Oh no, Bill Gates is being overtaken by the Nouveau Riche Bill Ellison (Oracle)

FORBES 400

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 22, 2000

Answers

Damn! I didn't make the list this year.

-- (kb8um8@yahoo.com), September 22, 2000.

Does it bother anybody else that there are only 44 women on this list (roughly 10%)?

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), September 22, 2000.

"Does it bother anybody else that there are only 44 women on this list (roughly 10%)?"

Not really, business as usual. A higher percentage would disturb me more actually. It would mean that a higher percentage of women across the board would forgo family life, so that a higher pecentage made it that big. I have nothing against family men in general, but in particular I think that women are more suited to raise kids. Which doesn't mean that a woman can't work and have kids (on the contrary, both can be managed well with a lot of effort IMO), but to make it that big a woman (or a man) have to devote themselves to the business almost exclusively at the expense of family (and compromises needed in relationships.)

IMHO, ofcourse.

-- (smarty@wannabe.one), September 22, 2000.

let the games begin...

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), September 23, 2000.

Yes, FS, it does bother me that only 44 women are on this list, and a good many of those names are "old money". And yes, let those games begin.

Um, "smarty" (again, I don't mean that the way it sounds), why do you assume any of these women have children? Why do you assume that, in order to make that much money, one has to "forgo family life"? In fact, why assume any "compromises" have to be made at all? Why does it have to be a "compromise" because someone (male or female) prefers career to family life? And taking that one step further, why is this apparently a bad thing in your eyes? (<--- that's an assumption on my part.)

Seems like an awful lot of assumptions there.

(I'll let a male from the audience address the "women are more suited to raising kids" part. You're welcome.)

(BTW, kb8, don't feel too bad. I didn't make the list again, either.)

-- Patricia (PatriciaS@lasvegas.com), September 23, 2000.

Let's also consider the percentage of Asians, Hispanics, American Indians, and other minorities on this list. To me it sounds suspiciously like an old white boys and girls club

-- (@ .), September 23, 2000.

Oh shat...next thing will be some bleading heart telling us we need a government program to insure that more women and blacks get filthy rich. Afterall, that's how those guys made their dough, by whining about how life isn't fair.

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), September 23, 2000.

FWIW Unk, I don't think anyone should be "given" anything they haven't earned (and yes, there ARE exceptions to that). I don't hold anything against "rich" people. The only thing I have a problem with is HOW their money is made.

But I honestly don't spend a whole helluva lot of time worrying about that, either. Real Life has a tendency to intrude :-)

P.S. Are you sure you can't come to LV???? (whine.....)

-- Patricia (PatriciaS@lasvegas.com), September 23, 2000.

FutureShock,

It sure bothers me. Let's steal, I mean tax, all the money away from the rich white men, and give it all to the women and any other under represented minorities on the list. That should work. After all, a person's rights are only important up to the point of things not being fair. If things aren't fair, then the Constitution shouldn't matter. My neighbor has a BMW, I want a BMW. Waaaaaaaah, it's not fair!! I want a BMW!




Sarcasm, OFF.

-- J (Y2J@home.comm), September 23, 2000.

"Um, "smarty" (again, I don't mean that the way it sounds),"

But I do.

" why do you assume any of these women have children?"

I don't assume any of these women have children. Hence why I said "..forgo family life". Some may indeed have children, but raised more by helpers than themselves. Wether that's bad or good is to debate, and a choice.

"Why do you assume that, in order to make that much money, one has to "forgo family life"? "

The higher up the scale you go, the less time one can spend with family and more time has to be spent with business related activities. The business to be successful (and that goes on a relative scale of small business to titan corporations) has to be "nurtured". A lot of time is spent on networking and PR apart from overseeing it and working at it. Ask any business owner. Ask any child of large business owners.

"In fact, why assume any "compromises" have to be made at all? Why does it have to be a "compromise" because someone (male or female) prefers career to family life?"

If one prefers career over family life, then it's not a compromise. One devotes oneself to career. It's a choice. But one decides not to compromise with relationships, and relationships suffer.

" And taking that one step further, why is this apparently a bad thing in your eyes? (<--- that's an assumption on my part.)"

It's not a "bad thing" in itself, as person to person choices. What my point (or opinion is) is that on a large scale, more women would have to chose career over family life (as it already has happened since the 60's- 70's), and the concequences of that is that now there is a large section of the women's population who's single at later ages (30 to 40) before even thinking of marriage and family. They're completely independant and happy financially (good thing) but unable to compromise in a relationship with an equally as independant man (good or bad is up to them to decide.)

I don't think it's bad, I think it's sad.

-- (smarty@wannabe.one), September 23, 2000.

smarty -- women who work for low wages don't spend a great deal of time with their kids and must often rely on unpaid "helpers" such as neighbors and relatives to raise the kids. As mother-to-many, I've worked as many as four jobs at once, seven days per week, and nights. We've never been on welfare. We live in a low-income region of the world in order to give our kids clean air to breathe and plenty of fun/exercise outdoors. I have read books to them in the middle of the night because they tried to stay up for me. It's a give and take family life thing, making a living.

-- helen (b@r.o), September 23, 2000.

(Hit the submit button before I was done by accident.)

I don't think it's bad, I think it's sad in some ways. Trends have their concequences. Some good, some not so good. In a way, more women forgoing family or having children is good to reduce the population, and good for women's equal rights. But down the road, childless women in old age are lonely(er).

One way or the other, women can't have it all. But definetely the feminist movement was (is) good to at least let women decide what they want.

-- (smarty@wannabe.one), September 23, 2000.

Helen, I understand completely what you're saying and I agree. But my opinion (given to FS in answer to his question) was focused on women in the big league of top 500 fortune co's.

-- (smarty@wannabe.one), September 23, 2000.

It would be interesting to see thumbnails on each of the 400. I would like to know how many have inherited wealth vs new wealth; ie, wealth that they created. A quick scan and I see only a few names that I immediately recognize as old money---Rockefeller, Scaife, and Hearst. Another quick scan and I see 7 "foreign" names---Sindhu (104), Chen (167), Singh (207), Jamail (236), Boadjakji (313) and Chong (825). (What happened to Cheech?). Some others of interest to me are Steve Jobs (236) (an ironic last name), Martha Stewart (274) (gag) and Oprah (354).

Somewhere I saw that 35/400 (8.9%) are new this year. Those interested in female, hi-tech entrepreneurship should look at---

DONNA DUBINSKY (397)

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 23, 2000.

Lars,

The Waltons have inherited their wealth from Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart. Although I wouldn't say that they are "old money", yet.

-- J (Y2J@home.comm), September 23, 2000.

I think John-boy Walton is so kewl.

-- (nemesis@awol.com), September 23, 2000.

Women still earn seventy cents on the dollar compared to men doing comparable work. Look it up. This has nothing to do with whether women are opting out of relationships, families, or child-bearing/rearing...or moral judgements regarding the "rightness" of those choices. That particular debate is so ignorant as to not deserve a response.

-- (Norma@Rae.com), September 23, 2000.

What debate are you talking about Norma Rae? All I see here is a discussion and opinions.

"Women still earn seventy cents on the dollar compared to men doing comparable work. Look it up. This has nothing to do with whether women are opting out of relationships, families, or child- bearing/rearing..."

I'm not saying at all that women earn equal pay for equal work. That's not what I'm discussing about, I'm discussing women OWNERS of big corporations. Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey don't have to compare their fortunes with those of men as being 30% less.

-- (smarty@wannabe.one), September 23, 2000.

I would certainly not want to hurt any feelings by REQUIRING these rich folks to reach out and help anybody who might need a lift. Dog forbid!

On the other hand, wouldn't it be nice if the 736 BILLIONAIRES listed on this site were to share their money VOLUNTARILY?

If each of them merely divested themselves of everything in excess of ONE BILLION dollars, (I know, they'd really have to tighten their belts, as mere BILLIONAIRES), the amount of money which could be used for a charitable cause, or some other good cause, (you name it) , would be approximately $736 BILLION.

This would be enough to give everyone in the country (275 million of us) almost three thousand dollars apiece. Maybe a better idea would be to spend it on the homeless; let's see, this would buy over seven MILLION modest homes ($100,000 each), or seventy million down payments of $10,000 each.

Maybe an even better idea is to invest $13,000 for every kid in the US as an endowment towards our future.

Any other suggestions for how to spend, or invest, this "excess" money, when all 274 billionaires rush forward to share their wealth, realizing that they couldn't possibly need more than a Billion dollars. After all, a billion bucks, even put into a modest CD, would earn interest at over fifty MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR!

JOJ

-- jumpoffjoe (jumpoff@echoweb.net), September 23, 2000.

