| Mon Sep 3
19:04:28 EDT 2007 |
| Microsoft Stock Price:
|
$28.73
|
| Bill Gates's Wealth:
|
$68.178424 billion
|
| U.S. Population:
|
302,774,977
|
| Your Personal
Contribution:
|
$225.18
|
Most people will have read the recent reports of how
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has had his personal net worth
soar over 100 billion dollars and then drop down to 55
billion. He certainly knows how to make (and lose) money.
Consider that he made this money 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 million
dollars per hour, around $300 per second.
Which means that if, on his way into the office, should
he see or drop a $1000 bill on the ground, it's just not
worth his time to bend over and pick it up. Assuming about 4
seconds to bend down and pocket the bill, he would make more
just heading off to work.
Another way to examine this sort of wealth is to compare
it to yours. Consider an average American of modest wealth.
Perhaps she has a net worth of $70,000. Mr. Gates' worth is
800,000 times larger. Which means that if something costs
$100,000 to her, to Bill it's as though it costs 12 cents.
So for example, you might think a new Lamborghini Diablo
would cost $250,000, but in Bill Gates dollars that's 31
cents.
That fully loaded, multimedia computer you've been
drooling after? Half a penny.
A nice home in a rich town like Palo Alto, California?
Two dollars. That nice mansion he owns? A more
reasonable $63 to him.
You might spend $50 on tickets, food and parking to take
your date to see an NHL hockey game. Bill, on the other hand
could buy the team for 50 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 six
747s--not tickets, the planes themselves. Two for
him, two for Melinda and two for young Jennifer Katherine.
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.
Laid end to end, Bill's money would stretch 3.8
million miles -- to the moon and back over 8 times. It
could paper over all of Manhattan 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 $8.97 trillion national
debt by well under 1%. It's nice to put things in
perspective.
Hey, Bill, if you just spent 3 minutes reading this
article, do you realize you could have made $50,000 in that
time? Back to work!
© 2007
Copyright Brad Templeton.
All rights reserved.
Economic Focus