Think Bill Gates Is Rich Now? Here's How He Could Become a Trillionaire

Just how rich can Bill Gates get?

According to a new analysis by CNBC using data from Oxfam, the Microsoft founder could become America's first-ever trillionaire.

That's 12 zeroes.

Gates, 61, is currently worth more than $84 billion, according to Forbes. Since 2009, the average net worth of ultra-rich individuals has grown at 11 percent per year since 2009, according to Oxfam.

If this rate stays constant, by age 86, Gates will have surpassed the $1,000,000,000,000 mark.

In the current environment, Oxfam says, "If you are already rich, you have to try hard not to keep getting a lot richer."

Here's the age at which the other top 5 world billionaires could become trillionaires at Oxfam's 11% average rate.

• Warren Buffett: 111 (current net worth $73 billion, current age 86)
• Jeff Bezos: 78 (current net worth $72 billion, current age 53)
• Amancio Ortega: 105 (current net worth $72 billion, current age 80)
• Mark Zuckerberg: 59 (current net worth $56 billion, current age 32)

Of course, Bill Gates wouldn't be the world's first-ever trillionaire, as historians have estimated various historical figures to have amassed holdings worth well in excess of 12 figures. And no one really knows how much Vladimir Putin is worth, but there are hints he could beat Gates to the mark.

Still, it would be a good list to join.

MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN!

Donald J. Trump 

✔@realDonaldTrump

Only 109 people out of 325,000 were detained and held for questioning. Big problems at airports were caused by Delta computer outage,.....

5:46 PM - 30 Jan 2017

 
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Donald J. Trump 

✔@realDonaldTrump

protesters and the tears of Senator Schumer. Secretary Kelly said that all is going well with very few problems. MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN!

5:50 PM - 30 Jan 2017

 
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Donald J. Trump 

✔@realDonaldTrump

There is nothing nice about searching for terrorists before they can enter our country. This was a big part of my campaign. Study the world!

5:57 PM - 30 Jan 2017

 
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Donald J. Trump 

✔@realDonaldTrump

If the ban were announced with a one week notice, the "bad" would rush into our country during that week. A lot of bad "dudes" out there!

7:01 PM - 30 Jan 2017

 
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The implementation of Trump’s order has not, in fact, been going well. Confusion remains on the extent to which Customs and Border Patrol agents are violating court orders against Trump’s ban—agents who had to make up rules on how to handle immigrants flying into the country on their own absent guidance from the administration throughout the weekend. There have been reports, for instance, that green card holders legally allowed permanent residence in the United States—initially subject to Trump’s ban before a hasty reversal—have been asked by border agents to submit their social media accounts to inspection and even to surrender their green cards. On Sunday, Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick reported on the case of Tareq Aqel Mohammed Aziz and Ammar Aqel Mohammed Aziz, two Yemeni brothers with green cards who flew in to Washington’s Dulles airport on Saturday:

The Aziz brothers’ story is particularly stunning because, says [attorney Simon] Sandoval-Moshenberg, not only were they handcuffed while they were detained by CBP at Dulles, and not only were they turned away and sent to Ethiopia, but they were also made to sign a form, known as the I-407. In doing so, they surrendered their green cards, under the threat of being barred from the U.S. for the next five years if they did not. Sandoval-Moshenberg tells me he couldn’t quite believe the two young men “were straight-up bullied into having their green cards taken away.” They were at no point given copies of any of the documents they had signed.

On Sunday, CNN reported that Trump advisers Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon were directly responsible for the plight of the Aziz brothers and all the other green card holders detained, delayed, and confronted over the weekend:

Friday night, DHS arrived at the legal interpretation that the executive order restrictions applying to seven countries—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen—did not apply to people with lawful permanent residence, generally referred to as green card holders.

The White House overruled that guidance overnight, according to officials familiar with the rollout. That order came from the President's inner circle, led by Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon. Their decision held that, on a case by case basis, DHS could allow green card holders to enter the US.

