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I dined once with a billionaire and a couple of multimillionaires. The billionaire owned a jet. The multimillionaires were envious of him because they only owne

I dined once with a billionaire and a couple of multimillionaires. The billionaire owned a jet. The multimillionaires were envious of him because they only owned jet timeshares. (If you own your own jet, it's always where you want it, you can decorate it the way you want, and you can leave your stuff in its bedroom and living room. It's like having a pied-à-terre in a city instead of renting a hotel room each time you visit.) The operating cost of a jet that's actually ready at your beck and call also includes its crew. That's maybe another $200k/year, or 4% annual interest on $5M principal, so add another ~$5M to the wealth required in order not to go broke this way. (Disclaimer: I unfortunately have neither the practical experience nor finance knowledge to know if I've used the right fully burdened labor costs and multiplier, but it's going to be in that ballpark.)

hexadecimated 9y ago
Such hideously wasteful extravagance, and how sad that these people who are already absurdly rich are still greedy for more.
- T2_t2 9y ago
  Not really. Buffett bought a jet, after calling it indefensible for years, and actually named it The Indefensible. I reckon it is a good investment for many CEOs. There time is worth FAR MORE to their companies than whatever a jet costs to run, the saved time is invaluable as is the clarity that comes with better conditions when flying.
  - dwaltrip 9y ago
    How much time does owning a jet actually save?
    - bilbobagends 9y ago
      Door to door from NYC to NC is about 4hrs best case commercial and 2hrs private (Teterboro). Longer distance saves less as a percentage.
    - karthikb 9y ago
      It's not just door to door time, but schedule flexibility. Not every route has a direct flight, multiple flights per day, etc. Many people schedule meetings to end right before they have to leave for the airport and catch the last flight back home for another important meeting the next day. Would prefer that someone making decisions impacting the livelihoods of thousands of people each day is focused on the issue at hand, not catching the next flight.
      - sjg007 9y ago
        Because video conferencing is so 1990s
        sokoloff 9y ago
        I am a [piston-engine] pilot (only use mine for business a few times/year; most is personal/family travel). However, I spend a lot of time with other entrepreneur pilots and many believe that their airplane is instrumental in their business. Being able to show up, in-person, walk around, shake hands, interview the customer, look them in the eye, walk their factory floor or otherwise see things first hand and then still make it home to put the kids in bed is far more impression setting than dialing into a video call. What little I've used mine for business, being able to be out and back the same day, direct, makes it more likely that I'll bother to show up (vs call or visit annually). Video conferences are better than phone calls, but a poor substitute for an in-person visit.
        bartread 9y ago
        Because video conferencing, at least the kind that most of us can afford without specialist equipment, is still annoyingly unreliable in 2017. Not saying every meeting has technical issues, or even most of them, but some do and finding a technology that everyone who needs to be in the meeting can use given different corporate standards is a PITA. It's still also no substitute for meeting face to face over the long term.
  - bilbobagends 9y ago
    He changed the name to the Indispensable.
  - eschutte2 9y ago
    A major advantage to buying a jet is depreciation.
  - CalChris 9y ago
    Buffett, yes. But I remember talking to a group secretary who'd been an executive secretary in the Dot Com heyday. She flew to Paris on the Concorde for bi-weekly meetings. Cuz it was important.
- zdragnar 9y ago
  Buying a jet creates high paying, skilled jobs which support families, their children's education, and so forth. The downstream effect from the purchase includes the pilot, the airport expenses, maintenance crew, and the taxes on the expenses and all of those salaries. Not a cent of the money is in any way wasted. I'm reminded of the Maryland luxury tax, which allegedly crippled their boat building industry and put a lot of middle class people out of their jobs. I say allegedly because I remember the story, not the source that confirmed that there weren't other coinciding factors.
