Bill Gates No Longer World's Richest Man 413
Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the well-that's-so-sad dept.
from the well-that's-so-sad dept.
alphadogg writes "Riding surging prices of his various telecom holdings, including giant mobile outfit America Movil, Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helu has beaten out Americans Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to become the wealthiest person on earth and nab the top spot on the 2010 Forbes list of the World's Billionaires." I'd still let the guy buy me dinner if he's ever in my town. He's probably still good for it even though he's fallen on hard times.
Wonderful news (Score:5, Insightful)
When I'm laid off and searching garbage cans for food, it will bring me great comfort to know that at least someone is doing well.
Re:Wonderful news (Score:4, Insightful)
It should, because if everyone were poor the world would be an even nastier place.
Man.. (Score:4, Insightful)
...when people's losses equal more money than I will EVER have in my entire life...I become a sad panda :(
Re:Who? (Score:3, Insightful)
Who?
He doesn't care that you don't know him.
So, the Rich got richer this year... (Score:5, Insightful)
And the poor got poorer. Nothing new to see here, move along.
It's criminal, though isn't it? Millions of people are out of work, thousands are losing their homes, a majority of Americans have so little in savings that a single illness can put them over the edge into poverty, and yet, all these guys, despite a huge recession, saw their fortunes go UP.
Go figure.
Re:Wonderful news (Score:2, Insightful)
"Autre motif d'orgueuil, que d'être citoyen! Cela consiste pour les
pauvres à soutenir et à conserver les riches dans leur puissance et
leur oisivité. Ils y doivent travailler devant la majestueuse égalité
des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les
ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain."
"Another reason for pride, that of being a citizen! For the poor
citizenship consists of supporting and sustaining the power and
idleness of the rich. They must work for those goals before the
majestic equality of the laws, which forbids rich and poor alike to
sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread."
Anatole France, Le Lys Rouge
Re:So, the Rich got richer this year... (Score:2, Insightful)
Making money isn’t “criminal” and I, for one, hope it never will be.
Re:Wonderful news (Score:5, Insightful)
It should, because if everyone were poor the world would be an even nastier place.
news flash 90% are poor. and the world IS a nasty place. because you live in a very rich country and dont see reality means you really have no idea.
Go spend 1 week with the poor of India, or in Afganastan, China, Korea, Russia, Mongolia, or anyplace in South america or Africa. THAT is poor, and that is what most of the people on this planet live like.
Re:So, the Rich got richer this year... (Score:2, Insightful)
Making money may not be criminal, but making lots of money usually is.
Please show me a billionaire that didn't pull illegal and criminal acts to get where they are.
From Carlos Slim and Bill Gates, to Russia's modern day oligarchs, to the robber barons and old money families ruling America today - there just aren't that many people who become that rich without being immoral, oppressive criminals. Some hide it better than others; some attempt to buy their reputations back with acts of charity; but don't think they are anything like the rest of us.
Did he earn it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Question: Did they earn it?
Answer: No. They played a game well and have received a cash prize.
No man does 53 billion dollar of work. He games the system so the incremental profits of the workers at the bottom of the pyramid trickle up into his pockets.
If you disagree, you are wrong. The truth in the paragraph above is undeniable by clear-minded, rational people. However, fear of socialism fueled the Cold War, was the justification of the US war in Viet Nam, the US funding and training of death squad in Nicaragua, and is the rational for the current Cuba embargo. Oh, and fear of socialism is the primary undercurrent to keep healthcare in America as a luxury only the wealthy can afford.
America is a fucked up mess. Capitalism is a fallacy.
Re:So, the Rich got richer this year... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wonderful news (Score:5, Insightful)
Just think what good could come if he was not sucking all of that money out of all of those poor economies. They might even be able to save and invest and grow their economies. Instead, Carlos uses the money to expand into banking and other areas to make even more money for himself.
Re:Hard times? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me guess, you've never in your life made a tax deductible charitable donation have you? Here is why I think that:
Let's say you have an income of $10. And your tax rate is 30%. So if you just pay your taxes and make no charitable donations, you'll pay $3 in taxes leaving you with $7.
Now let's say that you have that same $10 income. The same 30% tax rate. Now say you donate $5 to charity, deduct that amount from your income and pay your taxes on the remaining amount. So $10 minus $5 leaves you with $5. In the US there is a cap on deductible donations, say $2 is the max you can deduct. So when it comes time to pay taxes, even though you donated $5, you only get to deduct $2 of that amount. You must take your remaining $5 and pay taxes on an income of $8, which leaves you with $2.6 in your pocket ($10 - $5 - $8 x .3 = $2.6).
