on 90% of the world's computer he wouldn't stop to look at how much he made until he hit that goal.

People like Rupert Murdoch, wanted to build a media empire and all his riches came as a sideline of his goal. Indeed, if you look at the history of Murdoch you can find, time and time again, where his whole "corporate empire" was on the verge of collapsing.

The thing is most of us have jobs we work at, because...well, we want to eat and keep a roof over our heads. These rich people like their work and the money is just a nice fact.

[Magiver]

The thing is most of us have jobs we work at, because...well, we want to eat and keep a roof over our heads. I get what you're saying about people who work because they enjoy it but I personally don't know of a single person who works for the sole purpose of food and shelter. What I often see are jobs that are effectively "all or nothing" in nature. You either work 70+ hrs a week or somebody else takes your place.

[Bijou Drains]

Gates said at 1 point his plan was to give away 99% of his money. I guess the 1% he keeps will still set up his kids really well.

[Lantern]

From what I have read the focus of the Gates foundation on health issues in third world countries was very much inspired by Bill Gates personally. He is a apparently a huge biology buff and he is fascinated by biotechnology and its role in solving the big global health issues. IIRC he was also inspired by a World Bank report which argued that there is massive underinvestment in health technologies for the very poor and he thought his philanthropy could make a difference. IMO what makes his foundation special is not just the huge sums of money involved by the focus in getting the maximum bang for the buck in terms of impacting the largest possible number of lives. Whatever you think of his business career I think he has a strong claim to being the greatest philanthropist in history.

[Dangerosa]

There may be many fine human beings who are beneficiaries of trust funds - but I haven't met very many of them. In my opinion, there are few things more destructive to the human soul than waiting for someone to die to get money.

How big is your sample size? My experience is quite different, but I've only known perhaps a dozen or so trust fund recipients well enough to judge their character.

[Magiver]

Gates said at 1 point his plan was to give away 99% of his money. I guess the 1% he keeps will still set up his kids really well. Not really. They won't starve but it won't be any kind of Gates dynasty. Can't find quotes at the moment but I don't think they were going to get anywhere near 1% of his wealth.

[msmith537]

The OP is about the motivation of people like Bill Gates to acquire monumental wealth. Before he met his wife, he concentrated all his energy on getting more, and as a side-effect crushed any number of more innovative technologies and (again, IMO) held computing back 20 years. Maybe I'm alone in remembering genuine innovation like Go's PenPoint and how Microsoft crushed it with their stillborn "Pen for Windows", and destroyed that whole sector for a decade.

Nobody wants to use a stylus based computer interface.



It's a pet peeve of mine when non-geeks hold Bill Gates up as some sort of geek ideal. He's an obsessive-compulsive businessman, and a barely competent programmer. All his successes have been in getting the better of others in business negotiations, not superior technology.The Google guys are examples of the "Geek Ideal", not Bill. I can only imagine Melinda goaded Bill into charity via some sort of Lysistrata thing.

How much good is necessary to counter a life's work worth of bad? I don't know, but in Gate's case I'd have to say "Not enough yet".

My answer to that is "who gives a shit"? What good are a bunch of nerds tinkering with some obscure technology in their basement if they can't work it into a marketable product?

[Mr. Excellent]

\
How much good is necessary to counter a life's work worth of bad? I don't know, but in Gate's case I'd have to say "Not enough yet".

Forgive me, but I find this position difficult to understand. I probably don't know as much about Microsoft's history as you, so let's assume that everything you've said about that company (and Mr. Gates) is absolutely correct. That is, let's assume that Microsoft and Bill Gates have routinely stifled the development of consumer electronics, strong-armed competitors into oblivion (certainly, DOJ has concluded they have), and generally engaged in practices that held back their field. Fine. Granted.

But the Gates Foundation *saves lives* - and aims to save many more, through the provision of anti-malarial drugs, HIV treatment, clean drinking water and sustainable sanitation, and on and on and on. Even if Gates had been an unambiguously malign influence upon the PC industry - and I think that's more than a stretch - his foundation's work would far more than make up for that "bad" conduct.

[Sage Rat]

To answer the OP, there are several reasons.

