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Sometimes when you read Berkshire Hathaway’s proxy it’s always a pretty good laugh.

It’s a little bit outrageous that one of the richest men in the world, Warren Buffett, only earns a salary of $100,000 for his services to Berkshire Hathaway. Then he turns around and immediately cuts a check for $50,000 to pay back Berkshire for “minor items such as postage or phone calls that are personal.”

But the funniest number of all that I recently read is board member Bill Gates was paid $1800 for his services to the company just last year.

To give a comparison, the average board member fees for companies that reside on the S&P 500 was roughly around $241,000 in the year 2011. I learned this through compensation experts Equilar. So Gates $1800 check is quite small.

Earlier this month, Forbes estimated that Bill Gates is currently worth around $67 billion. What does that mean for his Berkshire Hathaway income… It’s currently worth around 0.000003% of his overall net worth.

Let’s put it another way…

The net worth of the average American family is around $80,000. So Bill Gates $1800 is roughly the equivalent of 2/10 of a cent for the average American family.

Of course there are other reasons for Bill Gates to sit on the board of Berkshire Hathaway. He runs a charity with his wife known as the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, which will get billions of dollars from Buffett in the form of Berkshire Hathaway shares. Plus, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are longtime friends.

As I’m sure you can imagine, Gates doesn’t do this for the money. He has probably lost more than $1800 in all of his couch cushions.

There was a video recently posted online which shows some of the most powerful athletes in the world sitting right alongside two of the most powerful businessmen in the world. (See the video above.)

As I’m sure you know, Lebron James is one of the biggest superstars in basketball (and all sports for that matter) and he just posted a YouTube video of behind-the-scenes footage from a dinner that he went to in Las Vegas with the multibillionaires. In the video, the spectacular player with the Miami Heat is shown casually dining with Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, two of the richest men in the world according to the Forbes 400 list.

The smalltalk at this table must of been out of this world.

The dinner experienced by these 3 gentlemen took place at the posh Bartolotta at the Wynn, we learned from the Bleacher Report.

During 2008, basketball star Chris Paul and Lebron James were training together before they went to Beijing to participate in the Summer Olympics. Lebron reportedly invited Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to see the team play.

“We just had dinner with a few friends of ours, you know,” Lebron tells us in the beginning of the video clip. “Two guys by the name of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. A lot of people call him William. Two of the powerful people in the world, you know.”

This isn’t even the first time that Warren Buffett and Lebron James have been out in public together, in all honesty. As a matter of fact, the 82-year-old Buffett has praised Lebron James on occasion because of his eye for finances. Yahoo Sports tells us that Warren Buffett says James is grounded and savvy.

Lebron James is number four on the Forbes list of highest-paid athletes during 2012. He’s currently behind Tiger Woods, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.

In spite of all of the very intense political fighting taking place over the fiscal cliff, Warren Buffett is very optimistic that our nation will fix its overall debt problem soon.

During an interview that he gave on BBC Radio 4’s program named Today, Warren Buffett said: “in the end, 535 people in Washington will not thwart the wishes of 312 million Americans.”

“The United States is richer than it’s ever been. We have $50,000 or so of GDP per person. But we’ve overpromised and we’ve also undertaxed to some extent, so we find ourselves with this great fiscal imbalance. But it was man made. We’re a rich country. It can be solved. … We’ll be able to overcome this problem. America has faced a lot tougher problems than this one. We’ll get it solved.”

Warren Buffett also had a conversation with Melinda Gates, who as I’m sure you know, is married to Bill Gates – friend of Warren Buffett. He’s also the chairman of Microsoft. Warren Buffett also gave a pledge to give most of his fortune to the Gates Foundation. “We have a great history of philanthropy, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have the capacity to do a whole lot more.”

He also spoke with Melinda Gates about the topic of needing to get more women into leadership positions in this country:

“What a waste of human talent. Fifty percent of the talent of the country we’ve pushed off in the corner for almost 200 years. No Supreme Court justice was a woman. Believe me, I’ll take Sandra Day O’Connor or Ruth Ginsburg. It was a shame to not be utilizing that talent. One of the things that makes me so optimistic about the future, when I see how far we’ve come only using half the talent in the country. And now I realize we’re getting to the point, we’re starting to use 100 percent of our talent. It makes me very optimistic. But we still have a ways to go.”

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett already owns companies related to insurance, newspapers, jewelry and many other areas of interest. Now you can add party planning to the mix since Berkshire Hathaway and the 82-year-old investor will soon acquire Oriental Trading Co.