The reality is that you always have less money in your pocket after making a deductible donation than if you'd just paid your full tax liability. You don't make charitable donations in order to keep more of your money for yourself, it just doesn't work that way.
They never worked, ever. (Score:4, Insightful)
Reagan is the primary person to blame for the current economy. Basically he sold the world a pyramid scheme. Trickle down economy is EXACTLY what a pyramid scheme is. The idea that anyone who joins the scheme just pours some money into the top of the pyramid and then reaps his rewards as it trickles down to him. And it works, for the first few layers until to many people are needed to join to keep the system flowing and it all collapses.
And just like pyramid schemes continue to be popular, reaganomics continue to be popular, by the same kind of people. The scammers and the ignorant.
A pyramid scheme MUST fail, because the longer it continues, the larger it becomes. It can only work in fictional universes were infinite growth is possible (and for a long time, that is exactly what Reagan fans claimed). For a manufacturing nation as you claim it would in, this would mean that their must be an infinite number of resource to use in manufacturing and an infinite market to take the products. Or to put it in simpler terms, it would mean for Microsoft, that it could half the release cylce of their flagship product Windows each time, and still find a growing market for it. So by now you would be getting a new windows every day, pay 300 bucks for it, and have 6 billion people buying it.
Silly? That is what reaganomics boil down to. Infinite sustained growth.
Like all pyramids scams, we want to believe that it could work, but it doesn't. And it shows the fatal flaw in democracy. People that fall for scams, get to vote.
Re:Wonderful news (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So, the Rich got richer this year... (Score:5, Insightful)
-Employing people at wage-slave levels
-Influencing markets to better suit yourself
-Taking money from others
Then I'm all for you. Good luck. Most rich people don't do it on their own, so they employ people to do stuff for them. Rich people didn't get rich by paying their employees. Most rich people control their market to some extent. Power is worth more then money because it can make you money. As for the last part, realize that simply receiving money from others is bringing them down. Presumably, whatever they paid you for is worth more to them then they buck they paid for it, but this whole capitalism thing is a vicious cycle of clawing your way up at the expense of others. If you're at the top, it's more then likely you're standing on someone's neck.
Re:Did he earn it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Question: Did they earn it? Answer: No. They played a game well and have received a cash prize. No man does 53 billion dollar of work. He games the system so the incremental profits of the workers at the bottom of the pyramid trickle up into his pockets.
Seriously? So the people that found and build successful organizations cannot be said to have "worked" for their success. Gates may no longer be directly involved in production, he is no longer coding or developing, but that is not to say that he didn't "work". He earned his success.
He games the system so the incremental profits of the workers at the bottom of the pyramid trickle up into his pockets.
Its called owning a business. Every business owner ever makes their money from the product of their employees labor. This is just how employment works. This concept is so basic that I am wondering if there is some sort of deeper irony to your post that I am not grasping. Gates has simply managed to make his business work on a vastly larger scale than almost anyone else. In the process, his organization employees thousands of employees. Do you really think the world would be a better place without Microsoft?
If you disagree, you are wrong. .
Logic and debate isn't really your strong suit is it?
The truth in the paragraph above is undeniable by clear-minded, rational people. However, fear of socialism fueled the Cold War, was the justification of the US war in Viet Nam, the US funding and training of death squad in Nicaragua, and is the rational for the current Cuba embargo. Oh, and fear of socialism is the primary undercurrent to keep healthcare in America as a luxury only the wealthy can afford.
Um...What? You should loosen up your tinfoil hat and let some blood up there.
America is a fucked up mess.
Leave. Nobody's stopping you. I'm sure China or N. Korea could use some more moronic proletariat labor. Keep fighting the good fight Komrade!
Oh, and fear of socialism is the primary undercurrent to keep healthcare in America as a luxury only the wealthy can afford.
Nope. The problem is people spewing idiotic vitriol that only serves to enrage and polarize people. Stop appealing to ghosts of McCarthy's past and slow down enough to realize that the US is a big place. People have different needs and desires, and we all expect our government to represent our bests interests.
healthcare in America as a luxury only the wealthy can afford.
(psst! I think you forgot about all of our social welfare programs) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicaid [wikipedia.org]
Capitalism is a fallacy.
