加载中…福布斯杂志：盖茨蝉联2012首富 巴菲特位居第二
(2012-09-24 11:31:25)
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盖茨蝉联2012首富
巴菲特位居第二
http://www.sina.com.cn
2012年09月21日 16:45
哈尔滨日报
据中新社纽约9月19日电 (记者
阮煜琳)根据美国《福布斯》杂志19日公布的2012年美国前400位富豪排行榜，今年56岁的微软(微博)创始人比尔·盖茨以660亿美元的资产第19次蝉联美国首富桂冠。
美国《福布斯》杂志19日在其官方网站上发布的2012年美国400位最富有的人排行榜，微软创始人比尔·盖茨以660亿美元的资产居于首位；伯克希尔哈撒韦董事长兼首席执行官、“股神”沃伦·巴菲特位居第二，资产460亿美元，甲骨文(微博)公司CEO拉里·埃里森位列第三，资产410亿美元；查尔斯兄弟和科赫兄弟以310亿美元并列排行榜第四位。
2012年美国最富有的400人净资产高达1.7万亿美元，过去一年中增长了13%。据最新美国政府数据，其真实GDP为13.56万亿美元，美国最富有的400人的净资产已经相当于美国国内生产总值的八分之一
FORBES | 9/18/2012 @ 7:50上午
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The Forbes 400 Summit: Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and the
Greatest Roundtable of All Time
This story appears in the 2012年10月8日 issue of Forbes.
The Forbes 400 Summit: Bill
Gates, Warren Buffett and the Greatest Roundtable of All
Time
This story appears in the
2012年10月8日 issue of Forbes.
Click here for the extended
video
Exactly 30 years ago Malcolm
Forbes’ most enduring brainchild–a ranking of the richest people in
America–came to fruition. The Forbes 400 proved a phenomenon as
soon as it launched. Three decades later it’s an American icon.
Each of the 400 stories testifies to the American Dream. When
measured together, they serve as an annual marker for the dynamism
of free enterprise.
Current
Issue
For this 30th Anniversary Issue,
we decided to raise the bar : Rather than congregate only on the
printed page, what if we actually summoned the 400 to come together
in person? Specifically, what if the most financially successful
people in America, leveraging their resources and the
results-driven mind-set that created that success, tried to solve
the world’s most intractable problems? To literally change the
world?
So on June 26, 161 billionaires
and near-billionaires gathered at the New York Public Library for
The Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy, the greatest-ever meeting of
its kind. Oprah Winfrey kicked off the day, and Warren Buffett and
Bill Gates also gave keynote talks. Melinda Gates, Diane Von
Furstenberg and Jacqueline Novogratz headlined a panel about giving
to women and girls. Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff and Jim Breyer
talked about using tech-driven metrics to improve philanthropic
efficacy. Jon Bon Jovi chatted with Steve Forbes about using fame
as a force for good. (And he ended the event with a
once-in-a-lifetime ukelele duet for charity with
Buffett.)
The highlight of the day was a
roundtable featuring six all-time great philanthropists — Warren
Buffett, Bill and Melinda Gates, Steve Case, David Rubenstein and
Leon Black — who have collectively pledged or given over $100
billion to charity (with the heaviest lifting from the first three,
who also spearheaded The Giving Pledge). With just the smallest
nudging from yours truly, this historic sextet provided one of the
great primers on how to give back effectively — and why it’s
important.
FORBES: For the first time the
phrase “this panel needs no introduction” is actually true. The big
question: Do people who’ve been successful have a moral obligation
to give? Is it an emotional decision–”I can do good”–or an
intellectual decision–”I feel an obligation to do
good”?
MELINDA GATES: It’s both, but I
won’t say the emotional piece is because I have an obligation. Any
time you give, it has to be from your heart. One of the amazing
things about philanthropy, at least for us, is getting out into the
world and talking to people. And you realize how similar people are
in terms of what they want and their needs. So, for me, it’s a
heart tug that I feel and that I carry every time I come back home,
be it Seattle or New York.
