PART 16: Bill Gates' Wealth Index
Bill Gates' Wealth Index
Consider that he made this money in the 25 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 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. 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 $1000 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 Lake Washington 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. When I first wrote this as an article (it appeared in Upside and Harper's and was noted annoyingly without credit in the Wall Street Journal and Reader's Digest, it was a $500 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. When I later came to explain the article was really about numbers and not him it was over $100 per second as he ranted to me about how mean Upside is to him.
It's perhaps more disturbing to look at the slope of his appreciation during some periods. In 1998 he netted some $45 Billion, meaning that at the rate he's went, if he saw a $10,000 bill, he would have been 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 $3,700 per second in 98, they would have to be mythical five-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 $1,000 bills would be very unprofitable.
That $45B in 12 months is an astounding rate at which to make money. That's higher than the entire gross domestic products of Chile and Egypt, and he's done twice as well as Guatemala, 4 times better than all of Sri Lanka or the Dominican Republic, 6 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 1998 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 did in 98 by holding onto that MSFT stock. His profit/month is more than all the sales of Lockheed Martin, J.C. Penny, UPS or Intel, and all but 25 of the largest companies on last year's Fortune 500. In fact, in 1998, his stock has gone up around three times Microsoft's entire sales - not just profits 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.
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