1) There is no unspendable level of wealth. Bill Gates has personally bought several businesses for himself that he believed in, and I'm sure that he has invested in several businesses that were proposed to him where he thought that the guy doing the proposing had some keen ideas that deserved a market and that this was a guy who could make it happen if given the money. You can start a charity fund or finance the creation of new universities and libraries all over. If you have a few billion dollars extra to spend, someone will be quite happy to find use for it.

2) There are people depending on you. You know that you can run the company and continue to support the workers and keep them employed while as your second in command, if he was to take over, he might run it into the ground. The company is your child, it's your baby. Even though you might reach the point where you want to quit and retire, your board might try to keep offering you more and more money because they're afraid the second in command will run the company into the ground, and you've got that emotional connection so you use the money as a good excuse. You're wanted and needed, so hell, you can find something to do with the extra money. You can save children in Africa.

3) Work is fun. It's what you do. Do you really view yourself as someone who sits with his thumb up his ass, and who is going to be happy that way for the next 40 to 60 years? The kind of person who climbs to the top is probably going to say, "No."

4) You feel that you still have more to give. Kevin Smith, the director, once said in an interview early in his career that he thought he had 10 good movies in him. He'd probably made a few million--plenty to live on for the rest of his life--after 5 movies. Should he have stopped?

5) Some do. Jim Davis may have stayed on writing Garfield for decades. Bill Watterson decided that he'd made enough money and he'd given the world what product he had in him, and he left.

[Jackmannii]

When you got it, baby, flaunt it, FLAUNT IT!!!

- Max Bialystok in "The Producers"

Baby if you got it
You have got to flaunt it now
Baby if you flaunt it
You can make them want it now baby
Yes, I got it
And I'm gonna flaunt it now

- Donna Summer

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

[elelle]

Flaunt. OK now, Splain.

[gaffa]

But the Gates Foundation *saves lives* - and aims to save many more, through the provision of anti-malarial drugs, HIV treatment, clean drinking water and sustainable sanitation, and on and on and on. Even if Gates had been an unambiguously malign influence upon the PC industry - and I think that's more than a stretch - his foundation's work would far more than make up for that "bad" conduct.
Sure, but even now, Microsoft is a malign influence in the same areas of the world where the Gates Foundation is trying to do good. Read up on the history of the One Laptop Per Child project. It was designed to run on Open Source software (http://laptop.org/en/laptop/software/index.shtml) - which was both a political goal, and a necessity to reach the intended price point of less than $100 a unit.

What was the response from Microsoft? With Intel, they have produced competitive units with a special version of Windows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classmate_PC). They are out to crush a charity.

Is that evil enough for you?

[Boyo Jim]

Yes, a person's available money allows for a certain level of personal comfort. And it's also true that there's only so much one can consume at once. It's the old truism that you can only drive one car at a time, after all....

I dunno about there being a spending limit. I have a personal dream of creating the world's largest fireworks by smashing 2 explosive-laden remote-controlled 747s together in midair. But come to think of it, 8 would be better.

I'm sure I could go through several billion dollars worth of 747s over an Independence Day weekend.

I'd be willing to bet I could spend every penny of Bill Gate's money in a few months, though I suppose there's hardly a downside to losing a bet like that.

[Unintentionally Blank]

Think of the Carbon credits consumed in such an endeavor! :D Make sure it happens over an endangered species!

The hard part will be convincing Bill he 'wants' to give you all his money. I don't think the Jedi Mind Trick will work.

[Shagnasty]

I dunno about there being a spending limit. I have a personal dream of creating the world's largest fireworks by smashing 2 explosive-laden remote-controlled 747s together in midair. But come to think of it, 8 would be better.

I'm sure I could go through several billion dollars worth of 747s over an Independence Day weekend.

Nothing says "Happy 4th of July" like crashing a bunch of airliners into other stuff and watching everything go up in flames. I'll tell you what, we will do that some day and I have some tech projects in mind that might make it happen as soon as I get the funding. That does sound pretty cool. I personally never met a third world child that I cared for that much and they all lot pretty pathetic when they put them on those fund raising advertisements. I don't know why they don't find some better looking ones to use as models. It seems like the money could be much better spent on projects like this.

