If you haven't read The New Yorker article described here then you really should. I was particularly impressed by comments made by Leon Cooperman, a very wealthy hedge fund manager.
ps.
If you want to read about another put-upon jillionaire, read this article featuring a timeshare magnate who is troubled by burdensome regulations.
Mr. Cooperman,
As someone who runs a business, you have no doubt seen folks who work effectively and others who don't. I've had discussions with friends about the nature of work and I'd like to present my thoughts on this to you.
First, Work is defined quite accurately in Newtonian Physics...
Work = Force x Distance
We might think of
Work as moving a large stone. If the stone doesn't move, then the
Distance is zero and no
Work has been done. A man might struggle for days to move the stone, but if the stone doesn't budge, then he has done no
Work; it's as if he had never shown up. He might argue that he's done quite a bit of work, spending twelve to fourteen hours a day trying to move the stone. His argument is based on the notion that
Work = Effort x Time NOT!
The amount of time (spent in the office) has nothing to do with the amount of work accomplished!
Every occupation has its own set of valid metrics for measuring Distance. If someone manufactures tires, then maybe he measures himself based on the number of tires shipped to the warehouse. A teacher might use the improvement in his students' test scores. Clearly, the metrics in these examples aren't quite correct: if no tires are sold then the effort in making them is wasted; and better test scores aren't worth anything if the students quit school before graduating. Nevertheless, there is some metric that each of us must use.
In the company where I work, there was a team which had been given the job of developing a product. They had glorious status reports extolling the team's accomplishments. The team leader was given awards and featured on the company's website. But they never delivered the product. In this important metric, their Distance was zero, and eventually the entire team was fired. Of course, the team members were upset; each thought that he had done something significant based on his own metric. But it was the corporate metric that mattered the most, and every employee must keep that metric in mind as he evaluates his own contribution.
In The New Yorker article, you mention that you work very hard. But by what metric do you measure the Work of a Hedge Fund Manager? Maybe it's the number of satisfied customers, or the total assets under management, or the average return over the past five years, or a combination. The problem here is that all of these metrics involve personal enrichment, either for you or your customers. What does a (successful) hedge fund do other than make wealthy folks more wealthy? Maybe there's something about allowing the marketplace to function more efficiently, but that seems a stretch.
No doubt, you disagree with me, just as I disagree with you when you assert that Mr. Obama "had never worked a day in his life." I doubt that you understand the nature of Mr. Obama's work and the metrics that he might use. Certainly, personal enrichment is not one of them.
Finally, let me return to the story of the team which never delivered a product. Think of Omega Advisors as the team, and this country as the corporation. What benefit does the country reap by having a team so focused on personal enrichment? What product does your Work yield? What stone do you move?