billg.html

                            Bill Gates Wealth Index
                                       
   [INLINE] Most people will have read the recent reports of how
   Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has had his personal net worth soar over
   40 billion dollars. He certainly knows how to make money.
   
   Consider that he made this money in the 22 years or so since Microsoft
   was founded in 1975. If you presume that he has worked 14 hours a day
   on every business day of the year since then, that means he's been
   making money at a staggering half-million dollars per hour, around
   $150 per second.
   
   Which means that if, on his way into the office, should he see or drop
   a $500 bill on the ground, it's just not worth his time to bend over
   and pick it up. He would make more just heading off to work.
   
   We're assuming about 4 seconds to bend down and pocket the bill. Of
   course he can afford to hire people to follow him and pick up any $500
   bills he may drop. Not that he would, fortunately he doesn't quite
   think of his wealth or time this way. The rumours that when the
   $50,000,000 invoice for his new manor on Puget Sound came in, he
   simply said, "Melinda, could you get my wallet. I think it's in my
   other pants" are not true. It is ironic that a lot of that house is
   going to be underground; rooms built with Windows won't have any.
   
   When I first calculated this, it was only a $20 bill, and then for
   some time it was a $100 bill. I remember speaking to him at a
   conference some years ago thinking, "$31 per second, $31 per second"
   as we talked. I didn't mention this.
   
   It's perhaps more disturbing to look at the slope of his appreciation
   this year. From January to July he's gained some $16 Billion, meaning
   that at the rate he's going, if he sees a $10,000 bill, he's just as
   well to pass it by. (They do exist, but he won't see one until he buys
   the U.S. treasury -- they are not circulated. Salmon Chase, former
   secretary of the treasury and chief justice, is on it.) If it's a pile
   of cash he has to count, it's even worse. At $2,500 per second so far
   this year, they would have to be thousand-dollar Bills -- and he would
   need to have a quick hand -- to avoid him losing the money in wasted
   time while he's counting them. Counting $500 bills would be very
   unprofitable.
   
   That $16B in 7 months is an astounding rate at which to make money.
   Over $27 billion per year, that's higher than the entire gross
   domestic products of Chile and Kuwait, and has done twice as well as
   Guatemala, 4 times better than all of Sri Lanka, the Dominican
   Republic, 5 times better than Costa Rica, El Salvador or Panama, 8
   times better than everybody in Brunei, including the Sultan, and 23
   times better than all of Bermuda. That's right, in 1997 Bill's made
   much more (before taxes) than the entire population of Kuwait, all the
   Emirs, oil wells, Sheiks, millionaires and peasants -- everybody.
   
   And forget about companies. Nobody -- even G.M, Exxon, Ford, IBM and
   Intel combined -- has earned what Bill's done since January by holding
   onto that MSFT stock. His profit is more than all the sales of
   Lockheed Martin, J.C. Penny, Boeing, UPS or Intel, and all but 25 of
   the largest companies on last year's Fortune 500. In fact, they in the
   first 7 months of 1997, his stock has gone up around twice Microsoft's
   entire sales for 1996.
   
   The "Too-small-a-bill-for-Bill" index has gone up quite a bit over the
   years. When Microsoft went public in 1986, the new multimillionaire
   only had to leave behind $5 bills.
   
   Chart Here's a chart (click on it) of the amount of currency it's not
   been worth Mr. Gates' time to pick up off the ground over the years,
   based on his current 281 million shares of Microsoft (he hasn't sold
   many) and the split-adjusted stock price courtesy of Microsoft's own
   web site.
   
   The chart was of course generated with Microsoft Excel, and for those
   who want to play with it or print it at a better resolution, here's
   the .xls spreadsheet file to download.
   
Bill Gates Dollars

   Another way to examine this sort of wealth is to compare it to yours.
   Consider the average American of reasonable but modest wealth. Perhaps
   she has a net worth of $100,000. Mr. Gates' worth is 400,000 times
   larger. Which means that if something costs $100,000 to her, to Bill
   it's as though it costs 25 cents. You can work out the right
   multiplier for your own net worth.
   
   [INLINE] So for example, you might think a new Lambourghini Diablo
   would cost $250,000, but in Bill Gates dollars that's 63 cents.
   
   That fully loaded, multimedia active matrix 233 MHZ laptop with the
   1024x768 screen you've been drooling after? A penny.
   
   A nice home in a rich town like Palo Alto, California? Two dollars.
   That nice mansion he's building? A more reasonable $125 to him.
   
   You might spend $100 on tickets, food and parking to take your family
   to see an NHL hockey game. Bill, on the other hand could buy the team
   for 100 Bill-bills.
   
   You might buy a plane ticket on a Boeing 747 for $1200 at full-fare
   coach. In Bill-bills, Mr. Gates could buy three 747s. One for him, one
   for Melinda and one for young Jennifer Katherine.
   
Yet More

   Evan Marcus a Systems Engineer from Fair Lawn, New Jersey who
   maintains a Bill Gates Net Worth Page on his web site, notes that Bill
   could buy every single major league team in Baseball, Football,
   Basketball and Hockey for only about 35% of his net worth -- plenty
   left over to buy a European sport.
   
   Of course then he wouldn't have around $150 for every person in the
   USA as he does now. Nor could he still give $6.70 to every person on
   the planet.
   
   Marcus suggests that Bill could only pay Michael Jordan's 1997 salary
   only 1300 times, but that he could buy 902 million subscriptions to TV
   guide. He's also fascinated by how much much all this money would be
   if put into dollar bills. Laid end to end, the Bills would stretch 3.8
   million miles -- to the moon and back over 8 times. They could paper
   over all of Manhatten 7 times, or be stacked 2,690 miles high -- watch
   out for satellites. They would weigh 40,000 tons -- 100 times the
   weight of one of those 747s he bought above.
   
   But one thing Marcus says Bill can't do is even dent the national
   debt. Should he selflessly donate his stock to the U.S. treasury, he
   would reduce the $5.37 trillion national debt by well under 1%. It's
   nice to put things in perspective.
   
Other Pages

   Some other web pages have had something to say about this staggering
   amount of money. You can try:
   
    1. The Bill Gates Net Worth Page
    2. Bill Gates Personal Wealth Clock
    3. Search the rec.humor.funny joke archives for jokes about Bill
       Gates
    4. Yet Another Unofficial Microsoft Jokes page.
       
   By Brad Templeton, who still stops to pick up nickels (but has given
   up on pennies.) The funny thing is, Bill Gates probably still does,
   too.