It has been widely reported that federal officials, up to and including new Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, have been kept in the dark about the details of the order and its implementation from the outset. Sources told CNN, for instance, that the order was drafted without standard review and guidance from the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the National Security Council. A growing number of Republicans are becoming critical of the order—on Sunday, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker and Sen. Lamar Alexander seconded earlier criticism from Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain and the Koch brothers’ political organization issued a statement calling Trump’s ban “the wrong approach.”

On Sunday, Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern concurred with the federal judges who have, by their orders, questioned the constitutionality of Trump’s ban.

The Establishment Clause forbids the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” As the Supreme Court explained in 1982’s Larson v. Valente, “the clearest command of the Establishment Clause is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another.” This constitutional requirement, the court noted, is “inextricably connected with the continuing vitality of the Free Exercise Clause,” guaranteeing religious liberty for all by barring “favoritism among sects.” The court has also declared that the government may not “aid or oppose any religion. This prohibition is absolute.”

Trump’s executive order officially prefers Christians and Christianity and disfavors Muslims and Islam. The order is sloppy and at times indecipherable—it was apparently signed without any input or review by the executive agencies it affects—but whoever wrote it was smart enough to attempt to dress up its animus in pretext. That pretense, however, does nothing to obscure its discriminatory intent and effect.

Protests against the order are expected to continue. On Monday evening, congressional Democrats including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will lead a vigil outside the Supreme Court.

Muslim Ban Trump's Strongest Statement

Today in Conservative Media: Mocking the Backlash to the Muslim Ban

Protesters rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Saturday in New York City.

Conservative media continued their aggressive defense of President Donald Trump’s executive order banning citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. The move caused global chaos, sparked protests in dozens of U.S. airports, and prompted a series of judicial actions to block parts of the order.

The right-wing website the Blaze mocked backlash to the order writing, “You have to be suicidal, an idiot, or a liar to act like Trump has committed some kind of atrocity simply because he wants to ensure that we’re being extremely careful when we open our doors to people from nests of global jihadism.” The site also argued against the idea that the ban may inspire some foreign radicals to act, writing, “If Islam isn’t to blame for terrorism, why are you so worried about turning Muslims into terrorists?”

Breitbart seized on the same concern, calling Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer a “fear monger” for asserting that Trump’s order would “encourage lone wolves in America.” Meanwhile, another Breitbart post titled “Islamic State Supporters React Angrily to Trump’s Temporary Refugee Halt,” contained “exclusive” messages from alleged ISIS terrorists, which it claimed to have obtained from the Telegram app. One such alleged terrorist sympathizer said:

The madman Trump is still ignorant of politics, science and culture. That Islam-hating Crusader prevents Muslims from entering America. That failed Nazi thinks that this will stop the mujahedeen from striking his country. Doesn’t he understand that his country will implode? When that happens, he’ll panic and backpedal on his Islam-hating policies.

According to Breitbart, the message writer “offered no explanation as to how the U.S. will purportedly implode from implementing stricter security screening procedures aimed at keeping terrorists out of the country.”

In responding to American outrage over the order, Sean Hannity and Breitbartcited a poll saying 57 percent of U.S. voters favored a temporary ban on refugees from some countries. The posts then note that the survey was conducted prior to Trump’s order.

In a piece headlined “Trump’s Order on Refugees: Mostly Right on Substance, Wrong on Rollout,”  National Review’s editorial board defended the core of the action while scolding the “amateurism” of its implementation.

Several sites also continued to repeat Trump’s explanation for the ban. Trump said Obama had done the same thing in 2011, a claim that was debunked by the Washington Post fact checker as mostly false.

The C Student in Chief

Donald Trump and his administration are lazy, sloppy, and lack imagination.

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump, along with Vice President Mike Pence and Karen Pence, clap before cutting the infamous copy-cat cake during the inaugural ball at the National Building Museum on Jan. 20 in Washington.