But then it’s your intellectual
head that you have to put on, which says, “Okay, so I met that one
person” or “that one family” or “that group of villagers,” but how
do I impact tens of millions? How do I use this money that’s at our
disposal to have the very biggest impact?
DAVID RUBENSTEIN: I agree. My
theory is, number one, you should give money because when you give
money, it’s selfish. Nobody who gives away money says, “I feel
terrible about myself. I hate myself for giving away that money.”
You feel better about yourself, and when you feel better about
yourself, you’re gonna live longer, because your emotional health
will be better.
Second, you might actually help
somebody. You never know. All the times you try to do something, it
doesn’t always work. But sometimes you might actually help people.
And it’s a natural human instinct to help other people. And third,
you might get to heaven more quickly. Now, I can’t prove that, but
why would we take a chance?
You can only do three things
with money. You can give it to your children, you can give it to
your executor to give away or you can give it away while you’re
alive. And my theory is, it’s much better to give it away while
you’re alive. How much can you give to your children before you
completely spoil and ruin them? Very few people who inherit
gigantic sums have gone on to change the world for the better.
Generally the people who’ve changed the world for the better are
people who made it on their own and ultimately didn’t want to just
distribute wealth to somebody else. If you can give away as much
money as you can while you’re alive, you’ll realize the benefits
that I just mentioned, you’ll feel much better about yourself–and
your children will feel much better about you.
STEVE CASE: And there are three
different ways to give. One is to give money, write a check, which
is important. Two is to give your time and really focus on the
issue with passion. And three, essentially, is to give your
reputation, leverage your network and try to plug people together.
Initially [my wife] Jean and I did some startups. We gave a fair
amount of money away. Then we started investing in kind of what we
thought of as not startups but speed-ups, organizations like
Habitat for Humanity and Special Olympics, trying to expand their
efforts.
For probably seven or eight
years we actually didn’t have a website, which is odd given all the
money came from the Internet. We thought it would be better just to
kind of quietly do it. But then we realized we really weren’t using
our most unique and precious assets, which are the ability to
connect people together, build collaborations, shine a spotlight on
issues. Which really led us to commit to the Giving Pledge. It
wasn’t so much making a public commitment–it was more trying to
leverage everybody’s expertise and create a network effect around
the givers.
FORBES: Melinda, you talked
about giving around something you’re personally passionate about.
You and Bill have given to a lot of things, such as vaccines, that
are very abstract and far away from us. How do you get people
excited about things like that?
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BILL GATES: The best thing is to
encourage people to get out and see the things. If you get somebody
to go to Africa and see the beauty and yet also get a glimpse of
what happens to children, that malaria’s this awful thing, not just
in terms of deaths but the number of kids who are permanently
damaged, never able to learn–they’ve had either malnutrition or
malaria–it really draws you in. There’s no substitute for actually
going and seeing it.
Same thing with schools. If you
go to an inner-city school and see some of the pathologies that can
develop in terms of how there’s security [checks] and people aren’t
really going to the classes much, and then you go to a place a few
blocks away that’s, say, a charter school run on a different basis,
and you see that contrast, you really want all the kids to have
what you see at the second place.
So I think you’ve got to have
genuine experiences. That’s kind of the retail end. And then you, a
little bit, step back and say, “Okay, what is it about that system?
Why isn’t the combination of the market plus government able to
solve that?” Who’s really studying how you reward teachers? Who’s
really studying why they’re good? What is the institutional
framework that would change that? That involves working with
experts, doing a lot of thinking. But it’s got to be that kind of
retail experience that creates this dedication.
WARREN BUFFETT: I’m not sure
whether it’s intellectual or emotional, but when I was born in 1930
the odds were 40-to-1 against me being born in the United States as
opposed to someplace else. I was a male. The odds were even money
on that. So now I’m down to 80-to-1. You don’t want to bet on
80-to-1 shots normally, but I got lucky. As Bill says, if I’d been
born a few thousand years ago I’d have been some animal’s lunch,
because I’d have gone around saying, “Well, I allocate capital,”
you know, and the animal would say, “They’re the kind that tastes
the best.” I can’t run fast. And I can’t climb trees. And so here I
am, by pure, pure luck, born at the right time, the right gender as
it turned out, compared to my sisters who were just as smart or
smarter than I am, in the right place and in a system where
allocating capital pays off like crazy.