  - Retric 9y ago
    May I suggest you read this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window Fuel and depreciation is simply wealth being destroyed.
    - mlevental 9y ago
      umm that is literally the opposite of broken window fallacy
      - perl4ever 9y ago
        It certainly seems like an example of the broken window fallacy to me. Invoking the creation of jobs to refute the claim of wasting labor is the same illogical argument. It's just redefining bad as good and pretending it is an argument. Jobs are not a scarce resource. Labor is a scarce resource. Capital is a scarce resource. Instead of making cake for the rich, a baker may instead make bread for the poor.
        brbsix 9y ago
        Making cake for the rich isn't an example of the broken window fallacy either, and I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. Cash for clunkers is an example of the fallacy, operating a vehicle (be it a car or jet) for work/pleasure is not.
    - 9y ago
- adventured 9y ago
  > Such hideously wasteful extravagance You're moralizing the issue, which points to the fact that most of what you said is nothing more than a personal subjective judgement. For someone with that wealth, it's not usually going to be a wasteful extravagance at all. Billionaires are like large corporations unto themselves. Their business interests are of the scale of small companies in the S&P 500. Take Patterson Companies, an S&P 500 company, among the smallest with a $3.4 billion market cap. $3.4 billion in wealth isn't enough to get you onto the Bloomberg global richest 500 list. By contrast, Henry Kravis of KKR fame, is worth $5.x billion (merely #345 on the billionaire list). It makes perfect sense for someone with his large business interests to utilize a personal jet for optimization of time. It's about as wasteful as an average person in the developed world owning a car. Oh those average people in the developed world, living that luxurious extravagant life in which they own a car (or a home, gasp!).
  - hexadecimated 9y ago
    > most of what you said is nothing more than a personal subjective judgement Indeed it was, I was offering my own considered opinion, not some absolute universal truth. No surprise such opinions don't go down favourably on HN though. Amidst all the interesting technical and scientific discussion, there are disappointing overtones of wealth worship, and a weird cult-like following of billionaire entrepreneurs.
jonnathanson 9y ago
My experience tells me you're lowballing the crew salaries; your pilot alone draws at least $200k. You probably don't pay for the rest of the crew, but you do pay monthly fees for storage, private airstrip clearances, and ad hoc (big) costs each time you fuel it up, 'rent' an attendant, and cater the flight.
- AdrianB1 9y ago
  A commercial pilot at a regional airline makes less than $50,000 a year, many are closer to $30,000. When you get hired by a big airliner (over 1500 hours of flight time) and eventually you get to captain (not co-pilot) then you increase substantially, but nowhere close to $20,000, unless you fly a drug lord in strange places.
  - nugget 9y ago
    I have friends who are pilots at the majors who clear $300,000+ a year. Pay has risen substantially since the round of bankruptcies cleared legacy debts. FedEx and UPS apparently pay the most - although I'm not sure why.
    - SeanBoocock 9y ago
      This is correct (have family in the industry). Pay for pilots at major domestic airlines is based primarily on seniority and equipment you fly. Captains at the end of their careers flying the larger planes - 747, 777, 787, A350 - are easily clearing $300,000 with great benefits.
    - pmorici 9y ago
      Flying cargo is more dangerous than flying people? There is stuff that is banned from being transported in a passenger plane that can be flown in a cargo plane.
      - jonnathanson 9y ago
        I'd also imagine you are logging a lot more hours, facing more intense time pressures, and possibly flying some really irregular or odd-hours routes when you're flying cargo.