Closing your eyes and plugging your ears to the truth doesn't make it go away. Capitalism may be inefficient and has flaws, but its real. Real life is not like Capricorn 1.
America is socialist (Score:5, Insightful)
America does tax the the rich to support its poor, therefor it is a socialist state. Trust me, you don't want to see real capitalism. Places like Hong-Kong used to be it and it ain't pretty. Think American ghetto's are though, imagine people with actual paying jobs living in "housing" that is a shell, with inside a mesh of cages that house entire families. Yes, not dissimilar to how chickens are housed in battery farms.
In a true capitalistic country, there is no restriction on what can be for sale. You would have legal organ harvesting, since money buys anything.
America right now might be bad, but it could be a lot worse.
And you can't really blame the Bill Gates of the world for it either. He got 1 vote. It is the millions of people who are just a paycheck away from complete financial ruin who vote against a system that could give them a proper safety net because they think that next paycheck will have a billion dollar amount on it, and then they would have to pay 50% taxes on it and that 500 million would mean utter ruination of their dream to one day make it rich.
It ain't the rich who worry about taxes, if Bill Gates suddenly had to pay 80% in taxes, what would he loose? Nothing. It is the idiots who live on minimum wage who somehow capping capital gains tax is a good thing for them.
It is the American dream vs gritty reality and reality doesn't stand a chance.
Sweden is the almost complete opposite, there the working and middle class (the majority voter) believe that the best system for themselves is a system where you can take a year off from work, or not work at all and be supported by the state. An alien thought to most Americans, but ultimately the Swedish system can only exist because the majority votes for it.
And the majority of American seem to want the current system.
Re:Wonderful news (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hard times? (Score:1, Insightful)
Conversely, if you really support a charity/church/whatever and want to give them $5 (which happens with a lot of people), if you take your pre-tax $10, pay $3 tax, and give $5, you only have $2 left. With a tax deductible contribution, you have $2.60 left for yourself. So your "cost" is less by taking the deduction.
Some people like to donate their money to what we consider to be worthy causes.
Re:Wonderful news (Score:3, Insightful)
You must be an American. These days, only Americans think that monopolies are a good thing. They're much like the old-style Soviets that way, except they're completely blind to the similarities.
He's no better than the drug lords (Score:4, Insightful)
The richest guy in the world being from one of the most corrupt countries? Big surprise. When you own much of the industry in an entire country, you know some nasty deals have gone on somewhere.
I'm pro-capitalist, but if a single business/person owns controls that much, it ceases to be capitalism. There is no competition, no new investment, no invention. Nothing but collecting payment since there is no other option. The sad thing is the Mexican government probably couldn't break up Carlos' monopolies at this point even if they wanted to.
Congrats Carlos. You won. Everyone else in Mexico loses.
Re:Did he earn it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nobody "earns" tens of billions of dollars.
Re:Hard times? (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with this is that many very wealthy people create their own charities. Since it's your charity, you can control who controls it. And it's likely that the tax money saved by donating to the charity will be at least partially made up by the charity spending money on things you would have spent money on anyway. The result is that your effective tax rate is lower.
Using your example, why not donate $2 to a charity you control, have it spend 10c on something charitable, and have $1.90 go to pay for that vacation villa you want that lets disadvantaged children stay there every once in a while when you're gone anyway? There's rules governing how a charity can spend its money. But there are a lot of ways to game the system.
I'm not accusing Bill Gates of doing this. It looks as though he really is being charitable. But don't assume that every wealthy person who gives to charity is doing so out of altruism.
Re:Did he earn it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Clam down there, Marx. This game you refer to is called "life," and no, it isn't fair. It won't ever be. Better to accept that fact now and press on than to sit around crying about it.
No matter how much of a "fucked up mess" you think America is, the fact remains that the standard of living for the poorest of our poor is still vastly better than almost anywhere on the planet. Even if you have nothing but the clothes on your back, you can at least walk into a homeless shelter and get free food and a place to sleep.
There's no law of nature which says you deserve anything, but I find it encouraging that there are places in this world where you are allowed to make progress and better your social and financial standing whether it be by hard work, smart investing, or a combination of both. You want to see real suffering? Go to countries where trade and business is restricted, governments are practically set up to support corruption, and large groups of people are routinely persecuted and murdered en masse because of their background and/or religion.
It took the western world centuries to figure out that they stood more to gain by treating their neighbors as customers rather than enemies to be killed or controlled. World peace, if it can be achieved, will not be brought about by good will and wishful thinking, but by money.