From: xcruz@webtv.net (Robert Chavez)
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 16:02:38 -0600 (MDT)
To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu
Cc: xcruz@webtv.net
Subject: Letter from Nader to Bill Gates
Message-ID: <13713-35C23EFE-11@mailtod-122.bryant.webtv.net>
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Sender: list@rhizome.org                   From: cpr@beaver.slip.net
(Christiane) Date: Fri, Jul 31, 1998, 4:11pm (MDT+2) To: xcruz@webtv.net
Subject: RHIZOME_RAW: Message from heaven (forward) 
                                                              Hi, 
               I had to send this little thought
to you, the calculations from old friend Al Krebs and letter from Ralph
Nader.   J 
                                                                Subject:
NADER SENDS PUBLIC LETTER TO BILLIONAIRE BILL GATES 
                                                                FRIENDS
AND COLLEAGUES: 
Here is some food for thought. Bon Appetit!!!!! 
As I write this Bill Gates is currently worth $61.613 billion 
Microsoft's stock was up by $0.875 today. This means that Bill made
another $483,243,075.00 today. (That's $483.24 Million.) 
Since midnight (Eastern Time), 811 minutes have passed. Since that time,
Bill has made money at the 
rate of $595,860.75 per minute. That's $595.9 Thousand per minute! 
If Bill Gates was
a country he would rank between 37 & 38
a public corporation between 6 & 7
a bank between 7 & 8
a state between 8 & 9 
If you assigned yourself the task of spending all of Bill Gates fortune
over a 30-year span, 60 minutes an hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a
week you would have to spend it at the rate of $234,289.64. an hour. 
Habitat for Humanities estimates that to build a house for a family of
four costs $30,000 (labor volunteered) a piece.. With Bill Gates fortune
you could build housing for 9,242,023 people. With Bill Gates fortune
you you could afford a four year scholarship, room and tuition fully
paid for 533,062 students 
NADER SENDS PUBLIC LETTER TO BILLIONAIRE BILL GATES ABOUT WEALTH
DISPARITIES 
CHALLENGES GATES TO JOIN WITH WARREN BUFFETT TO LEAD A CONFERENCE OF
BILLIONAIRES AND MULTI- BILLIONAIRES ON THE SUBJECT OF NATIONAL AND
GLOBAL WEALTH DISPARITIES AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: RALPH NADER 202-387-8030 
----------------------------------------------- 
July 27, 1998 
Mr. William H. Gates
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Microsoft Corporation
1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052 
Dear Mr. Gates: 
An astonishing calculation comes from Professor Edward Wolff of New York 
University and presents an important opportunity for you. Professor
Wolff, a wealth economics specialist, estimated that your net wealth is
greater than the combined net worth of the poorest 40 percent of
Americans (106 million people). That includes their home equity,
pensions, mutual funds and 401(k) plans, but excludes their personal
cars. 
When Professor Wolff made his analysis, your net worth was only $40
billion. Now, according to the latest Forbes listing of billionaires,
your assets exceed $51 billion and that may be outdated, given the most
recent surge in Microsoft stock. So it is fair to assume that the mostly
secondhand cars of these 106 million Americans can now be included and
then some. 
All this wealth makes you the world's number one working rich person.
Apart from the more than medieval size gap between your wealth and
theirs, it is more than a little worrisome that tens of millions of
Americans have so little net property worth, some after a lifetime of
labor. As Jeff Gates, author of the new book - The Ownership Solution - 
says: "Capitalism is very good at creating capital but terrible at 
creating capitalists." 
The United States now has the sharpest wealth disparity of any western
nation. The wealth of the top one percent is greater than that of the
bottom ninety percent of Americans. As author Gates observes: "The
implications attending inaction are staggering fiscally, socially,
politically and even environmentally." If you knew the range of Gates'
experience in Washington and the business community, you would conclude
that his normative conclusion was not "a random thought." 
As might be expected, on a worldwide plane, wealth disparities are
staggering. According to the United Nations Development Program, the
assets of the world's 358 billionaires were greater than the combined
incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world's people (about 3
billion human beings)! 
All these chasms are widening against a background of modern and
accelerating technology, declining trade barriers, mobility of capital,
medical advances and presumably a greater awareness of what history's
most tragic mistakes, avarice, monopolies and cruelties can produce. 
As one illustration, last year, more people in the world died (nearly
six million) from Tuberculosis and Malaria than in any previous year.
The growth in gross global GNP and capability did not stop these
diseases of poverty from their mass destruction. Concentration of power
and wealth and the gross insensitivity of economic and political
leadership had a good deal to do with these preventable casualties. 
There is obviously a problem of distributive justice that has not been
given the attention it deserves by the leaders of global capitalism. I
saw a T-Shirt being distributed at a conference recently with the
message: "A Rising Tide Lifts All Yachts." A telling phrase for our
times. 
Warren Buffett, possibly the world's number two working rich person with 
assets exceeding $33 billion, is your dear friend and fellow card
player. Let me suggest that you team up with him to sponsor, plan and
lead a conference of billionaires and multi- billionaires on the subject 
of National and Global Wealth Disparities and What to Do About It. The
quantity, quality and distributional dimensions of economic output will
drive participants to come to grips with the fundamental purposes of
economic systems and their economic indicators. 
With the dual sweep of the Gates-Buffett hands, the serious and
consequential plight of humanity would become a matter of high alert for 
those business colleagues and acquaintances of yours who aspire to move
from success to significance. 
During our brief meeting earlier this year at the Time-Warner 75th
anniversary dinner in New York, you replied that you were open to
communication (by E-Mail, you smilingly suggested). I look forward to
your response. 
Sincerely, 
Ralph Nader
P.O. Box 19312
Washington, DC 20036 
Christiane Robbins 
Digital Media Studio
CAPITAL Pictures
San Francisco, CA 
TEL: 415.648.0369 
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