I don’t feel guilty about that.
I do feel grateful about it. I’ve got a whole bunch of stock
certificates sitting in a box. They’ve been down there for 40
years. I haven’t even looked at ‘em for years. You know, I could go
down there and fondle ‘em occasionally, but that’s about all
they’re good for. I mean, they have no utility to me. They have all
kinds of utility to the people that Bill and Melinda are talking
about. Incredible utility. And what can they do for me? They can’t
do anything in a practical manner. And so, it just seems so obvious
to get ‘em where they’re useful.
FORBES: Who’s had an epiphany
moment regarding philanthropy on a massive
scale?
WARREN BUFFETT: I can’t remember
back that far. I can’t remember what we had for lunch.
[Laughter.]
MELINDA GATES: I’ll tell just
one story. Bill and I had already decided after we were engaged
that the money that had come from Microsoft would go back to
society. That was a given. We both came from families that believed
in that and believed in volunteerism and civic
work.
On our first trip to Africa, a
few months before we were to be married in the fall of 1993, we
went to see the animals, and the safari. We had a group with us. We
had an amazing trip. We didn’t go to see the poverty. But you can’t
but help be in Africa, see the people and say, “Well, what’s going
on here? Why is it that the women are the ones that we saw doing so
much work, carrying loads on their heads, a baby on the back and a
baby in their belly? And the people with shoes on, smoking
cigarettes, were men.” We just kept asking ourselves, “Well, what’s
going on here?”
That started us. For us as a
couple, it’s been not only an intellectual journey but a really
fulfilling journey in terms of what we learn
together.
LEON BLACK: My wife was
diagnosed with melanoma cancer five years ago. It was a
misdiagnosis where a recurring plantar’s wart on her foot for five
years turned out to be a stage two melanoma. That was very scary
and a wake-up call. She’s fine, which is the great news, but even
better than that, we took a page out of Michael Milken ‘s approach
and what he’s done with prostate cancer, where he’s been able to
reduce morbidity rates in prostate cancer almost in half over the
last 20 years, and say, “Maybe we can make a difference in starting
a melanoma research alliance and empower the best and the
brightest, on the condition that they collaborate, that they work
with each other, that they share their
research.”
Fast-forward to a kind of Who’s
Who scientific advisory board, getting it out on a global basis to
make a difference. We’ve gotten 30 or so young investigators
involved. This was a field where, really, nothing had happened for
40 years. That was the frightening thing we learned when my wife
was originally diagnosed. And now this is one of the areas that is
most hotly pursued. That was our personal
moment.
STEVE CASE: We’re giving, all of
us, because we want to have an impact. We want to change the world.
And how do you have the maximum impact, ideally, with the most
modest investment? That’s what we are, whether you’re an investor
or an entrepreneur starting a company: How do you take a little bit
of resources and have the broadest possible impact? So, looking for
ways to get leverage and maximize the impact is not about the input
of writing the check. It’s about the output, what actually
happens.
We’ve all learned that it’s
hard. It takes a lot of work. But if all you do is write the check
and then figure you’re done, it’s actually kind of like investing
in a company. A venture capitalist writes the check, but then the
real value they provide is the expertise they help to guide that
investment, the network that surrounds those entrepreneurs in terms
of people they can bring into the organization. Trying to take
those same lessons and apply them to this role, I think, is very
important.
DAVID RUBENSTEIN: Most of the
people who got into The Forbes 400 got there by having an idea and
pursuing that idea as long as they could. And it created great
wealth for them. They didn’t really care about making the money so
much as pursuing the idea.
I think in Bill’s case, you were
interested in proving that the software you could develop was the
best software in the world. And so the same principle really
applies in philanthropy. You have to have an idea of something you
want to do, and you put into it the same
passion.
And I want to agree with Steve.
