福布斯杂志：盖茨蝉联2012首富 巴菲特位居第二
2012-09-24 11:31阅读：
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 |19,092
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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 iss
ue 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/