We learned this past Friday from Warren Buffett that Berkshire Hathaway Inc., his investment firm, will buy Oriental Trading which is based out of Omaha, and it’s the largest direct retailer of over 40,000 discounted party goods. The estimated cost of this purchase is in the neighborhood of $500 million.

Oriental Trading is a mail-order company that specializes in selling school supplies, novelties, toys, crafts and general party supplies. They recently filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the year 2010 because they were burdened by a large debt load and lower consumer spending plus higher costs really hurt the company.

Last year, Oriental Trading re-emerged when company restructuring took place and the majority shareholder, KKR & Co., bought the business with other investors. Previously, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm known as Brentwood Associates owned the business before selling it to the Carlyle Group during 2006.

It is expected that the Berkshire Hathaway deal will close by the end of November.

Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway have bought other businesses this year. They bought most of Media General Inc.’s publications, and this is only a month after he picked up the Omaha World-Herald, which is his hometown paper. Berkshire Hathaway’s other subsidiaries are Helzberg Diamonds, See’s Candies, International Dairy Queen Inc. and GEICO Auto Insurance.

Warren Buffett was also placed second on the list of the wealthiest Americans, where we learned he is worth $46 billion. He is second only to Bill Gates who is currently worth $66 billion.

Bill Gates is once again the rich you should intrude into a soup spoon. I went options are stored forest man in the world, and he is still by a wide margin. The philanthropic giant, and cofounder of Microsoft Corp., is again at the top of the Forbes 400 list for the 19th year in a row, and his total net worth is $66 billion.

Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., is once again in second place at a grand total of $46 billion. Larry Ellison, who is the cofounder of Oracle Corp. also stayed in third place and he is worth $41 billion. The cofounders of Koch industries Inc., David and Charles Koch, have respectively tied for fourth place at $31 billion apiece.

According to Forbes, you can basically boil this year down to the rich getting richer, as 241 members of this list rose in net worth, and only 66 members actually shrunk in net worth. The rising prices on the stock market, plus the rebound in real estate, as well as prices going up for rare art, have helped these individuals gain more of their net worth.

More members of the founding family of Walmart Stores Inc., the Walton family, actually moved up into the top 10 this year. They displaced Sheldon Adelson, who is the founder of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., and George Soros the investor. Michael Bloomberg, current Mayor of New York City, is also back in the top 10 at number 10. He owns the financial data services firm Bloomberg LP, and he is estimated to be worth around $25 billion.

The masters of social media took the biggest hit on the Forbes 400 list this year. Mark Pincus of Zynga Inc. fame, as well as Groupon’s Eric Lefkofski, both dropped off of the list entirely this year. The biggest loser of all is Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. The Facebook IPO dropped tremendously since it went public in May of this year, and his total net worth was basically cut in half. This lost him a total of $8.1 billion in net worth. Zuckerberg was formerly number 14 on this list, but he is now sitting at number 36.

The honest truth is that even though Mark Zuckerberg lost a lot more money than the majority of people would ever come close to making during their lifetime, he still has a very large net worth at an estimated amount of $9.4 billion according to Forbes.

There are 20 newcomers that made their way onto the list this year, which means that they are worth at least $1.1 billion in net worth, because that’s what you need to in order to enter this list. It was previously $1.05 billion a year ago. Shahid Khan, the owner of the NFL team the Jacksonville Jaguars made the list this year and came in at number 179. The founder of Epic Systems, a health records firm, Judy Faulkner, made the list and came in at number 285. The husband and wife team of Peggy and Andrew Cherng also found their way onto the list at number 239. They are the owners of the restaurant chain Panda Express. The final new member of the list is Twitter creator Jack Dorsey. He came in at number 392.

As of this time, there are 45 women on the Forbes 400 list. They added three more women this year because there were only 42 women just a year ago. Oprah Winfrey currently sits at spot number 151.

Here’s a quick list of the top 10 members of this year’s Forbes 400 list:

• Bill Gates – $66 billion
• Warren Buffett – $46 billion
• Larry Ellison – $41 billion
• David Koch – $31 billion
• Charles Koch – $31 billion
• Christy Walton and family – $27.9 billion
• Jim Walton – $26.8 billion
• Alice Walton – $26.3 billion
• S. Robson Walton – $26.1 billion
• Michael Bloomberg – $25 billion

Warren Buffett did things his way in order to make $50 billion, and it was very consistent that during The Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy which was held at the main branch of the New York Public Library, instead of taking a book out of the building, Warren Buffett actually brought one in. He specifically brought in a well-worn printing of the hardcover book named I Remember, which is the autobiography of a gentleman named Abraham Flexner and it was written in 1940. Most modern philanthropists have never even heard of this person.