The ancient word philan , for philanthropy, as the Greeks invented
it, had nothing to do with giving away money. Philanthropy means
love of humanity, love of people. For the ancient Greeks that meant
giving your time or your energy and your money. Everybody doesn’t
have the ability to be in The Forbes 400 and give away large sums
of money. Most people in the United States really only have the
ability to give away their time and their energy and their
ideas–some money but not nearly the kind of money we’re talking
about represented here.
So, I really hope that the
philanthropy movement, which Warren, Bill and Melinda have really
helped develop as a global phenomenon, is seen not just as wealthy
people giving away money but wealthy people giving away their time,
their energy and their ideas and encouraging other people to give
away whatever they can–ideas, energy or time.
FORBES: To the extent there’s an
obligation to give back, is there also an obligation to do so
publicly–to show that those who’ve achieved incredible success give
back to society?
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STEVE CASE: To get the maximum
leverage, the maximum network effect, some of that is doing it
publicly and trying to get other people to rally around your cause.
The idea of the Giving Pledge and making a public commitment, we
thought, would motivate others, not just the
wealthy.
FORBES: Where did the 50% number
in the Giving Pledge come from?
WARREN BUFFETT: I said zero, and
Bill said a hundred, so we compromised. It came out of the air. But
I would bet that most of the people who’ve joined the Giving Pledge
will not only give more than 50%, I think they’ll give appreciably
more than 50%. And they’re doing it. You have to have a cutoff
point, but I don’t think we’ve reduced anybody’s expectations by
using that number.
MELINDA GATES: I want to go back
to t he public-versus-private idea. Bill was already very visible
because of the business. But for me it would’ve been nice to just
kind of be private. Early on we were doing a lot of things behind
the scenes privately. I liked to fly under the radar screen. It was
nice when we could go into countries and, you know, the ?government
didn’t know we were there, so I could go see projects on the ground
very anonymously.
But what I’ve learned is that
your voice in these things matter. If you’re going to galvanize
people around a particular issue that you care about, if you want
to galvanize governments to give money around big causes or other
philanthropists to come together around the cause that you care
deeply about, you’ve got to be more public about it and you’ve got
to use your voice. And one of the knock-on effects is that you do
end up inspiring other people.
WARREN BUFFETT: It’s a
fundamental premise of the Giving Pledge: It’s important for people
to declare themselves. A wide spectrum of people, different ages
and interests, everything else, are explaining why, to them, it’s
important that they give half or more. Are all going to hit with a
given reader? No. But a few will. And that’s what
counts.
BILL GATES: In dinners around
the United States and in China and India and other places, this
topic has come up a number of times. Perhaps the most interesting
was when I was in the Middle East, actually in Jeddah. There was a
wealthy group really struggling with it. But one of them mentioned
that in the Koran it actually says the reason to talk about your
philanthropy is if it encourages other people to do the same. And
in that case you have an obligation to talk about your
philanthropy.
It’s a tricky thing. Are you
trying to get credit for it? Or are you just trying to be able to
share what’s worked and what’s not worked? It’s been fantastic
where you can get groups together who can talk about what makes it
fun, what makes it not be fun. Should you have staff? How do you
involve colleagues and children? Being off by yourself, that’s one
option. But I don’t think you’ll learn quite as much or enjoy it
quite as much if you can’t find a group of fellow
travelers.
STEVE CASE: This issue was a big
topic at this last Giving Pledge meeting: How do you influence
others beyond what you’re doing, particularly governments? You
could start with a premise of you could do what you’re doing on
your own. That’s great. You could say, “Let’s network that together
with other givers and have more impact.” That’s great. You could
then go another level and say, “How do you interact with companies
and create public/private partnerships that really integrate what
you care about and do what maybe hundreds of companies are doing
on–on a global basis?” That has even more impact. And then the
final step is, how do you integrate governments and leverage what
they’re doing or influence what they’re doing?
Do the risky things in this
world. And then, when you’re looking to scale them, plug into
governments. That gives you even more impact. Having a big impact
on these big issues requires stepping out of your comfort zone and
trying to create that network effect.
FORBES: Five of the people on
this panel are Giving Pledge signers: What has surprised you guys
most when talking with each other?