[Boyo Jim]

Nothing says "Happy 4th of July" like crashing a bunch of airliners into other stuff and watching everything go up in flames. I'll tell you what, we will do that some day and I have some tech projects in mind that might make it happen as soon as I get the funding. That does sound pretty cool. I personally never met a third world child that I cared for that much and they all lot pretty pathetic when they put them on those fund raising advertisements. I don't know why they don't find some better looking ones to use as models. It seems like the money could be much better spent on projects like this.

Funding? No problem. If I can get the funding for a couple of dozen 747s, I'm sure we can get a bulk discount and have some spare cash.

And we will probably have to develop some new technology to arrange a simultaneous midair collision of 8 airliners. 2 is a piece of cake, you just put them 180 degrees apart and run them head on. But 3 or more gets kind of tricky, especially if you insist on precision down to the microsecond and inch, which I do.

And I agree there are a lot of butt ugly poor kids out there. But out of proportion to butt ugly rich kids? I'm not so sure about that. Is there an ugliness scale that kids can be charted on?

Eh, maybe you're right. Wealth has a beauty all its own.

[Sinaijon]

There really isn't such a thing as 'unspendable' levels of wealth. I highly doubt any rich person has millions in cash sitting under a mattress. Money in a bank or investment has spent. It has been used to purchase assets of some sort.

[Unintentionally Blank]

There really isn't such a thing as 'unspendable' levels of wealth. I highly doubt any rich person has millions in cash sitting under a mattress. Money in a bank or investment has spent. It has been used to purchase assets of some sort.

I think it depends on context. Can someone buy another house in Rio? Sure. But if they never go there, it just becomes an 'investment' (or burden if you don't pay for some company to keep it up.)

I'm pretty sure nobody has 'millions' in an escrow account, available at the drop of a hat. Most of the wealthy have that money tied up making them money. ('The Second million's a lot easier to get than that first million.') But if you don't think a person could pull the money out in small bills with a little notice, you're missing a critical point of economics.

Managing a large chunk of money becomes a career in itself, unless you're rich enough to spin off a percentage to let somone else do it for you...and even then, the smart folks will keep a pretty close eye on things.

But what's wealthy? $200k car? $5 million house? $60 million Jet? $100 million yacht? There's folks out there with two of each (and then some.) Plus money in the bank.

I dated a trust-fund baby for a bit. It was an eye opening experience. On one hand, she had $64k in her checkbook. (about $80k in today's dollars) She could walk into ANY dealership, and pay CASH for ANY car they had. She had a couple of houses here in town and had no problems walking into the local Walmart and buying two lawn mowers. Even though the other house had about 2 square yards of lawn. (Ski country)

On the other, her mom would collect all the garbage in the house, run the food down the dispose all, and take the rest every two weeks to the local Park and throw it in the dumpster. When I went to visit, I got a bill for a 20 minute call home...she wanted a check.

When things went pear-shaped, I had to write a check for my 'wedding present' to get the engagement ring back.

It was a seriously f'd up situation.

[Tristan]

Sure, but even now, Microsoft is a malign influence in the same areas of the world where the Gates Foundation is trying to do good. Read up on the history of the One Laptop Per Child project. It was designed to run on Open Source software (http://laptop.org/en/laptop/software/index.shtml) - which was both a political goal, and a necessity to reach the intended price point of less than $100 a unit.

What was the response from Microsoft? With Intel, they have produced competitive units with a special version of Windows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classmate_PC). They are out to crush a charity.

Is that evil enough for you?

So, Microsoft developed their own laptop for under $100 to sell?

So now there are 2 (in theory) under $100 laptops available to the poor?

I fail to see the problem here.

[gaffa]

So, Microsoft developed their own laptop for under $100 to sell?
No, Intel developed it with Microsoft in order to try to kill this project. If the poor, and computer users in developing countries grow up using Free Open Source Software (FOSS), they will never become Microsoft customers.
So now there are 2 (in theory) under $100 laptops available to the poor?
If you read the links provided, Intel is "dumping" these units - selling them for less than cost. They are not doing this to make the world a better place. This is a predatory business practice intended to destroy the competition - a charity in this case. This is all about preserving the status quo at the cost of a world changing technology.

I fail to see the problem here.
They are selling this special version of Windows XP for $10. They are still getting 10% of the cost of something intended to cost as little as possible to make the world a better place. It's telling that Microsoft is so rapacious that their only competition in this area is people giving their work away for free. (Apple, their only other competition, is a luxury brand.)

[tacoloco]

Except that, before Bill met Melinda, he hadn't given anything to charity (other than the previously mentioned "Give charitable organizations one free copy of your software in order to get them as support customers and keep them from from moving to Open Source solutions" marketing drive).

Oh I see. You have an axe to grind with MS and Gates over open source software.

It doesn't matter if Gates wasn't generous with his money before he got married, he's done an outstanding job since then. That's really all that matters.

[Lantern]

I don't see any solid evidence that the Intel-MS project is a case of predatory pricing. First of all the economics of predatory pricing is a lot more complicated than just selling a product below cost (what's the evidence Intel is doing that anyway?). It also involves variables like a credible strategy of recouping losses later on by charging monopoly prices which implies strong barriers to entry in the market. The concept of predatory pricing is also tricky to apply when products are very different in terms of features which is definitely the case here. You could argue that the Intel product is simply better for education because it introduces students to a Windows computing environment which dominates the business world. More generally competition and choices are generally good for consumers; in this case it means that third world governments will be able to obtain computers at a lower price which in turn means that more kids will have access to them.

So yes this sounds much more like an uninformed rant against Microsoft and Bill Gates rather than a coherent argument.

[Unintentionally Blank]

Take this as a FWIW:
According to filings by Apple (AAPL), Jobs owns 5.426 million shares of Apple stock. As of Tuesday night, Apple's stock had picked up 26.39 points since Forbes' counted the 400 "haves." Jobs shares had gained $146 million in value. Not bad.

Disney (DIS) filings say Jobs owns 138 million shares of the happiest company on Earth. Those shares have not had nearly the run enjoyed by Apple shares over the last few weeks, gaining only 99 cents as of Tuesday night. Still, Jobs has so many of them that they've increased in value by $136 million. Not bad either.

Apple's meteoric rise plus Disney's incremental rise equals $282 million more for Apple's CEO and Disney's largest private shareholder.

Here's a guy who made a BAJILLION dollars in a down economy, gained many times more in one quarter (in a down economy) than I'll ever see. Did he _earn_ that money? Well, kinda. More to the point, he's got a little rock star status, he refuses to manage by committee and focus group, he's intensely secretive, incredibly savvy, and money makes money.

But, hey, 282 million? How can that possibly feel? What does buying a happy meal ($3) feel when you earned $282,000,000.00 in the last little chunk of time? Yikes! He's down to $281,999,997! Oh, wait, in the time it took to write that, he made another HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS.

ETA: Sorry, bad at math. He _had_ $5,500,000,000 in the bank, not $282 mil, still, do those numbers even _compute_ in your head?

[Colophon]

The thing that I never understand is why all these people carry on working.

Take the guys on Dragons' Den, for instance. They're nowhere near the Bill Gates league, of course, but I look at someone like Duncan Bannatyne, who has a personal fortune of more than £300,000,000, and I think - WHY? Why do you still put on a suit and tie, have boring meetings in offices, and so on and so on?

There are so many things I'd like to do and see in my life that I know I will never have time (or money) to do because of WORK. So it boggles my mind that someone with that much money would devote any proportion of their life to work!

It's like these people that win the lottery and then carry on with their job in a warehouse "because I wouldn't know what to do with myself otherwise". WHAAAAAT? Have you so little imagination that you think the alternative to stacking pallets of kitchen towels and dog food is slumping on your sofa watching Trisha? Give me that winning lottery ticket and belt up, morons!

[Machine Elf]

The thing that I never understand is why all these people carry on working.

Take the guys on Dragons' Den, for instance. They're nowhere near the Bill Gates league, of course, but I look at someone like Duncan Bannatyne, who has a personal fortune of more than £300,000,000, and I think - WHY? Why do you still put on a suit and tie, have boring meetings in offices, and so on and so on?

