Bill Gates just retired

[lolpie]

"His salary last year was $901,667. That would come to about $433/hr based on a 40 hour work week. He probably works a lot more than that though and he has many other activities, particularly his charitable foundation (Gates Foundation) that keeps him busy.

But I’m guessing that is not what you were looking for. His primary source of wealth is his stock in Microsoft of which he holds 1.1 billion shares. That provided him with $175.6 million in dividends last year. The price of his stock rose $3.50 since the first of the year. His net gain then was:
Salary $ 901, 667
Dividends 175,000,000.
Stock gain 3,850,000,000
Total gain so far this year = $4,025,901,997 This assumes no other source of income or investments which is probably a bad assumption
To find out how that would translate if he earned that by the hour again divide by the typical 40 hour work week and assume he was paid for vacations and sick leave = 2080hrs/year = $1,935,529.81

But, if you want to calculate hourly income that way then you also need to consider that in the last 5 years Microsoft stock has dropped in value. It closed for example at $33.63 at the end of 2001. So as a practical matter, his "income" over the past 5 years has dropped by about 4 1/2 billion dollars in that time frame leaving him with a loss of about $432,700/hr for every single hour he could have worked during the past 5 years. He has also poured many billions into the Gates Foundation making it by far the biggest charitable foundation in the world and him the most charitable guy in the history of mankind. But that his probably made him feel richer, not poorer."

[zhongguohua88]

I thought this was interesting: http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql-Mtlx31e8

[Wolfy]

I once read (don't remember where) an article about the lifetime earnings of Michael Jordan (at the time, the most paid athlete ever): his entire life was something like one single hour of Bill Gates.