While flipping through the pages of the autobiography that Warren Buffett read nearly 50 years ago, he mentions that “Abraham Flexner probably influenced philanthropy as much as any individual in the country. Not in terms of the money he used but of what he brought to the game.”

This native of Louisville Kentucky was first brought into the public eye in the year 1908 for writing the book The American College. The book actually condemned higher education because it relied upon lectures instead of hands-on teaching and smaller classes. Andrew Carnegie was quite attracted to Abraham’s analysis of higher education, particularly because he really wanted there to be reforms in medical schools.

In 1910, the Carnegie Foundation published a document known as “The Flexner Report,” and this report actually set national standards for the training of physicians. “He was not a doctor,” said Warren Buffett. “He just was smart and straight thinking. And after he worked for a couple of years for Carnegie to do this, half of the medical schools closed. I mean, he actually changed medical education.” Abraham Flexner also made a major impact during the year 1930, when being backed by Louis Bamberger, with Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, in which he recruited individuals like J. Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein.

Buffett also said “I’ve studied what both the people with the money do and the people who were implementing the ideas of the people with the money. And it had an influence on me very early.”

Now that we know there was a long-term influence in Warren Buffett’s life, we are no longer mystified by his philanthropic philosophy and desire to donate so much of his money. Also, if you are curious as to why Warren Buffett is ready to outsource his philanthropy to Melinda and Bill Gates, then you don’t have to look any further than Flexner.

“Carnegie did not go out and visit all of these medical schools himself,” said Warren Buffett. “He got Flexner to do it. George Eastman wanted to start a great medical school in Rochester, and he didn’t know how to do it. He called up Flexner and said, ‘Tell me how to do it.’ And it was the same way with the Bambergers. So I believe in getting things done through other people.”

You can also look at Flexner’s influence to explain why Warren Buffett wants his fortune to be put into action within 10 years of his death. Mr. Buffett remembers a New York Times editorial about Flexner that he read in 1959 at the time of his death. This editorial ended by stating that “no other American of his time has contributed more to the welfare of this country and of humanity in general.” Warren Buffett has now set himself up to inject the largest amount of cash into philanthropy, and people are going to sing his praises the same way that they sang the praises of Abraham Flexner.

In what really isn’t much of a surprise to anybody, Amancio Ortega, the Spaniard gentleman that founded Inditex SA, has recently knocked Warren buffet off of his spot as the third richest person in the world. Why is it not a surprise? Because Warren Buffett has been giving away large portions of his wealth over the last six years now.

Ortega, who is currently 76 years old, gained a total of $1.6 billion because the share prices of his stock gained a total of 3.8 percentage points which was a record at the close of the day. This is all learned according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, where we found out that Ortega’s wealth is now a total of $46.6 billion. This major gain in stock value actually puts the Zara clothing chain owner above Warren Buffett, who is the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Warren Buffett’s current net worth is $45.7 billion. He has ranked number three the entire time that this index existed, which hasn’t been all that long since it only was created on March 5 of this year.

A market rout in Spain has caused Ortega’s wealth to rise an amazing 32% this year, where it has gained a total of $11.4 billion. The policy makers in this country are currently resisting a lot of pressure being put on them to get aid from the central bank in Europe. The profit of Inditex has risen for twelve quarters in a row, and they have gone on to add more stores in markets that are emerging, in places such as China, and this has allowed them to reduce their dependence on Spain. This is important since the unemployment in that country has gone up over 20%. It’s hard to make money when nobody has jobs and income to pay for your products.

“Buffett’s holdings have done well recently, but not all of them,” stated Walter “Bucky” Hellwig, who helps manage $17 billion at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama. Amancio Ortega “has a more concentrated holding, and that implies more risk. You may have these fits and starts between them going forward.”

Inditex spokesman Raul Estradera chose not to comment. There was an e-mail message left with the 81-year-old Buffett, which he did not respond to. His assistant Carrie Sova was the one who got the message.

Carlos Slim And Bill Gates

Shares of Inditex rose yesterday in Madrid, and it was part of a rally in European stocks. The reason why these stocks rallied is because the German Chancellor named Angela Merkel, and her government, decided to back the European Central Bank’s plan to buy bonds from countries that are weighed down with debt, such as Spain. The shares of Berkshire Hathaway actually fell a half percent in New York when news that they increased their cash hoard to the highest level in a year. Buffett cut back on his bets of consumer-products stocks. Berkshire Hathaway also reported their second quarter earnings on August 3, and they beat the street and estimates by analysts.