Meetings may not be so boring if you're the one in charge, especially if you get to hand off the minutiae of your workday to executive assistants. Perhaps, for such individuals, fulfillment lies in continuing to exercise power over such large organizations, and deriving a sense of self-worth (as opposed to sustenance) from the continued high income. If the company is paying them $10M a year, they feel valued. Already got $10 billion stored up in the bank from a successful career? That's great, but what have you accomplished lately?

You can run a company successfully for one year, earn $30M, and disappear/retire to some tropical paradise.

OR

You can continue to run a company successfully for a couple of decades before retiring, at which point you're able to say to yourself, "I presided over Boeing/HP/Microsoft/Ford for a couple of decades. In that time I guided them through the introduction of several new products and an ongoing growth/expansion that resulted in thousands of new jobs for people."

So...a sense of self-worth through continued accomplishment, and a sense of self-worth as measured by the huge salary that you continue to pull in.

[interface2x]

There are so many things I'd like to do and see in my life that I know I will never have time (or money) to do because of WORK. So it boggles my mind that someone with that much money would devote any proportion of their life to work!Really, though, isn't that work ethic and that devotion to something what got them rich in the first place? At least usually. From what I can tell, with most of these people, the thrill is in the work and in the chase, not in the money. I know I personally will never see even a fraction of that kind of money because I simply don't have that burning drive.

[Annie-Xmas]

In the creative fields, I image that it's the desire to create. It takes a helluva a lot of passion and drive to get anywhere as a writer/singer/songwriter/actor/whatever, and you just can't turn that off once you have enough money.

[Colophon]

Really, though, isn't that work ethic and that devotion to something what got them rich in the first place? At least usually. From what I can tell, with most of these people, the thrill is in the work and in the chase, not in the money. I know I personally will never see even a fraction of that kind of money because I simply don't have that burning drive.
I guess that's why I'll never make a fortune. If the point comes where I've got enough in the bank to comfortably see me out, I'm not working a damn day longer! Work, for me, is just what I do to get money to live. It doesn't define what I am or give me a sense of worth, particularly.

I mean, I edit copy and write headlines etc that are seen by maybe two or three million people a week; and occasionally write articles too. Sure, I get a small amount of pride from seeing my work in print (although as a copy editor, I don't get a byline or anything). But I certainly don't have the drive and ambition to get to the top of the ladder, whatever that might be.

[Unintentionally Blank]

Yes, but what do you enjoy doing? What defines you? (Lets assume it's, I dunno, painting.)

Now lets say someone likes your painting and pays you $50, under duress.

Then you find people lining up for your paintings, and you don't want to be a painting factory, so you limit yourself to 1 painting a year. It takes you 9 months to make a painting.

Your paintings then go for $1.5 million dollars a piece.

Are you going to stop painting?

[Mr Happy]

My father is one of these people who acquires a lot of wealth.
His father was a hard worker and worked from dawn to dusk to provide for his family, giving them just enough to survive.
My dad is of the attitude that he wants his kids to have more than he had, and he's giving us that. He doesn't work anywhere near as hard as his father did but he makes a ridiculous amount more than him.

From the time he first realised he could make money he never wanted his children to work a day in their life. He saw his father working and he never saw his father. He knew his children were smart and wouldn't turn in to Paris Hilton if they were all given a platinum Amex, so that's what he aimed for. He aimed to give his children a blank cheque on life, literally.

He didn't think of the reality of the situation, his children having hobbies, and plans of their own, which seem like work to him.
He looks at one of his sons running a radio station and thinks his son is working, when really his son is following his dream.
He sees another son bankrolling small films and thinks the same.

My father makes more money than him or his children can spend, but he does it because he can, and because he wants to take that worry away from us while he still can. Ideally he'd love for every descendant of him to be as fortunate as his children. It's unrealistic but that's how he see's it.
And if he has the ability, why not?

[Colophon]

Yes, but what do you enjoy doing? What defines you? (Lets assume it's, I dunno, painting.)

Now lets say someone likes your painting and pays you $50, under duress.

Then you find people lining up for your paintings, and you don't want to be a painting factory, so you limit yourself to 1 painting a year. It takes you 9 months to make a painting.

Your paintings then go for $1.5 million dollars a piece.