I was amazed at the disparity between the 400. The list begins with Mr. Gates and 63 billion and ends with a few folks who have a mere $725 million. Everything's relative, I suppose.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), September 23, 2000.

Actually, Lars, a lot of the names you see from "New York" and its surrounding suburbs are "old money" (not Trump [g]); I recognized many of those names. And the two "Cox" sisters in Atlanta -- that's old money as well (I think).

smarty, I don't quite think I understand what you're getting at. On the one hand, you seem to be saying that women really belong back in the "traditional role". Well, with the almost absolute necessity of two-income households, I can't see that as being realistic. And, as no men seem to have chimed in, I know a couple of single fathers who are a hell of a lot better than some moms I know. I also happen to know a few very financially successful women who "have it all"; some balance relationships and careers better than any man I've ever known, and the others balance families -- including children -- with their careers better than any man I've ever known. They have my utmost respect and admiration.

I do realize that these men and women are probably in the minority, but I also happen to feel that the tide is turning, probably borne out of the necessity of two-income households.

You also stated that women who don't have children are lonelier when they get older. I have to tell you from my experience (I used to do volunteer work with the elderly) that the ones who HAD families were, in many instances, lonelier than the ones who didn't. These people had families (grown children) who simply abandoned them, and there's nothing lonelier than knowing you have children out there who don't want to be bothered with you. I was stunned at how many fell into this category.

-- Patricia (PatriciaS@lasvegas.com), September 23, 2000.

Capitalism can be such a bitch, huh JOJ? Evil Bill Gates, the nerd who tinkered in his basement as a teen with computers, now rules the planet. The heirs of big names be damned, they inherited their papa's hard work.

Communism rules. Down with capitalism. I say all mentally challenged people should work for the government and be paid as much as the rich kid who works for his papa's big corp. Long working hours and hard work aren't excuses to deprive the poor beer guzler couch-potatoes who's only chance in inducation is to learn from sitcoms, while the rich kids go to Yale and watch PBS or History channel. What snobs!

I say, the Founding Fathers had it all wrong! Democracy shmocracy! When only 50% of the population votes, one knows damn well that that 50% voting block are the rich. We can't let the rich and educated make the decision for the entire nation, we must have a system that makes it equal for all, and the only way to achieve that is to taxe the rich until their fortune is equal to every average Joe and Jane. Why, there ought to be a law to force the rich to give to charity too. Especially charities that help out government workers.

Oh, I'd say a lot more about this evil system we have here in this (snicker) great nation, but don't get me started! You know how I love to type and rant...

-- (smarty@wannabe.one), September 23, 2000.

Patricia, I give up. I'm obviously not expressing correctly what I mean, as we seem to keep passing each other right by on different issues and ideas. Same thing happened with Norma Rae.

Now I'm bracing for JOJ's response, he might have missed my last one as dripping with sarcasm.

-- (smarty@wannabe.one), September 23, 2000.

Sorry; that's one of the things I dislike about "online communications". You can't hear inflection, you can't see body language; consequently, entire meaning can be lost. And this wouldn't be the first time I didn't "get" something either.

Sarcasm, OTOH, I recognize almost immediately (re your answer to JOJ); I almost fell out of the chair laughing so hard :-)

-- Patricia (PatriciaS@lasvegas.com), September 23, 2000.

I think a lot of it has to do with personality, Patricia. I remember my mom suffering from "empty nest" syndrome when her three kids moved along in life. She never really paid any attention to us when we lived with her, but she felt lost without us. It was an "identity" thing, I think. She identified with the role of motherhood, even though she didn't attend to the role.

I worked while raising my three, but the folks I hired to help out did the chores like cleaning the house, etc., so I could spend time with the kids. I've not felt any loss with them gone. In fact, [as heartless as this seems], both SO and I FEAR calls from our kids, as when everything is running smoothly, they DON'T call, but the moment something goes wrong [and they need money] they call.

My mom loved to be around kids. I think it was because she could rule over them. She made every effort to visit us once we had children, to the point that my sister-in-law once spent the entire visit in the bathroom waiting for mom to leave. Funny memories I have of that.

I'd agree that childless people [men AND women] aren't lonelier in old age. The friend I mentioned in my E-mail the other day was once married, but never had children, and she's never been lonely in her life. She reads, works, travels, participates in a musical group [a band of sorts], and has friends all over the world who she's met through involvement in various organizations. She'll never be wealthy, but she's always been happy, and I'm only one of HUNDREDS of people who spend the night at her home when I visit Chicago.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), September 23, 2000.