
Inside the deal that made Bill Gates $350M (1986) [pdf] - unreal37
https://www.unf.edu/~rlamb/Docs/Microsoftarticle.pdf
======
unreal37
How quaint that $300 Million put you in the "top 100 richest Americans" in
1986. Today, #100 has $5 billion.

~~~
pmelendez
You'd need to adjust the numbers by inflation to make a fair comparison
though.

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dragonwriter
$350 million (the amount referenced in the article) in 1986 dollars is $760
million in 2015 dollars. [0]

Still quite a bit less than $5 billion.

[0] [http://data.bls.gov/cgi-
bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=350.00&year1=19...](http://data.bls.gov/cgi-
bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=350.00&year1=1986&year2=2015)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Wealth disparity is a lot worse now than it was in 1986. So you have to take
that into account also.

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adpirz
I think that's exactly what that shows. Real median income (2014 dollars) was
51,000 in 1986. Today, it's 53,000[0]. Wealth in the middle hasn't changed
much, and all that GDP growth is being gobbled by the very top.

[0]
[https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MEHOINUSA672N](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MEHOINUSA672N)

~~~
bpodgursky
Or you know... Bill Gates et al created a segment of the economy that didn't
exist. Inflammatory language like "gobbled up" really annoys me.

It's not like all that Microsoft stock would be evenly distributed among the
middle class if he had never come along.

~~~
ryandrake
OK, so entrepreneurs "grow the pie" while gobbling up most of the newly
created pie.

~~~
adventured
That's definitely not true at all. Entrepreneurs typically take a small
fraction of the pie they started.

Show me how much of the pie Bill Gates has kept from the total value Microsoft
has created over nearly 40 years, including for public investors, the software
industry, hardware industry, all global productivity gains related to
Microsoft software, Microsoft employees, and so on (including all salaries
paid out over 40 years by Microsoft).

Now let's do the same math for Elon Musk, Larry Page, Steve Jobs / Wozniak,
Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and so on.

Don't forget to quantify the benefits to consumers, including quality of life
gains. What's Google's search engine worth to consumers? How much time does it
save them? What kind of quality of life boost - even if small in per capita
terms - has it provided to over a billion people?

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musesum
"...a programmer who received nearly $200,000 plans to use it to expand his
working hours by hiring a housekeeper"

I was consulting with MSFT in 1990. During the break, several softies were
discussing the intricacies of their stock tracking code. I guess that is one
way to fill up those extra working hours.

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zeeshanm
Here's HTML version: [http://users.wfu.edu/palmitar/Courses/SecReg-
Palmiter/Handou...](http://users.wfu.edu/palmitar/Courses/SecReg-
Palmiter/Handout/MS-FOrtune.htm)