WARREN BUFFETT: I think we’ve
had more success than we anticipated. I don’t know whether Bill and
Melinda would agree with that.
BILL GATES: I think that the
fact that people really want to have a frank discussion and they
have such great stories about what’s brought them to give, it kind
of reinspires everybody when you get together.
WARREN BUFFETT: I’ll tell you
one surprise. I’ve been with Bill and Melinda in Beijing and then
again in Delhi. And it was amazing to me. We had about 50 people, I
would say, at both of those dinners. They have the same concerns.
They obviously have some different views from their culture and
some different attitudes about what the government should do and
that sort of thing. But there are a lot of common characteristics
between the billionaires in Beijing and Delhi and New
York.
MELINDA GATES: That generation,
the generation that makes the wealth–we’re seeing a lot of movement
in the tech sector in India–they’re very energized to not only give
money back but to do what you’re hearing so many of the people in
the room talk about today, which is to use their brains against
something that they see in their country that needs
change.
You really make sure you get to
that first generation of wealth before it’s handed down to the next
generation, because sometimes the second generation feels like,
“Well, I’ve gotta hang on to it. It was given to me. And I’ve gotta
pass it along.” But the first generation says, “Hey, we made it,
and it’s ours to give away as well.” That’s a common theme we’re
seeing across the world.
WARREN BUFFETT: That’s true in
the United States, too. In talking to people, if they inherited it
themselves, they feel they’re breaking a covenant to some extent if
they don’t continue that policy. That’s not universal. But I can
understand that. That’s a very understandable human reaction. But I
try to talk ‘em out of it.
DAVID RUBENSTEIN: Many people
who are in the 1% are very afraid of being identified as having an
enormous amount of wealth, and they don’t want the publicity
associated, perhaps, with announcing they’re giving it away. But I
think that’s a false concern. Because of The Forbes 400, people
know who the wealthy people are. And I do think that those people
who have the wealth are almost certainly gonna give it away anyway,
because there’s not many other things you can do with it. I don’t
think you can give that much of it to your
children.
The greatest impact of the
Giving Pledge will actually be outside the United States in time,
because other people still look to the United States as a leader,
as a moral leader in certain ways and as a leader in philanthropy.
I believe other parts of the world will see that what we’ve done
here has helped make the United States a better place and to make
the lives of people better.
The thing that’s most surprised
me is that people come up and thank you, dramatically. You build a
company, and you’ve made a lot of success in business–nobody ever
came up and said thank you for doing that. When you give away
money, people come up to you and say, “Well, it’s great. You’re a
patriot.”
And I say, “Well, no, a patriot
is somebody that went in the military, somebody who is a policeman,
a fireman, a teacher. Giving away money to help the federal
government is not necessarily a patriotic thing.” But people think
that you’re doing patriotic things. And it makes you feel good,
even though the truth is you’re not any more patriotic than anybody
else.
And I’ve been surprised at how
much attention some modest gifts get. You can give a relatively
modest amount to certain causes, and people get enormously excited
about it. Sometimes you can give away hundreds of millions of
dollars or billions of dollars, and you sometimes don’t get the
attention because people can’t grasp the enormity of what you’re
doing. In some cases you’re changing the face of Africa, but you
probably don’t get the same impact as if you gave a lesser sum to
some institution in the United States that everybody
knows.
STEVE CASE: David gave money to
the Smithsonian National Zoo to promote panda sex. That got a lot
of attention.
DAVID RUBENSTEIN: Panda
conservation!
STEVE CASE: I have a question
for Bill and Melinda. I think what Warren did, giving away such a
significant amount to the Gates Foundation, with essentially no
strings attached, no naming rights–he didn’t say, “Oh, rename it
the Gates & Buffett Foundation”–was really an unbelievable
charitable gift. I think it inspired everybody.
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One piece of it that I think got
some people concerned, and I understand why he did it, was ten
years after your death it all has to be given
away.
WARREN BUFFETT:
Yup.
STEVE CASE: How much of a burden
does that create–that amount of dollars being deployed that
quickly? Do you worry about that? Do you try to make sure to keep
him healthy?
