What would you do with the wealth of the top 100 richest billionaires?

The top 100 richest men on earth, according to Forbes Magazine, include the like of Carlos Slim, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, the Walton children, The Koch Brothers, and many more. According to Forbes, their combined net worth, as of 2013, is exactly $1,996,038.000.000.00 (One trillion, Nine Hundred-Ninety Six Billion, and Thirty Eight Million Dollars)

Lets say that you were given all of their money. How would you use it? Would you give it to charity? Would you start businesses? What would you buy yourself?

 

start my own country then give it all back to them.

 

The worlds biggest treasure hunt....after I take care of the tribe, of course.

 

Return it to the rightful owners, the men from whom it was taken in the first place. ..
No, better yet, refuse to take it in the first place since it belongs to them, not me.

 

I would pay 40%, going to the US government and to the state of Indiana.

I would then give 1/4 of what is left over to charity, forming a charity foundation.
This foundation would do 4 main things.....
1; Help fund a series of privately owned non-profit hospitals and doctors offices, known as the Populo Health Network. (Populo is Latin for "For the people")

2; Build housing, and help find work for homeless people.

3; Help people who are losing their homes to pay off back taxes and mortgage payments that they are behind on.

4; Help fund a private, non-profit series of schools.



I would keep only 1/4 for myself. I would buy a private jet, yaught, and build a large estate in the country outside of Indianapolis, and also a number of cars.
I would hire a number of people to act as my personal staff, and run my home.

I would buy the Indianapolis Colts, Indiana Pacers, and form a Major League Baseball team in Indianapolis. I would also form a Nascar team.



The rest of the money would be used to form manufacturing companies throughout the US. I would not take profit from any of these companies. it would, instead, be put back into the company in order to cut costs, and as bonuses for workers exceed at their jobs. My companies would pay a minimum wage of 15 dollars an hour to all workers. The CEO would make only 300 thousand a year.

 

Given the present economic climate here in the U.S., and the impact of Reagan/Republican policies causing the redistribution of wealth upward, using their principles would require 99 of the top billionaires to give most of their fortunes to the very richest billionaire. He is obviously the hardest working billionaire and deserves the 99's vast fortunes in addition to his own. This is the model of the distribution of wealth that conservatives and neo-conservatives have been fighting for.

 

I did not say it was stolen from them. I said it was given to you. Perhaps they CHOSE to give it away.

 

I would invade Canada.

 

Well most of their wealth is in stocks and bonds, not actual cash. If they were to try to sell off at once in the open market, their wealth would collapse. That said, for the purpose of the hypothetical, I would move to either a small country or a large country with a small population, and help them along their way.

 

I would stay in American and try and repair the damage done by partisan politics and greed by rebuilding the manufacturing industry and making healthcare and education more affordable.

 

I would make sure that every cat and dog had a home, and establish a free neuter program.
Then I would do a march on DC and wouldn't leave until it were mandatory to treat animals humanely...no more strays, no unwanted litters, fenced yard and/or leash law, everywhere. Mandatory jail sentence for offenders.

Having more than enough money left over, I'd start soup kitchens where needed. No one should go to bed hungry.

Animals first though. People can speak for themselves.

 

I'd move to Ireland and breed Leprechauns before I'd do that.

 

Why on earth would you give 40% to government ? Don't you realize that so much of it would be wasted inside the bureaucratic machinery ? You yourself could take the money and set up charities, and foundations where the vast majority of the money would get to directly to the need.
Giving it straight to government would be akin to simply throwing it down a well.

 

Hmmm.....Not a bad idea. I would simply start a charity to pay salaries to cops and soldiers, and to help pay for infrastruction repair without the need for giving the money to bureaucrats.

 

Sounds pretty sensible.

 

What a question! So many answers! I'm presuming that I don't have to worry about my obscenely concentrated wealth being confiscated by governmental fiat. Nor would my possession of such wealth cause a financial collapse that would turn my fortune into waste paper.
1- Buy Greenland from the Danes. Maybe they'll sell for approx $200-300 billion. It's nearly an independent nation now but buying off the total population of 56,000 for $2 million each shouldn't be hard.
2- Hire an army of architects, scientists, engineers, poets, and visionaries to build a new nation. Open minds and an optimism for the future essential. Trans-humanists preferred if have good work ethics.
3- Build thorium reactors to power the new society. Other renewable power sources will be looked at such as wind, geothermal, thermoelectric but applied rationally and environmentally sound. No wooley thinking here. This will be a power network for the future.
4- Build new cities in a planned orderly manner with as small an impact on nature as possible. My idea would be to build as if was a colony on an alien planet. Everything will have to be recycled, conserved, durable, livable.
5- Experiment with different government and social structures in the different cities, bioengineered hive society, syndico-anarchist, fabian communist, athenian democratic,..send me a proposal. Keep notes and see what works best for stability, productivity, and quality of life.
6- Fund a research institute comprised of young minds to evaluate fringe science. Things like cold fusion, polywell fusion, gravity shielding, tesla tech, FTL, anything that may have been discarded by conventional scientists but which could lead to a breakthrough. Detail what works and what doesn't. A side lab on biomedical research. Transhumanist cyber implants, mind and body augmentation via nanotech, robotics, bioengineering, hormone research, performance enhancement. Ending the 30,000 year pause in human evolution.
7- Rigorous genetic and population management. Sorry but breeding MUST be a collective responsibility. How? That's tricky. Gene police or perhaps something injected. Babies in bottles? I do know that utopias can fail when babies pop out faster than systems can deal with.
8- Start exporting ideas and finished goods for social and technical solutions to current problems. Discounts for nations that modify their economies to reduce waste, war, poverty, and wealth concentration in the hands of the few.
There's lots more to do including space travel, but New Greenland will be very busy in the next 200 years.
Well...you asked.

 

I forgot to mention that I would start a private aero-space corporation and pay to research spaceflight tech, such as electromagnetic shuttle launch technology.

 

Well you could run the federal government for about half a year, but probably not since most of the wealth are in assets that aren't necessarily easy to unload especially if their are no other billionaires to by them. Most of a billionaire's money is tied up in things like stocks and bonds real estate, yachts, airplanes, and other investments, which in order to reap the money you will have to sell and at one hell of a depressed price since the number of billionaires in the world will have just been reduced by 1/3. I suspect that by the trime you onload all those assets you don't wish to keep for yourself, you'll have much closer to one trillion than two trillion , and then you'd only e able to run the federal government for 3 months.

 

I would hire Van Halen to act as my own personal stereo system for the rest of their natural lives. Except Sammy Hagar, he's a tool. It's Diamond Dave or the deal's off.

 

Great answer! I want the only walled city in America to call my "warrior's hold."

 

Ideally, I would collect much more tax on all future income (including increases in capital values - capital gains) and I would impose hefty estate taxes that eliminated tax-free foundations and similar tax loopholes. The chances of actually doing this are effectively nil.

 

I would invest it and start more businesses. Basically what Romney did is the best thing you can do with money to help yourself and the people you hire and sell goods to. Well with money at least, military service is probably the most selfless thing you can do for your country.

 

I'd keep a billion $ for myself, feeling that it would be enough to last several lifetimes, mine, my daughter's etc. and dole out the rest equally to the public. You see it's totally consistant, being that super rich, I wouldn't mind giving a huge part of it away, since I'd still get to keep enough to be insanely wealthy.

 

(*)(*)(*)(*) a lot of young (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)

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relax into many young pink tacos

 

They would surrender in hours and assimilate in days. The oil revenue alone would more than pay for the war. Besides, I think they're hiding Bigfoot up there.