Carlos Slim is now $27.6 billion ahead of Ortega, and he is a Mexican telecommunications tycoon. He is also the richest person in the world. Bill Gates is the cofounder of Microsoft, and also the second richest person in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He is currently worth a total of $63 billion.

Ortega actually became the richest man in Europe on June 13. At that time he passed Ingvar Kamprad of Sweden, who is also the owner of the major retail chain IKEA. He is the founder of the largest furniture seller in the world, and he also happens to be worth a total of $37 billion.

Warren Buffett actually made a donation of 22.1 million shares of class B Berkshire Hathaway stock on July 6. He gave it to charity, and the US Securities and Exchange Commission were notified. Those shares would actually be worth a total of $1.9 billion today, since the value of class B shares are worth $85.15 at the time of this writing. The majority of the stock went to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.

Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge

During the year 2006, Warren Buffett actually made a pledge that he would give the majority of the money that he’s made to charity, and during that same year he gave 20% of his Berkshire stock at the time. Now he plans on donating 4% of the shares each year during the month of July, and he has done so every year since then. Buffett has actually made a total of $2.9 billion this year.

Before Buffett made this pledge to donate the majority of his money, he actually kept the bulk of his net worth in class A shares of Berkshire Hathaway. During March 2006, Warren Buffett owned 474,998 of those shares based on a proxy statement from the company. If he still had all those shares, that total net worth would be $60.7 billion based on the market close yesterday.

Buffett’s current share value is 350,000 class A shares, and 3.8 million class B shares of his company Berkshire Hathaway.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett both started the Giving Pledge during the middle of 2010, and they are trying to get the ultra rich to make a commitment to give away the majority of their fortunes to philanthropic ventures. They have actually gotten 81 families to sign this pledge, and this information is based on the Giving Pledge’s website.

“My wealth has come from a combination of living in America, some lucky genes, and compound interest,” Buffett says in a letter that he sent to his shareholders in June of 2010. In agreeing to donate 99 percent of his wealth, he said, “my family and I will give up nothing we need or want.”

The Bloomberg Billionaires Index measures the amount of wealth that the richest people of the world have based on the current economic climate and market conditions. They update the figures of each person’s net worth at the end of the business day at 5:30 PM in New York, plus these figures are listed in US dollars, and they are based on the current exchange rates.

Ariel Hsing, an American teen competing at the London Olympics, just upset the former world champion and gold medalist from 1983 out of Luxembourg known as Ni Xia Lian. This just happened this past Sunday during the third round of the London Olympics table tennis tournament.

Hsing, who is only 16 years old, and gained a lot of attention because she happens and be friends with the two richest men in the world Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, beat Ni by a score of 4-2. She is going to later face Li Xiaoxia, who is the number two seed, and this is also going to take place during the third round.

Li, as well as her Chinese teammate Ding Ning, are two of the competitors that are potentially going to be the gold-medal winner.

“I really respect her as a player and I think she’s amazing,” said Hsing. “She’s one of my idols. But I’m just going to go for it. I think skill-wise she’s much better than me and she has a lot more experience than me. But it’s going to be her first match at these Olympics, and from my experience it is so nerve-racking.”

Hsing didn’t even realize that she was going to be playing Li later on Sunday. She had to find out from a reporter that same day.

“Do I really?” she replied.

And then it was confirmed just moments later.

“Oh my gosh,” she added.

During her match with Ni Xia Lian, the 16 year old actually had match point during the fifth game, but unfortunately hit a long ball and lost the game. But she did come back in the sixth and was able to win it by 12 – 10 which gave her the opportunity to win the best of seven series by a score of 4 – 2.

“At that point of losing (the fifth game) I really had to block out being so close and focus on the present,” said Hsing.

Hsing, who is going into her senior year at Christian Valley High School in San Jose California, was not sure whether or not Warren Buffett or Bill Gates would show up at the Olympics to watch her play.

But there were plenty of rumors floating around that said that Bill Gates may actually show up to the event. Warren Buffett knew ahead of time that he was not going to be able to make it. And Bill Gates did show up to the event and showed support for his young friend who calls him Uncle Bill.

Warren Buffett met Ariel at the tender age of nine, and then just two years later he actually invited her to a annual meeting at Berkshire Hathaway, where she played against some of the shareholders at the event. Then she returned again this year once she secured her spot on the United States Olympic team. She played Gates and Buffett at this event, and easily scored a few points off of the pair.

She actually refers to both gentlemen respectively as “Uncle Bill” and “Uncle Warren.”

