<story><title>Bill and Melinda Gates: America’s Top Farmland Owner</title><url>https://landreport.com/2021/01/bill-gates-americas-top-farmland-owner/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ksdale</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;kind of&lt;/i&gt; his money that he controls. He can do a lot with it, but he can&amp;#x27;t buy a yacht with it... You don&amp;#x27;t get  the favorable tax treatment without a ton of restrictions on how you can spend the money.</text></item><item><author>thaumasiotes</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s another issue, which constantly bothered me back when &amp;quot;Jeff Bezos is richer than Bill Gates&amp;quot; was a big news item.&lt;p&gt;These comparisons never take the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation into account. Bill Gates put about half his money into a financial structure with favorable tax treatment. But it&amp;#x27;s still his money that he controls. There&amp;#x27;s no reason to ignore it if you&amp;#x27;re trying to assess how wealthy he is.</text></item><item><author>chadash</author><text>Bill Gates is the wealthiest person in the world (or arguably Arnault).&lt;p&gt;You might say, no, Musk and Bezos are worth 50% (or ~60 billion) more. On paper yes, but that&amp;#x27;s not a great metric. When I think of wealth, I think of what you can reasonably acquire.&lt;p&gt;If you multiply Musk&amp;#x27;s shares in Tesla times the current share price, sure you get 180 billion. But if he tried to sell a large number those shares, they&amp;#x27;d &lt;i&gt;plummet&lt;/i&gt; in value as he was selling them. Without Musk, I&amp;#x27;d be surprised if Tesla is worth 20% of its current valuation. To a lesser extent, this is true of Bezos too, although Amazon without him is still a very valuable company.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, Bill Gates owns 1.6% of Microsoft, which I believe is his biggest holding, followed by Berkshire Hathaway stock. I&amp;#x27;d bet he can sell both of those holdings completely without a huge hit to either stock price (but definitely &lt;i&gt;some&lt;/i&gt; hit). Same with his farmland and other alternative assets. On top of that, having already sold his Microsoft shares, he&amp;#x27;s not subject to as much capital gains tax as Bezos or Musk, each of whom pretty much owe 20% of their total net worth the second they want to sell.&lt;p&gt;So on paper, Musk and Bezos are wealthier, but if all of them decided to Scrooge McDuck it and put all their money into a gold filled vault tomorrow, Bill Gates&amp;#x27; vault would be the fullest.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: typo above... Originally said that Musk owns 180 bn in Amazon stock :)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>smt88</author><text>He can&amp;#x27;t buy a yacht with his Foundation money, but he already has a yacht.&lt;p&gt;Think of it this way: Gates has a certain list of things he wants to spend money on. The government likes some of those things and forgoes taxes on them.&lt;p&gt;That doesn&amp;#x27;t change the fact that Gates is spending his money on exactly what he wants to. The restrictions are essentially irrelevant to him.</text></comment>
<story><title>Bill and Melinda Gates: America’s Top Farmland Owner</title><url>https://landreport.com/2021/01/bill-gates-americas-top-farmland-owner/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ksdale</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;kind of&lt;/i&gt; his money that he controls. He can do a lot with it, but he can&amp;#x27;t buy a yacht with it... You don&amp;#x27;t get  the favorable tax treatment without a ton of restrictions on how you can spend the money.</text></item><item><author>thaumasiotes</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s another issue, which constantly bothered me back when &amp;quot;Jeff Bezos is richer than Bill Gates&amp;quot; was a big news item.&lt;p&gt;These comparisons never take the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation into account. Bill Gates put about half his money into a financial structure with favorable tax treatment. But it&amp;#x27;s still his money that he controls. There&amp;#x27;s no reason to ignore it if you&amp;#x27;re trying to assess how wealthy he is.</text></item><item><author>chadash</author><text>Bill Gates is the wealthiest person in the world (or arguably Arnault).&lt;p&gt;You might say, no, Musk and Bezos are worth 50% (or ~60 billion) more. On paper yes, but that&amp;#x27;s not a great metric. When I think of wealth, I think of what you can reasonably acquire.&lt;p&gt;If you multiply Musk&amp;#x27;s shares in Tesla times the current share price, sure you get 180 billion. But if he tried to sell a large number those shares, they&amp;#x27;d &lt;i&gt;plummet&lt;/i&gt; in value as he was selling them. Without Musk, I&amp;#x27;d be surprised if Tesla is worth 20% of its current valuation. To a lesser extent, this is true of Bezos too, although Amazon without him is still a very valuable company.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, Bill Gates owns 1.6% of Microsoft, which I believe is his biggest holding, followed by Berkshire Hathaway stock. I&amp;#x27;d bet he can sell both of those holdings completely without a huge hit to either stock price (but definitely &lt;i&gt;some&lt;/i&gt; hit). Same with his farmland and other alternative assets. On top of that, having already sold his Microsoft shares, he&amp;#x27;s not subject to as much capital gains tax as Bezos or Musk, each of whom pretty much owe 20% of their total net worth the second they want to sell.&lt;p&gt;So on paper, Musk and Bezos are wealthier, but if all of them decided to Scrooge McDuck it and put all their money into a gold filled vault tomorrow, Bill Gates&amp;#x27; vault would be the fullest.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: typo above... Originally said that Musk owns 180 bn in Amazon stock :)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>criley2</author><text>&amp;gt;It&amp;#x27;s kind of his money that he controls. He can do a lot with it, but he can&amp;#x27;t buy a yacht with it... You don&amp;#x27;t get the favorable tax treatment without a ton of restrictions on how you can spend the money.&lt;p&gt;Bill Gates would never need to buy a yacht with his foundation money because he would buy a yacht before he made it foundation money.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s like saying I can&amp;#x27;t buy a new TV with my retirement funds, but, I can certainly buy a new TV and contribute less to my retirement funds -- the end result is the exact same dollars went to the exact same end, I just organized them differently.&lt;p&gt;A version of this is that every kid who got scholarship money or loans knows how to bucket expenses to use your &amp;quot;limited use&amp;quot; dollars on qualifying expenses that would otherwise be paid by general funds, freeing up general funds for things. The net result is that the loans paid for nonqualified expenses, but they were organized appropriately.</text></comment>