has anyone ever interacted with an actual billionaire?

I have! Last year, Mr. Bezos and Mr. Nadella were over for dinner, and I also got to meet Mr. Wilbur-Ross a few times. Impressive people.

A classic "Bill Gates is frugal" story:

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19920227&slug=1478100

Yes. In my case I saw things that seem incomprehensible to the average person. You want a new car?. Just go buy it now. You want to meet one of the most famous person in the world? Let's go over to their place now. Want to go to Singapore right now? I'll call for the plane. Really.

sbeefyk2 wrote:

Intimidated? You're a beta male then. No man should ever be intimidated by another man. You should have the confidence and competence to go toe to toe with the billionaire in your work endeavors. If he has advice on outreach then take his advice and do what he says. You don't get to be a billionaire without being a master salesman. Just look at Trump. He’s as smart as a box of rocks but he’s the greatest marketer and salesperson in the world so he sold himself and got the top job.

I really don't understand why people repeat the fallacy that Trump is dumb. If Trump and Obama both took an IQ test, does anyone really believe that Trump would score worse than Obama? I would be shocked if Obama scored within 200 points of what Trump got on the SAT. Trump may be a blowhard, but he isn't dumb

if you can't tell that Obama is smarter than Trump , it's probably because your scores are sufficiently below theirs so that you can't perceive the difference.

derp wrote:

SteveA555 wrote:

I really don't understand why people repeat the fallacy that Trump is dumb. If Trump and Obama both took an IQ test, does anyone really believe that Trump would score worse than Obama? I would be shocked if Obama scored within 200 points of what Trump got on the SAT. Trump may be a blowhard, but he isn't dumb

if you can't tell that Obama is smarter than Trump , it's probably because your scores are sufficiently below theirs so that you can't perceive the difference.

Nice try, but I have a well-known award which is only given to people who achieve a high SAT score. Obama and Trump would definitely have mentioned if they had received the same award.

Look at the difference in results between Obama and Trump, as there's practically no comparison. Between his pathetic foreign and domestic policies, Obama was a complete failure. Obama's signature legislation was Obamacare, which dramatically raised healthcare premiums while reducing choice and adding an extra layer of regulations which hampered economic growth for most of his terms in office. Coupled with Obama's lies that Obamacare would greatly reduce costs for the typical family and that nobody would lose their healthcare coverage/doctors, Obamacare has been a disaster. Trump's signature legislation (so far) has been his tax cuts which have greatly spurred economic growth. Trump is doing his best to undo the damage Obama's administration caused.

does any of that have anything to do with their relative intelligence?

Trump struggles to string together a sentence and demonstrates a very limited vocabulary.

i'm not sure you should be so proud of your Darwin Award.

I went to school with some billionaire's kids. One of them is a billionaire now. Then all he did was smoke dope.

I had an unexpected conference call with the CEO of a huge company once. He is worth 1.8 bil. I was handling a lawsuit for one of the company's subsidiary and the CEO got wind of it. Everyone beneath him had been telling me that they just wanted to cut their losses and settle even though the defendants had engaged in some pretty slimey stuff. I explained to the CEO the pitfalls of litigation and our strengths and weaknesses. He then asked me "what would you do if something happened to your wife?" I took that as the cue to tell him about how we would got to the FBI and take the case to trial without ever settling. He told me that was how we were going to handle the lawsuit and thanked me. After the call ended, the general counsel called me and told me that we were still just going to settle quick and leave law enforcement out of it. He just needed me to tell the CEO that we were going to the mattresses so they could talk him out of it. They ultimately did and the company ended up doing business with the bad guys going forward.

Billionaire CEOs are kept in very strange bubbles where they only interact with certain people at their company and in the public (usually at exclusive country clubs, etc.). They end up being "managed" by all the other execs and it is often an open question to what extent they really do anything once they get to the top.

I know a guy that started a company with a couple of other guys and recently sold it off for 1.3billion dollars. The guy is still a nice and down to earth guy. He is fairly young (late 40's) and is now just working for fun and trying to figure out a way to use his money to help people. A good guy.

I had lunch with the CEO of my company before, hes an older guy, self made, probably worth 2 bil or so, maybe more. After about 20 minutes, we ran out of stuff to talk about. He was a nice enough guy, but it was fairly awkward. There's just not a lot of overlap between a 75+ year old billionaire who makes more in 4 hours than I did all year.

Warren B. was over one Saturday afternoon for a visit, and his truck was blocking my Mustang. I took his truck get a carry-out pizza.

This was a few decades ago, I'm not sure he was a billionaire then, but still.

Holy crap. It's hard to believe a real life person could be this delusional.

Interesting thread. The super rich people I have met seem to have a belief that they will always win. Seems to be true of masters in every field...

If you were 65 years old, significantly overweight with heart problems and a ton of money, you wouldn’t trade your financial fortune to be 30, healthy and fit? I would... I’d take being young and healthy over old and rich any time.