A Coveted Landing Strip for Google's Founders 427
An anonymous reader writes "The NYT reports, "In the annals of perks enjoyed by America's corporate executives, the founders of Google may have set a new standard: an uncrowded, federally managed runway for their private jet that is only a few minutes' drive from their offices. For $1.3 million a year, Larry Page and Sergey Brin get to park their customized wide-body Boeing 767-200, as well as two other jets used by top Google executives, on Moffett Field, an airport run by NASA that is generally closed to private aircraft."
Party airplane (Score:3, Interesting)
I worked at the base a few years ago and the runway wasn't being used most of the time, except by the 129th rescue wing of the Air National Guard and the occasional astronaut trainer jet. The base doesn't really have any residential neighbors but that noise would carry a long distance I assume.
If you work there and fly a private plane you can already fly to work (at least that's what I heard when I was there). But of course large commercial size jets is a different story entirely.
Re:Larry's had that for a while (Score:5, Interesting)
I know plenty of people who worked harder but got no where mostly due to things out of their control.
Re:not evil? how about global warming? (Score:2, Interesting)
worth 4 tenths of a cent per share? (Score:5, Interesting)
Google has 312 million shares outstanding. $1.3 million dollars per year, spread over 312 million shares, is only 4 tenths of a cent per share. As a shareholder, if you are worried about that, you have taken your eye off the ball.
Re:not evil? how about global warming? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Larry's had that for a while (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a lot of people who work hard - and the majority of 1st gen. billionaires are no exception. But reading Bill Gates history, I believe there was a definite element of luck there - right place at the right time - along with some cunning to get where they are at.
With the same skill set and drive, just with different luck, I could definitely see Gates as head of just another software company and be worth "only" $50-100 million.
I don't think he's the exception among the billionaires. I could see a lucky break at the difference between moderately sucessful multi-millionaire businessmen no one heard of and the ultra-rich - in fact it seem to be that the once in the lifetime jackpot is what propels them to ridiculous wealth.
The one exception to this I think would be Steve Jobs - that guy could probably make fortunes several times over starting from scratch.
Re:Money! Money! Money! (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, historically speaking, English monarchs typically weren't all that rich, or at least didn't have much in the way of what we would call disposable income. Everything they needed to pay for came out of the royal treasury - that included paying for things like ships and armies, as well as their own personal expenses.
The state of Pennsylvania exists because Charles II needed to pay back a large debt owed to William Penn's father (Admiral Penn) - the only way he could pay for it was by forking over a huge amount of land. He'd never be able to raise the money to pay it back.
Elizabeth II, on the other hand, is loaded. Mostly because of the amount of land she privately holds (as opposed to holds by right of being the crown).
Re:Larry's had that for a while (Score:3, Interesting)
Lots of people dream that dream, but know it's just that, a dream. The chances of attaining that are insane. And living your life out striving to attain that...well, lets just say you're in for a lot of disappointment.
Besides, for a lot of people anymore, that's not the dream they want to attain. There are other worthy dreams that don't center around becoming one of the richest people on the block.
Re:Larry's had that for a while (Score:3, Interesting)
That's part of why I've come to the conclusion that a land tax would be the best tax of all. Basically, you can't avoid it because a) you can't hide land, and b) any "accountant trickery" would be publicly visible (hey -- why is Globocorp's HQ appraised at $0? Then I'll buy it!). It also means you don't have to monitor each and every (easily concealable) economic transaction for tax purposes.
Of course, people like making corporations work through hundreds of thousands of pages of tax law instead...
Re:Larry's had that for a while (Score:3, Interesting)
I think Google's done a great job, but this is entirely the wrong impression. Search engines were not only obvious, they were old hat, the battles already fought and decided, when Google appeared on the scene. And Google has never, by any standard measure, been the best search engine, except for being fast. And it's not the best now, in fact it's worse than when it started.
Google's "breakthrough" was being fast through distributed search, which is something that all the search engines were working on for some time. Google won this by being latecomers to the search game, that is, not having any customers to lose by risking a different back-end architecture; and by being fortunate that the big Internet portals at the time made poor decisions (Yahoo thought directories were better and never committed to search, Excite was consumed by the monumentally misguided @Home). There's no sense in which their founders were smarter or worked harder than the founders of any other technology company at the time.
Now, lots of those founders are or were doing "just fine"--a lot better than me. Hard, smart work definitely counts for something. But the difference between "quite successful" and "super-rich" is luck, not hard work. The google founders weren't smarter or harder-working than a hundred other people. I know a very successful and famous Internet celebrity and multimillionaire, who, quite frankly, isn't smarter than anybody.
Re:Larry's had that for a while (Score:5, Interesting)
You know I hear people complaining about this crap in Fortune 500 corporations and it sounds fine and dandy. It isn't until you look at the little guy that you realize why there are so many republicans fighting for these tax breaks.
I am a small business owner. I am incorporated because if anything were to ever go wrong it would basically end me financially ever after if I were not. Every dime I make gets taxed twice. The corporation is taxed, and then I am taxed. You bet I do everything legally possible to avoid taxation because I am paying double taxes! Forget private jets, those tax breaks impact my grocery budget.
This problem doesn't change in a bigger company, just the number of people involved in the scale. All of the profits are paid to employees or shareholders. The employees are taxed and the shareholders are taxed, in many cases the shareholders also invested after-tax money.
The solution is simple, abolish corporate taxes altogether since their profits are either reinvested or paid out to others who have to report them as income. Furthermore the payouts to shareholders should be taxed as income because for your average corporation the one or three shareholders are the owners.
I also think all car expenses, utilities, rent, phone, internet, and food should be deductions on personal income tax.