hexadecimated 9y ago

Such hideously wasteful extravagance, and how sad that these people who are already absurdly rich are still greedy for more.

T2_t2 9y ago
Not really. Buffett bought a jet, after calling it indefensible for years, and actually named it The Indefensible. I reckon it is a good investment for many CEOs. There time is worth FAR MORE to their companies than whatever a jet costs to run, the saved time is invaluable as is the clarity that comes with better conditions when flying.
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  How much time does owning a jet actually save?
  - bilbobagends 9y ago
    Door to door from NYC to NC is about 4hrs best case commercial and 2hrs private (Teterboro). Longer distance saves less as a percentage.
  - karthikb 9y ago
    It's not just door to door time, but schedule flexibility. Not every route has a direct flight, multiple flights per day, etc. Many people schedule meetings to end right before they have to leave for the airport and catch the last flight back home for another important meeting the next day. Would prefer that someone making decisions impacting the livelihoods of thousands of people each day is focused on the issue at hand, not catching the next flight.
    - sjg007 9y ago
      Because video conferencing is so 1990s
      - sokoloff 9y ago
        I am a [piston-engine] pilot (only use mine for business a few times/year; most is personal/family travel). However, I spend a lot of time with other entrepreneur pilots and many believe that their airplane is instrumental in their business. Being able to show up, in-person, walk around, shake hands, interview the customer, look them in the eye, walk their factory floor or otherwise see things first hand and then still make it home to put the kids in bed is far more impression setting than dialing into a video call. What little I've used mine for business, being able to be out and back the same day, direct, makes it more likely that I'll bother to show up (vs call or visit annually). Video conferences are better than phone calls, but a poor substitute for an in-person visit.
      - bartread 9y ago
        Because video conferencing, at least the kind that most of us can afford without specialist equipment, is still annoyingly unreliable in 2017. Not saying every meeting has technical issues, or even most of them, but some do and finding a technology that everyone who needs to be in the meeting can use given different corporate standards is a PITA. It's still also no substitute for meeting face to face over the long term.
- bilbobagends 9y ago
  He changed the name to the Indispensable.
- eschutte2 9y ago
  A major advantage to buying a jet is depreciation.
- CalChris 9y ago
  Buffett, yes. But I remember talking to a group secretary who'd been an executive secretary in the Dot Com heyday. She flew to Paris on the Concorde for bi-weekly meetings. Cuz it was important.
zdragnar 9y ago
Buying a jet creates high paying, skilled jobs which support families, their children's education, and so forth. The downstream effect from the purchase includes the pilot, the airport expenses, maintenance crew, and the taxes on the expenses and all of those salaries. Not a cent of the money is in any way wasted. I'm reminded of the Maryland luxury tax, which allegedly crippled their boat building industry and put a lot of middle class people out of their jobs. I say allegedly because I remember the story, not the source that confirmed that there weren't other coinciding factors.
- Retric 9y ago
  May I suggest you read this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window Fuel and depreciation is simply wealth being destroyed.
  - mlevental 9y ago
    umm that is literally the opposite of broken window fallacy
    - perl4ever 9y ago
      It certainly seems like an example of the broken window fallacy to me. Invoking the creation of jobs to refute the claim of wasting labor is the same illogical argument. It's just redefining bad as good and pretending it is an argument. Jobs are not a scarce resource. Labor is a scarce resource. Capital is a scarce resource. Instead of making cake for the rich, a baker may instead make bread for the poor.
      - brbsix 9y ago
        Making cake for the rich isn't an example of the broken window fallacy either, and I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. Cash for clunkers is an example of the fallacy, operating a vehicle (be it a car or jet) for work/pleasure is not.
  - 9y ago
adventured 9y ago
> Such hideously wasteful extravagance You're moralizing the issue, which points to the fact that most of what you said is nothing more than a personal subjective judgement. For someone with that wealth, it's not usually going to be a wasteful extravagance at all. Billionaires are like large corporations unto themselves. Their business interests are of the scale of small companies in the S&P 500. Take Patterson Companies, an S&P 500 company, among the smallest with a $3.4 billion market cap. $3.4 billion in wealth isn't enough to get you onto the Bloomberg global richest 500 list. By contrast, Henry Kravis of KKR fame, is worth $5.x billion (merely #345 on the billionaire list). It makes perfect sense for someone with his large business interests to utilize a personal jet for optimization of time. It's about as wasteful as an average person in the developed world owning a car. Oh those average people in the developed world, living that luxurious extravagant life in which they own a car (or a home, gasp!).
- hexadecimated 9y ago
  > most of what you said is nothing more than a personal subjective judgement Indeed it was, I was offering my own considered opinion, not some absolute universal truth. No surprise such opinions don't go down favourably on HN though. Amidst all the interesting technical and scientific discussion, there are disappointing overtones of wealth worship, and a weird cult-like following of billionaire entrepreneurs.

jonnathanson 9y ago

My experience tells me you're lowballing the crew salaries; your pilot alone draws at least $200k. You probably don't pay for the rest of the crew, but you do pay monthly fees for storage, private airstrip clearances, and ad hoc (big) costs each time you fuel it up, 'rent' an attendant, and cater the flight.

AdrianB1 9y ago
A commercial pilot at a regional airline makes less than $50,000 a year, many are closer to $30,000. When you get hired by a big airliner (over 1500 hours of flight time) and eventually you get to captain (not co-pilot) then you increase substantially, but nowhere close to $20,000, unless you fly a drug lord in strange places.
- nugget 9y ago
  I have friends who are pilots at the majors who clear $300,000+ a year. Pay has risen substantially since the round of bankruptcies cleared legacy debts. FedEx and UPS apparently pay the most - although I'm not sure why.
  - SeanBoocock 9y ago
    This is correct (have family in the industry). Pay for pilots at major domestic airlines is based primarily on seniority and equipment you fly. Captains at the end of their careers flying the larger planes - 747, 777, 787, A350 - are easily clearing $300,000 with great benefits.
  - pmorici 9y ago
    Flying cargo is more dangerous than flying people? There is stuff that is banned from being transported in a passenger plane that can be flown in a cargo plane.
    - jonnathanson 9y ago
      I'd also imagine you are logging a lot more hours, facing more intense time pressures, and possibly flying some really irregular or odd-hours routes when you're flying cargo.