BILL GATES: We tried to switch
him from Coke to Diet Coke, but that’s not
working.
WARREN BUFFETT: Diet Cherry
Coke.
BILL GATES: We’ve had so much
time to learn about various things, it won’t be a problem at all.
Those dollars will have just as much impact as the other things
we’ve given. But it’s fascinating. Our time frame is more like 20
or 30 years after we pass away. You’d call that a pretty small
different point of view. There are other people who believe in
perpetuity. And that’s perfectly fine. You know, there were some
historical foundations like Rockefeller that’s sort of perpetual.
And there are some that aren’t as well known that spent their
money. The more you think about it, having a finite limit makes
sense. Because you can really go after a particular thing and count
on the rich people of the future to understand better what problems
need to be addressed and exactly who should go after those
problems.
MELINDA GATES: Warren has
influenced us hugely in our giving. Originally, when we set our
will up, we said, “Okay, the foundation would live, you know, 50
years beyond the last of us.” We’ve recently moved that into 25
years.
Warren’s thinking about, “Don’t
leave it to your children.” That influenced us hugely. Take big
risks. As he says, “Swing for the fences. Don’t go for the easy
pitches.” I mean, that rings in your ears, particularly when you’re
going to do something that takes some guts, right? He’s just been
an unbelievable inspiration to us and continues to be in this
philanthropy.
FORBES: How do you maintain your
enthusiasm given the inevitable challenges and setbacks you
face?
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, if you
take five different items that might affect the lives of millions
of people, and one of ‘em’s going to succeed, and that’s more or
less your probability going in, you should not get discouraged at
all about the other four. With the bigger money, you should be
doing things that can change lots of lives. And you should be doing
things that have some real chance of failing. If they’re easy, let
somebody else do ‘em–or they’ve probably already been done. So
failure is not failure. If you’re Alex Rodriguez, and he bats .350,
you can say, “Well, he didn’t hit .650, but .350 is terrific.” It’s
the same way in philanthropy. You should not get discouraged about
the fact that one out of five, two out of five or maybe four out of
five don’t work out the way you want it. If one out of five does,
and you change millions of lives, you should feel very good about
what you’ve done.
STEVE CASE: Building the
businesses that led to the success that gives you the opportunity
to give back, there were struggles as well. There are very few
overnight successes. That persistence, that perseverance, I think,
is an important skill set in anything you do.
We also know the difference
between success and failure sometimes is inches. And just staying
with it and having that perseverance and not giving up, and being
fearless, is the difference between success and failure in anything
you do.
LEON BLACK: I would go a step
further. People are on The Forbes 400 because they are tenacious
problem solvers. They had challenges, they had goals, and none of
those goals were achieved easily. It took them years to get to
where they got to. And I would just say in the field of
philanthropy, it’s a broader canvas of a problem-solving challenge,
whether it has to do with fighting poverty or disease or improving
education. It’s almost as if so much of what came before is the
experience and the education for all of us to then be able to paint
on that broader canvas.
And the rewards with this other
canvas are so much more refreshing. Much of the world that I’ve
lived in the last 30 years is the world of Wall Street, of finance.
The goal has been to make money. And when you deal with teachers
and scientists, you’re dealing with so many brilliant young people,
where money is just foreign. It doesn’t matter. I find this
unbelievably refreshing to see this type of brainpower out there
and the dedication.
DAVID RUBENSTEIN: I tell
students all the time, “You have to ignore what your parents want
you to do. Because if you do just what your parents want you to do,
you’re gonna be miserable in life. Find something that you’re
passionate about that you want to do, because only if you find
something you really love will you be
successful.”
And the same is true in
philanthropy. If you find something that you’re doing because it’s
socially acceptable, you’re never really going to enjoy it. Just as
you experiment with many different jobs until you find something
you love, experiment with philanthropy. Find something you really
love, where you think that you’re making the difference and your
existence on the face of the earth is justified by your doing
something that’s really made the world a better place for some
other people.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2012/09/18/the-forbes-400-summit-bill-gates-warren-buffett-and-the-greatest-roundtable-of-all-time/
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