Ariel has actually mentioned that she wants to use her time at the London Olympics, which is her first Olympics, as a way to prepare for the Rio de Janeiro Games that are coming up in four years. Her time is here now though, which is much sooner than expected.

Ni is a European champion twice over, and has been playing as a world champion for China for over 30 years now.

“Of course when I was 19 I was a world champion,” said Ni. “But times are changing and she’s playing well.”

Hsing is a United States citizen that was born and raised here, to two loving parents who emigrated to the United States around 20 years ago. Her mother Xin Jiang is originally from China, and her father Michael is from Taiwan.

The table tennis tournament is about to get very serious later on Sunday night, and especially on Monday as the top 16 women and men singles compete for the gold.

Table tennis is a national pastime in China, so it’s no surprise that they have taken 20 of the last 24 gold medals given out since the event was added to the Olympic Games in Seoul Korea during the 1988 Olympics. It is expected that the Chinese are going to take all four gold medals this year as well, meaning they will get both team gold medals and both single gold medals in their respective categories.

If you don’t already know, Warren Buffett is on the verge of turning 82 and he was unfortunately diagnosed with prostate cancer very recently. The good thing is that the third most wealthy man in the world does not plan on slowing down one bit due to this diagnosis. He does not plan on passing the reins of Berkshire Hathaway to his successor yet either, so you can trust that the Oracle of Omaha isn’t giving up whatsoever.

There are a lot of people who reach the age of Warren Buffett and begin to get all kinds of stressed out about their health problems, and they even often change their diet to help combat some of the health issues that they face. Warren Buffett hasn’t changed whatsoever and doesn’t intend to change this about himself either.

He plans to continue to eat all of his favorites such as hamburgers, French fries, strawberry shortcake, Cherry Coke, steak, hash browns and banana cream pie to name just a few. One other startling confession from many people that are close to Warren Buffett is that they’ve never actually seen him take a single sip of water. You may find that very hard to believe but it’s the absolute truth.

Warren Buffett’s successor at Berkshire Hathaway has already been chosen and disclosed at this very moment. But Warren and the rest of Berkshire Hathaway plan on keeping this person’s identity secret for the time being. The way things go in the business world, it is a fact that the stress and strife that come along with working as a high level executive could unfortunately cause the successor to pass on prior to Mr. Buffett. So it makes sense that they would want to keep this individual’s identity under wraps for the time being.

You probably know already that Buffett intends to give away the majority of his $44 billion fortune. Just a mere few days ago, he donated 18.4 million shares of his Berkshire Hathaway stock to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. The value of that stock is estimated at $1.52 billion. He also gave away a 1.2 million shares of Berkshire stock to his favorite three children’s foundations, as well as 1.8 million shares to his very own Buffett Foundation. And last but not least, he gave 10 shares each of Berkshire stock to 15 different schoolchildren that qualified in the finals of a business contest that he ran.

It’s practically common knowledge that Warren Buffett, billionaire investor, plans to donate the majority of his wealth to various charities before he passes on. So it should come as no surprise to you that he just donated $1.52 billion as part of his annual gift to the Gates Foundation. The foundation was created by Bill Gates, who is cofounder of Microsoft Corp.

Warren Buffett is the CEO and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which is his Omaha-based investment firm. There was also a donation made of 18.4 million in the form of Berkshire Hathaway’s Class B shares. This donation went to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. There was a filing on Friday which proves this to be true. Shares of Berkshire Hathaway’s Class B stock closed at $82.54 last Friday in New York City.

Warren Buffett is also a trustee of the Gates Foundation, as well as being the third richest man in the world. His current net worth is in the neighborhood of $46 billion. This information was gathered according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s index, which is a daily ranking of the wealthiest people around the world. Mr. Buffett has also campaigned quite extensively to promote giving charitably.

“I urge people to unbutton their wallet, pull out a check, reach into their purse, whatever it takes,” said the 81 year old Buffett in a YouTube video that he put out last year. “You will find that when you give a dollar and something of yourself, a lot more than a dollar comes out the other end.”

In 2006, Warren Buffett shared his plans with the world which amounts to him donating 10 million Class B shares to the Gates Foundation. The initial gift he presented them was in the amount of 500,000 shares. He will also release the remaining shares of his donation 5% at a time on an annual basis. Each donation will be less shares then presented to the foundation the year before.

Warren Buffett wasn’t concerned about presenting the foundation with less shares each year because he stated that the shares will rise “in an irregular manner, by an amount that more than compensates for the decline in the number of shares that will be distributed.” There was already a 50 to 1 split of the Class B shares in 2010.