After the best year in history to be among the super-rich, one of America’s 745 billionaires wonders: “What’s enough? What’s the answer?”
After the best year in history to be among the super-rich, one of America’s 745 billionaires wonders: ‘What’s enough? What’s the answer?’Leon Cooperman in his home office in Boca Raton, Fla. BOCA RATON, Fla. — The stock market had been open for only 17 minutes when Leon Cooperman picked up the phone to check how much money he’d made. He dialed a private line to his trading desk in New Jersey, just as he did a dozen times each day.“Give me numbers.”“Fine. Thank you.
And now came another series of emails from a stranger who ran a charity in New Jersey. She said billionaires were avoiding paying their fair share of taxes by using loopholes in the tax code. She said their legacy of excessive wealth was “burdening future generations.” She said Cooperman had no idea what it was like to live in poverty or to choose each month between paying rent or buying food.
What Cooperman had for transportation was a 25-year-old Schwinn bicycle he liked to ride around the neighborhood and a Hyundai he used for running errands a few times each week. “I could buy a Picasso for a hundred million, but it doesn’t turn me on, so then what?” Cooperman told them. “We live a very rational lifestyle. What better use is there for our money?”
Cooperman walked past an old designer home that was being torn down and rebuilt into a new designer home. He continued up the road toward the clay tennis courts, the spa and the terraced clubhouse. A resident drove by in a new Bentley, and Cooperman waved and then watched the $200,000 car drive on. “You get a lot of people who show off their wealth,” he said, “but I could buy and sell that guy 100 times.
“We both got what we worked for,” Cooperman said. “We were best friends, and we admired what each other had, but it would have been wrong to take what I earned and given it all over to him.”“Different choices, different outcomes,” he said. “The world isn’t meant to be totally even.”His choice: 12 more hours anchored to the chair in his office, monitoring the market and calling in to his trading desk again and again as the sun reflected off the swimming pool outside his window. The market fell.
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