Bill Gates thrown out

[London Geezer]

It's in italian, i'll translate it for you


Basically, Bill Gates is on holiday in Southern Italy. He wanted to see Stromboli (the famous volcano) from up above, so he jumped on his chopper and off he went to have a look... Well, after taking some pics he came down and the chopper landed on a platform which has to ALWAYS be left free in case of emergencies. The police came and kicked him out, forcing him to land on his yacht. Poor soul...

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

Rules are rules. I don't see why an exception should be made for him.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Yes, I rub my hands with glee that one of the richest men in the world, while on a luxury holiday in Italy, had to park his helicopter on his yacht instead of the nearest landing pad.

How humiliating and maddening it must be for Bill Gates, while he sits on his big pile of money and sips champagne in the sun....

 

[DemoCoder]

Please, if you know anything about Gates, you know he was never a conspicuous consumer before he got married. He was a nerd. Even after he was a billionaire, he still flew coach, did not have an uber sports car, yatch, and could be seen eating at McDonalds in Seattle from time to time. Even considering his wealth, his worldly possessions are relatively modest. There are dozens of hollywood actors and basketball players who have bigger houses than he does. And he looks like a chump compared to some of the estates in London, like Lakshmi Mittal's $128 million house. Gates is not even in Forbes top-20 list on yatchs, cars, or homes, even though people with less than $1 billion are.

Gates did the equivalent of park in the wrong space. Millions of soccer moms at national parks do this everyday. He was told he couldn't park in the handicap zone and left. Big deal. Atleast he did leave, instead of buying the whole park and kicking everyone out.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Yeah that was my point. If *my* biggest problem was being told to park the helicopter on the yacht instead of on the emergency pad, I wouldn't be worrying about much of anything.

 

[London Geezer]

He could have bought the whole island...

 

[Crisidelm]

Cannot be bought (the island)

 

[MuD]

Cannot be bought (the island)

Why not? EVERYTHING can be bought, eventually. (had to learn that, the hard way).

 

[London Geezer]

That island is populated! Not sure whether someone can buy a populated island.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Please, if you know anything about Gates, you know he was never a conspicuous consumer before he got married. He was a nerd. Even after he was a billionaire, he still flew coach, did not have an uber sports car, yatch, and could be seen eating at McDonalds in Seattle from time to time. Even considering his wealth, his worldly possessions are relatively modest. There are dozens of hollywood actors and basketball players who have bigger houses than he does. And he looks like a chump compared to some of the estates in London, like Lakshmi Mittal's $128 million house. Gates is not even in Forbes top-20 list on yatchs, cars, or homes, even though people with less than $1 billion are.

Gates did the equivalent of park in the wrong space. Millions of soccer moms at national parks do this everyday. He was told he couldn't park in the handicap zone and left. Big deal. Atleast he did leave, instead of buying the whole park and kicking everyone out.

Actually that is not entirely true. Long before he got married he purchased a porshe 959 (one of, I believe, 200 built). Still it doesn't seem he is overly extravagant in his lifestyle.

 

[Deepak]

Still it doesn't seem he is overly extravagant in his lifestyle.

So he is not as *evil* as people potray him??

BTW, all these rich look puny when you compare them to Kings of ancient India.

 

[London Geezer]

Still it doesn't seem he is overly extravagant in his lifestyle.

So he is not as *evil* as people potray him??

BTW, all these rich look puny when you compare them to Kings of ancient India.

In a sense, that would make him more damaging to the country's economy. If he's not spending all the billions he has, that is all money that is not circulating in the country, making economy that little bit worse than it would be if he was spending more. That is valid for everyone.

 

[Deepak]

Still it doesn't seem he is overly extravagant in his lifestyle.

So he is not as *evil* as people potray him??

BTW, all these rich look puny when you compare them to Kings of ancient India.

In a sense, that would make him more damaging to the country's economy. If he's not spending all the billions he has, that is all money that is not circulating in the country, making economy that little bit worse than it would be if he was spending more. That is valid for everyone.

So he is a bad person bec'se he doesn't show off his money??

 

[DemoCoder]

Gates's money is on paper. To spend it, he'd have to sell stock, that means, he'd be taking *other people's money in selling the stock and spending it* in exchange for stock certificates. However, if Gates dumped all his MS stock, it would likely devalue it, and hence, it would be worse for everyone. That's why so-called "wealth taxes" that socialists propose from time to time on financial assets are absurd. They are taxes on non-realized gains, which would force a sale and devaluation of said wealth, in the end, screwing some poor grandma who has the stock in her portfolio.


Gates's 959 purchase is famous. It got endlessly delayed by customs, and he never ended up driving it much. Larry Ellison is a much more conspicuous consumder: Mig jet. Formula 1 car. Multithousand dollar suits. Ludicrous and gawdy mansion.

 

[London Geezer]

So he is a bad person bec'se he doesn't show off his money??

No, he's a bad person for other reasons. And by the way, spending != showing off.

 

[Humus]

In a sense, that would make him more damaging to the country's economy. If he's not spending all the billions he has, that is all money that is not circulating in the country, making economy that little bit worse than it would be if he was spending more. That is valid for everyone.

It's important to remember that an economy is driven by production and not by the flow of money. Unless Bill Gates' spending would lead to increases in production the additional money in circulation would instead cause inflation since more money is chasing the same amount of goods.

 

[FUDie]

Still it doesn't seem he is overly extravagant in his lifestyle.

So he is not as *evil* as people potray him??

BTW, all these rich look puny when you compare them to Kings of ancient India.

In a sense, that would make him more damaging to the country's economy. If he's not spending all the billions he has, that is all money that is not circulating in the country, making economy that little bit worse than it would be if he was spending more. That is valid for everyone.

But just think about all the money people spend on virus scanners, email scanners, etc. just because of MS products. Certainly that has to count for something

-FUdie

 

[Humus]

That counts as waste. Lot of money is spent on stuff we shouldn't have to care about and driving an industry that shouldn't have to exist. Even though this production shows up in the GDP numbers, it's also a production that doesn't improve people's standard of living. Like how the living standard in communistic countries are even lower than what the GDP suggest since what's produced is not decided by demand.

 

[Guden Oden]

No, he's a bad person for other reasons.

Hm, actually, BG is a rather good person in the sense he gives huge contributions to charity every year, and I read somewhere it says in his and his wife's will their personal fortunes would be almost entirely donated to charity when they croak. So that is pretty nice.

Anyway, Gates built a pretty ludicrous house too a bunch of years back... I'm sure it isn't the most expensive ever, but the pricetag had a whole bunch of zeroes on it I'm sure.

As for me, if I was stinking rich the only car I would consider owning would be a Bugatti Veyron, and it costs something like $1.200.000 I believe... Or will cost, I don't think it's actually on sale yet.

 

[Polarbear53]

His house is worth about $100 million. And I read an article on him a while ago, in about 1998 when microsoft really took off, he made so much money a second, he would have made more money walking by $10,000 on the ground then actually spending the time to bend down and pick it up. It was a few thousand dollars a second.


I wonder how much total money he has donated. It's a lot.