Bill Gates could buy EVERY HOME in Boston, MA and still have a $1,000,000,000 left. Guess the race
 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/ima...91094-3256.jpg

Interesting read: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/p...ome-in-boston/

White people crazy

And if he rented them all out he'd end up with more money than he started if he didn't die too soon.

Imagine trying to collect on all that fucking rent.... especially from... guess the race?...

pretty fly for a white guy

Boston wouldn't be useful to him.

However, he COULD buy every residence in Rhode Island and Montana (for even less money).

That would give him 4 of the 100 Senate votes on every issue and 7 electoral college votes in every presidential election. Add in a couple more billionaires and they could easily OWN 10% the vote in a country that frequently has elections decided by less than a 3% margin. Layer that on top of lobbying and the general public would have exactly ZERO say in any meaningful national issue.

These charts and lists like to comment on how much money XYZ has, yet rarely mention that it's not liquid. It's extremely unlikely that Bill Gates has the liquid assets to buy Boston, and if he did wish to liquidate his assets so that he could do such a thing, the asset selloff would have such an impact on his worth that it would jeopardize his ability to follow through with the purchase.

Exactly. :thumbsup

Cool, you buy a house and you assume right to vote for the previous owners :thumbsup

No dumbass.

You buy every house and the only residents are the people who you install in them. Rhode island or Montana with 1 resident or 100 residents or 10M residents has the exact same number of senators. It's one of the major flaws with the way American Democracy is built. :2 cents:

Gotcha. So on top of him buying all houses he must make all the people who sold those houses leave the sate. And keep houses empty or install state aliens in them instructed to vote his way. :winkwink:

Unfortunately there are people who do not understand that. It would not surprise me that one or few of them were GFY posters :1orglaugh

you do know its by voter and not by who owns the voter's house?

You do know you can't register to vote in a district if by using someone else's address without their consent.... and you can't be a resident without having a place to live. The point the article makes is that there are people who are wealthy enough to make entire cities "private property"... the fact is there are people who could make entire states private property.... and most State Constitutions are not equipped to handle it.

As another mind-fuck, ask yourself what would happen if Bill Gates decided to go gamble at a Casino...? Let's say he gambled a few billion dollars and won... he would keep the money. Now let's assume he gambled a few billion dollars and lost. Nothing prevents him from buying the casino itself to recoup that loss. Now apply the same reasoning to the stock market and industry regulations. Make bets and then buy out the other side of any that don't perform well enough. Think that sounds ridiculous? It's already being done by Berkshire Hathaway, BP and many others.

The legal framework established to manage our democracy and our economy presupposed that no one "person" would have enough wealth to do these sorts of things. That framework is broken and the "people" (which now includes corporations) who benefit from it being broken are the same people dictating how it will evolve in the future. :2 cents:

Not really. Lets say casino is valued at $X.
Gates comes in and loses $1.000.000.000.
Value of casino just went up to $X+$1.000.000.000

So he would pay extra of what he lost in order to "recoup" it.

Someone with $50,000,000,000 in assets has almost $50,000,000,000 in credit, possibly more.

you are correct, Relentless' hypothetical was wrong. if Bill Gates loses 3 billion to some investment bank in a shady deal, IF he decides to buy that investment bank, he's going to have to pay 3 billion more than he would have if he hadn't lost 3 billion to the bank.

Bill Gates net worth is 78.4 billion dollars.

The U.S. Govt. spends 10.46 billion dollars per DAY.

So Gate's money wouldn't even feed the federal beast for a full 8 days.

Think about that the next time you hear politicians wanting to continue to "grow" govt. :1orglaugh

:thumbsup most people just don't get that. Just look at the comments on that article hating on Gates... they are oblivious to the actual spending gov't does. An article on which cities govt's could buy EVERY DAY would be far more useful.

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Speaking of comments, best one was this gem "But how could he live in all those houses? He should just buy 1 or 2 big houses instead. Where will all the people of Boston go?"

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh