Brant Kuehn

A member of the Philip Greenspun's Homepage community since August 22, 2002

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August 22, 2002, on How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates:
Just a quick comment about wealth, money, and liquidity. Many comments so far have spoken of Gates' tens of billions as if he were some sort of Scrooge McDuck (Remember the cartoon Duck Tales?) swimming in a vault of gold. For the most part (Gates' physical possessions make up a very small part of his overall wealth) this sum is made up by the value of MSFT stock. The value of this stock is the aggregate expectation of the value added by MSFT capital and labor now and in the future. This "wealth" is supporting not only those who work in Redmond, but people down in California at nVidia and Seoul at Samsung, not to mention steel suppliers whose sheet metal makes up computer cases and other industries further down the supply chain. Yes, I know, Gates did not invent the computer, and no one would claim that. But he is to a large degree responsible for the popularity of the PC. That is beside the point, however. The point is that wealth estimates based on stock valuation are a...