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They spend more on that than they do taxes, so....

Elon Musk paid $11 billion in federal income taxes to the US government in 2021 alone. which is more than everyone on here combined will pay in their entire lives. 

they pay taxes when they produce income. they don't have to produce income. you do understand the vast majority of the wealth of these billionaires are stock holdings- not actual cold hard cash, right? how would you suggest to tax unrealized gains of their stock holdings? and if their stock shares crash will the federal government refund them money next year? 

Elon is worth about as much as the NFL

Bill Gates got divorced where he lost about half and has been donating a lot of money otherwise.

The compensation for "high level execs" is generally not enough by itself to get into the billionaire club.  It can hit $50 million or more of course in good years, so over 20 years or so you could get there if you save and don't spend.  A CEO usually isn't around 20 years.  They tend to fall into the mere $100 million club.

The billionaire wealth comes from inheritance or owning a large part of a company that goes huge.

I don't know of a billionaire who got there on compensation alone.  There could be one or two.

The compensation for "high level execs" is generally not enough by itself to get into the billionaire club.  It can hit $50 million or more of course in good years, so over 20 years or so you could get there if you save and don't spend.  A CEO usually isn't around 20 years.  They tend to fall into the mere $100 million club.

The billionaire wealth comes from inheritance or owning a large part of a company that goes huge.

I don't know of a billionaire who got there on compensation alone.  There could be one or two.

Jamie Dimon says hi. There are a couple of people at NVIDA- one I actually know- who have made hundreds of millions of dollars just from stock compensation. Fun fact- 76% of NVIDIA's employees have net worths (because of stock compensation) in excess of $1 million and over one third of NVIDIA employees have net worths in excess of $20 million- you guessed it- from stock compensation.

ANYWAY, regardless of that- what I was talking about OBVIOUSLY relates to Bill Gates as he founded Microsoft and was it's largest single shareholder and CEO for a very long time and 99.9% of his wealth came from it blowing up. If Gates had not gotten divorced as you mentioned- was still running the company- not selling off or donating his stock for the last 30 years- and still getting stock options like Musk has been getting at Tesla- my guess here without looking at the actual #'s - he'd be dubbed the "the richest person in the world" like Elon is. Microsoft stock has BLOWN up in the last 10 years alone- went from a $400 billion market cap to $3 trillion. Billy boy would be worth insane amounts of money if he was still running the company, holding all his Microsoft stock and getting awarded options like Elon is at Tesla.

Reality is no one in America is the richest person in the world. The gulf state dictators who we kiss ass too have more cash than anyone in the world. Saudi Aramco is the most profitable company in the entire world. When you have enough cash on hand to buy a fake Da Vinci painting for $350 million to put it on your $700 million mega yacht- well.....yeah.