billion. The size of this sum was difficult to comprehend. If a person earned $300 an hour and worked full-time, with no vacation, he or she would need to work 30,449 years to earn $19 billion. David Koch had come by the amount in one short lifetime.
And unlike his brother Charles, who stayed back home in Wichita and worked long hours in the Koch Tower, David Koch was inclined to enjoy his fortune. He moved to New York City and became a luminary in the rarified social scene of the very wealthy and the very famous. He attended the opera and gallery openings. He supported the ballet and lived in one of the most expensive apartments in the city. When he sold one apartment and bought another, it made the newspapers. In a city that was home to almost incalculable wealth, David Koch was likely its richest resident. And he was inclined to share his good fortune.
In October of 2007, David Koch gave $100 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his alma mater and that of his brothers and father. The money founded a cancer research center, a cause that was dear to David Koch’s heart after his own successful struggle with prostate cancer. David Koch gave $20 million to the American Museum of Natural History for a new wing to display dinosaur bones. He gave $20 million to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, in Baltimore, also to study cancer.
Then, in July, David Koch made a donation that grabbed national attention. He gave $100 million to the New York State Theater, a grandiose building in Manhattan that was a social hub of the city’s high society. The theater hosted some of the prime events of elite social calendars, nights when David Koch and his wife, Julia, joined the other prominent couples, attired in tuxedos and gowns, to laugh and share small talk in the lobby before they were seated to enjoy the New York City Ballet or the New York City Opera at Lincoln Center. Now, the theater would be called the David H. Koch Theater.
David Koch had plenty of latitude to make such charitable gifts. The New York Times reported that the gift to the State Theater amounted to roughly one-half of 1 percent of David Koch’s wealth, but even this overstated the size of the donation. The gift would be made over a period of ten years, which meant that it really represented a small fraction of the money that David Koch earned from the interest on his fortune—something akin to a microtithe. He could make such gifts without concern that it would substantially diminish his wealth.
During the summer of 2008, there was good reason to believe that David Koch’s wealth was poised to grow even more. In the preceding eight years, Koch Industries had transformed from a midsized natural resources company into a diversified industrial conglomerate and private equity house. Charles Koch had believed during the 1990s that his company could become a giant. During the 2000s, he proved that he was correct. It is true that the foundation of Koch Industries’ profits still rested on the fossil fuel business. The refinery in Pine Bend remained a reliable fountain of cash that kept the rest of the system flush with money to invest. The fuel pipelines and the Corpus Christi refinery also contributed a steady stream of profits. But Koch also owned Georgia-Pacific, Invista, and one of the largest and most profitable nitrogen fertilizer companies in the United States. Its trading desks in Houston, New York, and London rivaled those of any investment bank. Koch’s growth was not slow and steady—it was seismic, with periods of steady advancement that were punctuated by great lurches forward. Charles Koch had claimed to crack the code of creating prosperity, and the wealth machine he built now seemed unstoppable.
David Koch gave interviews to the media, and he was effusive and benevolent in his remarks. It seemed that he was ready to give even more. He told the Times how he was inspired by one of his neighbors, the billionaire private equity titan Stephen Schwarzman, who had recently given a gift of $100 million to the New York Public Library. “I admire people like that immensely, who have great wealth but are generous in terms of supporting worthy causes,” Koch said.
This era of goodwill, this summer of giving and plenty, turned out to be the high point of American economic life. This was the crest of the wave after a