Are you going to stop painting?
Well, I'd say that's a pretty special case. Very, very few people are lucky enough to get paid for doing what they love. And even fewer get paid millions for it. The thing I love most is skiing (and mountain-biking or hiking in summer). The chances of anyone paying me to do that are pretty slim (despite my best efforts to cripple my ski editor and take his job!). Besides, with something like that, once it becomes a job it often ceases to be fun. (Going back to said ski editor, I hear him moaning about having to go off to the mountains again when he could be at home in London...)

[Unintentionally Blank]

Well, I'd say that's a pretty special case. Very, very few people are lucky enough to get paid for doing what they love. And even fewer get paid millions for it. The thing I love most is skiing (and mountain-biking or hiking in summer). The chances of anyone paying me to do that are pretty slim (despite my best efforts to cripple my ski editor and take his job!). Besides, with something like that, once it becomes a job it often ceases to be fun. (Going back to said ski editor, I hear him moaning about having to go off to the mountains again when he could be at home in London...)

It was a simplistic example. If you love your job, you'll never work a day in your life.

I feel bad for the folks that think a job is something they do to keep the lights on and keep a roof over your head. There are jobs like that, and I'm damn glad I don't have one.

Think of it this way: Say you work from 20 to 65. During that 16425 day period, you'll sleep 5475 days, you'll work 5475 days, and if you have a one hour commute, you'll spend 935 days in a car.

That leaves 4,540 days, or 12 of those 45 years to do everything else.

But if you like your job, you'll be spending _27_ years, doing something you like.

For the vast majorty of my working life, my job has been challenging and interesting. I'll look back on a career and see stuff I _liked_ doing. Flipping burgers and folding clothes at Hot Topic would not be the way I'd like to waste 15 years if my life.

Will it have made me rich? Nope. But I made the conscious decision to work at a stable place (government) and do so in a way that means that when I'm not at work....I'm not at work. MY work is not my identity, and yet, part of what makes me who I am is enjoying the stuff I do at work.

It's like driving a hot car. If your commute sucks, it sucks a little less in a car you enjoy. If you hate driving during your commute, but like to read, then taking the bus or train gives you back valuable time to do so. (take that 1 hour commute, that's _10_ hours a week, or more than a full shift at work, that you could get back for yourself.)

[Neptunian Slug]

Unspendable is hard to define. I might make my first $50 million. That gets me a nice house, private jet and homes in Newport, Las Vegas and Paris.

But then, like many sports fans, I really would like my own team. My preference is the Reds, but I will consider other franchises. Even a bad team is going to run me $300$400 million. And I probably have to spend some dough to make it a good team. Not much point in owning a team if you can;t have a good one.

If I prove to be a lousy owner, I might have to find something else to do. One thing might be to find failing businesses and try to turn them around. Its a challenge and should keep me occupied for a little while.

Eventually I will have to think about giving some of it away. I don't have any kids, and I can't have the state taking all of my cash when I die.

If I get up to Bill Gates money, I might decide that I have too much.

[interface2x]

He aimed to give his children a blank cheque on life, literally.I don't suppose he's interested in adopting a 32 year old son, is he?

[PunditLisa]

As far as Steve Jobs or Bill Gates goes, would you ever ask Jack Nicholson why he's still acting? Or Steven Spielberg why he's still directing? Surely they have all the money they'd ever need! Guess what? They do it because the love the creative process. And they're fabulous at it, whether they are creating software, directing a movie, or envisioning a new way to listen to music. And, in the process, they've put thousands of people to work and made life more enjoyable for all of us. So why would they retire?

[Nava]

Antonio Catalan is one of those people whose name won't be familiar to pretty much anybody.

He comes from a family which have had hotels since inns became hotels. Before that, they had inns. He wanted to have hotels that would be different from what was being offered; he bought his first hotel borrowing money from his father and uncles; his NH chain didn't just become one of the most succesful in the world, it changed the way Spanish hotels make business.

At one point he got bored. He'd enjoyed the time when it was a startup, when he had to claw and beg for every cent, when the people from the big chains looked down on him. Now he *was* the big chain.

So he sold the majority of NH and started AC. Which, again, is a different model and, again, is forcing other chains to change how they do things.

That's not a guy who hates going to work...