[spenczar5]

> This is still $150M of pure gravy every single year.

The issue is rate of return. They are evidently spending $4.85bn on Xbox per year. The US federal interest rate is 3.5% so if you just put that money in US bonds you would get about $175M per year of much purer simpler gravy.

[skeeter2020]

Russ: "Anyway, next thing you know, we IPO, stock triples in a day and AOL gobbles us up. All of a sudden, I'm 22 years young and I'm worth 1.2 billion. Now a couple decades later, I'm worth 1.4. You do the math."

Richard: "Okay. Well, that's a gain of $200 million over 20 years. Um, 16.66 repeating. That's less than 1% return. Inflation is, like, 1.7. I think CDs are 2%. So that's less than a CD."

[_carbyau_]

I know this is a TV show reference and a point about investment strategy but...

If I had 1.2 billion dollars I wouldn't care what investment strategy I had. I've got enough to spend $30k a day for 100 years. At any age, that'll do.

[bluGill]

In generally spending increases to cover income. 30k per day sounds like a lot, but it isn't hard to spend that once you get used to having that much to spend. Your mansion with the heated indoor pool is expensive to maintain. Plus you probably have a vacation mansion someplace. Then you see a nice yacht and think "why not" - more costs. You aren't flying coach to get to all those things - and one day you realize your bills are more than the 30k/day you have to spend and you are broke despite being objectively rich.

It sounds like a nice problem to have, but it appears to be very stressful from what I can tell. (I'd still like to have it, and like most I think that I personally wouldn't get that far over my head)

[_carbyau_]

You are correct that we really don't know how we'd act unless we were in that situation. And like you, I hope I'd be vaguely sensible.

Two things, stand out to me though.

1. how you frame it might help with how you spend it. Which is to say that when shopping for a mansion "I've got 1.2 billion" likely leads to a different outcome than "I have 30k per day. I'll have to save up for it."

2. once chasing money is not a major thing in your life, what do you do for meaning?

[tommit]

> but it appears to be very stressful from what I can tell.

sounds like there is a win-win in there somewhere. I wonder what that would look like.

for real though, what are we talking about here? 30k a day is not enough because ... habits? plus, it's incredibly hard to spend that much. that's exactly why, after a certain point, it's basically impossible to get rid of wealth.

[bluGill]

What does enough mean? That's why I didn't use that word. Beans and rice is enough, but I'm glad I can afford nicer food. I don't need as large a house as I have and yet my house is modest by modern standards, and I would like larger.

I'm not arguing your idea that there is a point where you no longer can find anything to spend money on. However that point is different for different wealthy people and I don't know and you don't likely don't know either where your limit is or my limit would be. It would not surprise me if I personally had the money and decided to buy a yacht and then later sold it when I realized that while it sounds good I wasn't actually using it. But I don't know. Maybe if I had the money to afford a nice yacht I would use it all the time. Similar for those mansions. Would I live in a mansion or would I buy one first test symbol and then realize I didn't actually care and downgrade? I know someone who has made a lot of money remodeling the mansions of rich people who have decided downsize. For them downsize includes a master bedroom that is bigger than my entire house. And there were other bedrooms in that mansion, but it is still a down size.

[tommit]

Well, maybe we need to decide as a society what exactly enough means. I'd argue that anything above 100m is excessive, especially while other people are literally starving. But sure, let's say anything up until the first billion.

I can't argue the point as well as educated economists can. I'd like to point you to Gabriel Zucman, for instance. What really got me in the end is this: he proposes a 2% wealth tax. It's not a number out of thin air, he actually reasons very well how he got there. You know how much the average billionaire wealth increased over the last years, annually? It's 6%. So it's not even suggesting "you need to have less". It's suggesting "you should accumulate more a little slower than before".

Also, sorry, I really can't emphasise with people who got so used to having a yacht that they cannot imagine life without one anymore. It's peak consumerism, individualism, capitalism. My take is that we need to rethink _some_ things.

[kridsdale1]

I liked your reference.

And if Russ is blowing $100M a year on lifestyle and still has those numbers then he’s winning at life.

[tommit]

> winning at life

What a take. Of a character that is, albeit incredibly entertaining to watch, not displayed in a good light at all.

Alternatively, he's everything that's wrong with the system. He's certainly not generating any value to society.

But yeah, in a purely individualistic take, he's certainly winning at life. While making everyone else's a bit worse.

[hx8]

Exactly. The inflation rate is about 3%, so the people at Xbox worked very hard all year to have about the same value they put into it.

[londons_explore]

All the people were paid a salary for the work they did. And there was still money leftover .

[azertify]

That is an ideal way of seeing this. As a for-profit company their priority is shareholder value, so the focus isn't "people paid and games were made", it's the money left-over, and even more importantly that the number must grow.

[evan_]

Only if you count the value of the games produced as $0

[senkora]

It's a question of "value created" vs "value captured". They captured about as much value as the risk-free rate of return.

Value that is created but not captured (e.g. the value of consumers enjoying games and consoles above and beyond the price that those consumers paid) is typically not considered when making business decisions.

[hx8]

Wouldn't a fair way to count the value be all of the money selling them produced minus all of the money you spent producing them?

[slg]

No, because the customers bought the games. That means the customers valued the games at some value higher than the purchase price. There's a ton of surplus value for society produced as part of this process that doesn't end up on a company's balance sheet.

[Kirby64]

So, even worse than 0, if we’re saying the value of games is not measurable but substantial?

[mvdtnz]

That's pretty accurate when you consider the unfiltered slop produced by studios like Bethesda, Blizzard, Activision, King and most other Microsoft XBox studios.

[delecti]

But the revenue is coming out of the same org. That $5bn revenue only exists because of the $4.85bn expense. That money doesn't exist to put into bonds unless it's coming out of the games org. They can only make their margin percent look better by making their absolute margin $150mm worse.

[gopher_space]

Another point of view is that your people are so good that their division turns a profit under mismanagement. It costs MS negative hundred mil to keep the whole thing spun up on a bad day.

[peyton]

You’re saying that they should take the money people pay to buy Xboxes and put it in T-bills instead of delivering Xboxes? What happens when people ask where the Xbox they ordered is?