Back in 2009, web designer Matthew Ipcar, who’d created change.gov for the Obama campaign, led a small team tasked with relaunching the White House website. “We started from scratch,” he recalled. After drafting a 40-page memo articulating their vision, goals, and themes, Ipcar and his crew overhauled navigation, optimized typefaces, added image galleries, rewrote the presidential biographies, and introduced a “share your thoughts” section that encouraged users to interact with executive staff. “In the end,” Ipcar said, “we built something different from any previous head of state’s online presence. We were really proud.” (Disclosure: Ipcar is married to Slate columnist Michelle Goldberg.)

A Reminder That Good Things Still Exist: Beyoncé Is Pregnant With Twins

In one oft-told parable about Jesus, a man looks over the course of his own life, represented by sets of footprints in the sand. Jesus walked beside him for most of his life, so there were two sets of prints. But during the tough times, there were only one.

“Where were you when I needed you most?” the man implores the son of God. “Why did I have to walk alone?”

“My darling child,” Jesus says, “It was then that I carried you.”

Such was the statement made by Beyoncé on her Instagram account Wednesday afternoon, when she announced that she and Jay Z are expecting twins.

America has been stumbling through a constitutional crisis and one of the most dispiriting weeks in recent history. The president of the United States is opening his arms to white nationalists and erasing the history of the Holocaust. The top officers of the federal government know nothing about the very agencies they lead. America’s most marginalized and vulnerable residents are coming under attack, and it’s only week two.

But Beyoncé wants us to know: Through our troubles and fear, while our minds have been occupied elsewhere, she’s been carrying us (and two Knowles-Carter fetuses) the whole time.

The knowledge that Beyoncé—perhaps the most influential artist of our generation and one of the world’s best-known advocates for racial and gender justice—is procreating is a bit of much-needed solace at a time when many Americans are floundering in doubt about the fate of humanity. Democratic ideals may come and go, but two babies raised by the woman who gave us “boy, bye” will better humanity for generations to come.

The sad truth is that based on the timing of Beyoncé’s announcement and how much she’s showing in the très campy photo, the forthcoming twins might have been conceived with an alternative president—and very different world prospects—in mind. Days before the election, Beyoncé and Jay Z held a hopeful, happy rally for Hillary Clinton. The twins could have already been germinating. Beyoncé might not have known.

Still, the expectation of dual Bey-bies on the way offers a faint glimmer of a memory of the way things used to be: a feminist of color dominating the news instead of a racist sexual predator; an imagined future populated by children idolizing Amandla Stenberg instead of Ivanka Trump; a world run by empathetic girls instead of Islamophobic nihilists. The promise of new life coming to an admirable family is a reason to hope that all might not be lost.

In August, I went camping with friends in rural Virginia. To our horror, a man with swastika and Iron Eagle tattoos showed up at the campground with his family. They parked their RV in the site next to our tents and played hate music from their vehicle through the night. We had only a tiny iPhone speaker, but we found comfort in blasting the one album any of us could access on our phones: Lemonade. It felt like a kind of triumphant patronus charm that would keep the Nazis away. Today’s Beyoncé announcement feels the same. It’s a joyous occasion for the Knowles-Carter family, of course, but for the rest of us, it’s a chance to rally around a beloved icon of so many things the Trump administration hates and tries to invalidate. In an unfamiliar world, the flowers still bloom, and the gospel of Beyoncé still sings.

Of Course It’s a Muslim Ban in USA

A mountain of evidence proves Trump signed his executive order to target Islam.

On Monday night, Donald Trump fired Acting Attorney General Sally Yates for refusing to enforce his executive order on immigration. The order, issued Friday night, temporarily bars the entry of anyone from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Trump and his supporters insist that the order is valid and that the Justice Department must enforce it, because its text doesn’t explicitly target a particular faith. Yates disagrees. She says the order is religious discrimination because the intent behind it, manifest in statements by Trump and his aides, is to exclude Muslims.

None of the Countries on Trump’s Muslim Ban List Are Able to Fight Back

Iraq will not be retaliating against the U.S. travel ban on its citizens, says Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. The country’s Parliament had adopted a reciprocal measure to ban U.S. citizens from entering the country, but the Abadi says he will not act on it, given his need for U.S. support in the war against ISIS. “We are studying possible decisions, but we are in a battle and we don't want to harm the national interest,”.