TaxEat the rich!Here’s the thing. Even if he lives up to this promise, it’s still him deciding where that money should go, and it won’t be towards long term support of social safety nets for the commoners. He should just have been paying his fair share of taxes all along and into the future.
Based on current spending, it will most likely be spent getting drinkable water to the majority of the world’s population.
I don’t like how he got his money, but he’s been reasonably responsible with it since his divorce.
That said, he has over $113b dollars. If he gives away 99% of it, he’ll still have over a billion dollars.
Behind the bastards has a good two parter on him. I wouldn’t say he’s been responsible with it.
He’s been buying up huge swathes of farm land in the middle of the country. Not everything he’s doing has been philanthropy
…or paying his employees more.
Funny how we don’t have a popular term for the portion of an employee’s deserved wage that turns into “record shareholder profit.”
Imagine if all corporations were required to put a line item on check stubs showing how much you made them.
That term is wage theft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft
Too knee jerk. Needs “tax” incorporated as it’s so unpopular.
Who do you think Bill Gates’ employees are right now? Do you think he’s still the CEO of Microsoft? Are you referring to the Gates Foundation? If so, have you got data on what they’re paid?
This is him avoiding estate taxes, change my mind.
How much would his estate taxes be vs giving up 99% of his fortune?
Bill Gates uses his “charity” to exert influence worldwide and demand stuff in return.
If this man was truly giving away his money then world hunger would have been solved by now.
I mean if I want my next of kin/whoever to get my money, it’s better to do it while alive when you can get creative with the accounting. Especially when you’ve got Gates money and setting up something like a nonprofit is relatively easy.
Once you’re dead and you’ve got this lump declared assets you’re trying to pass on that Uncle Sam will take up to like 40% of.
Yeah but that’s communism, so no way it would’ve ever happened. The average American voter thinks they can become billionaires some day.
Does the word communism even have meaning any more, or is it just something to yell when confused people get confused?
I’m using it sarcastically
I know, I caught the silent /s at the end of your post :) You are referring to people who don’t use it sarcastically - does the word communism have meaning left when they use it?
It means when the government helps people that aren’t me or people I like, or fails to hurt the people I don’t like.
Honestly, it might just be creeping closer to “social”. As in, concerning a society. Things like bike lanes and healthcare.
Bullshit, he’s “transferring” his wealth to his own charity for tax reasons…
It’s a trick to protect his money for his children.
Not according to the opening sentence?
The Gates Foundation plans to give away $US200 billion ($313 billion) over the next 20 years before shutting down entirely in 2045
I’ll believe it when I see it. He’s evil and always has been.
He was anti-competetive towards Netscape navigator, admitted guilt and paid for it, since then he’s putting his money where his mouth is. Anything else I left out?
Microsoft has gone to shit after he left.
Lemmy sounds exactly like magas
I’ve been sending his chain emails along since the 90s so he owes me some serious interest.
He has been making this kind of promise since the early 2000s, but never follows through. Just the goal post keeps moving to the right.
While the goal post keeps moving, it’s the opposite of your statement. As explained in the article:
That target would represent a doubling in spending for the nonprofit, which has disbursed more than $US100 billion since it was co-founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates in 2000. Originally, the foundation was set to close 20 years after the Microsoft co-founder’s death.
“I have decided to give my money back to society much faster than I had originally planned,” Gates, 69, wrote in a statement. “I will give away virtually all my wealth through the Gates Foundation over the next 20 years to the cause of saving and improving lives around the world.”
Supposedly he’s already given away half, why is it unthinkable that he’s planning to give away the other half?
Because good people don’t hoard wealth to begin with.
He does this so people don’t hate him for helping to destabilize the global economy.
I think only allowing bad people to hoard wealth would be a moral failure if a good person had the opportunity to choose.
…and still be a billionaire.
Why should oligarchs get to decide where the proceeds of their exploitation get spent?
Doesn’t that leave him still with something like $2 billion? I’m not knocking the philanthropy, but also, his safety net is going to remain about $2 billion dollars larger than
minemost every other human being on this entire planet. And it will continue to accrue value at a higher rate than inflation as long as the good ol’ American engine keeps on chugging along as normal.From his vantage point, this sacrifice will likely impact neither his daily lifestyle nor his long-term comfort one iota.
It’s a great thing he’s doing, and I want to be clear about that. He’s giving a boatload of money to charity. And I also don’t know what else he might be doing with the remainder. I might be being an asshole. I haven’t even read the article. I just saw that fuckin guy and the shining headline and had a strong reaction.
(Edited)
I wouldn’t for a second think or hope that he endures the distress of poverty or feeling needy given where he started - he has tried to do good with his fortune and that is good enough for me…he is doing what he can for the world around him and should be comfortable as he does so. I hope to find my own (much less extravagant) comfort some day.
and thats the thing there are some who could realistically give away 99% of thier wealth and still individually be rich beyond belief. I hope it spawns some Rockefeller thing where the rich realize they can eat thier cake and have it to, they can be unbelievably rich and donate unbelievable ammounts of wealth, leaving a huge, arguably postive mark on history.
Get fucked with a rusty rake bill, you helped stop the COVID vaccines from being patent exempt, among plenty of other awful shit, all for more money.
The vaccines were patent exempt, WTO adopted it officially in 2022, which the Gates Foundation endorsed shortly after Bill’s initial objection.
Yeah
Like the idiots who think philanthropy is an acceptable compromise to a fair society.
You making yourself our enemy won’t make us take your side.
I’m saying ‘saving lives is good actually’ and you declare me an enemy that “endorses capitalism and imperialism”
exhausting
Omg you’re exhausting!!
It would be better if be hadn’t fucked with our economies to start with.
Bill gates isn’t actually going to do this…
I’m with you 100%.
Damn, Erika must be hanging around the wrong spaces. Don’t get me wrong, the liberalist ones are full of idealistic drivel like that, it’s true, but any Marxist space will drill into you their famous quote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theses_on_Feuerbach
The document is best remembered for its epigrammatic 11th and final thesis, “Philosophers so far have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it”, which is engraved on Marx’s tomb.
This thread is keyboard warriors complaining that a billionaire is taking action to save millions of people, from the comfort of their couches. One wise man even suggested poverty exists because countries spent all their money on Windows keys
Like I don’t like billionaires existing either, but this is objectively a good thing.
This thread is keyboard warriors complaining that a billionaire is taking action to save millions of people, from the comfort of their couches.
You say this as if Gates isn’t making their announcements in luxury. It’s an odd point, as if it would invalidate their objections somehow.
[Bill Gates announcing they will eventually donate money] is objectively a good thing.
It’s more complex when you look at the bigger picture surrounding philanthropy. (As a side note: moral concepts like “good” and “evil” can’t be objective in the first place; there wouldn’t be these arguments if it was)
Saving many innocent lives from preventable disease benefits those societies in need, I’m not disagreeing with that. I donate to fund malaria nets and vitamin supplements too, I think it’s a worthy cause, and more money does mean more help.
My objection is that this is philanthropy being used as buying good will. Bill Gates gained their money through exploiting the needy and continues to do so. We should not pretend that donating a minor chunk to charity makes this ok, can redeem Gates, or can make them a “good billionaire” (quoting others, not you). It’s better than nothing, yes! It’s also not enough to justify their actions.
Nor should we be satisfied with far-off statements, like “I’ll donate most of it to good causes when I’m dead”, or “I’ll donate most of it in 20 years”, and interpret them as selfless or noble actions - in fact, delaying some of these life-saving donations until 2045 is allowing large numbers of innocent people to die. Isn’t that clearly a bad thing?
Philanthropy is almost always reputation laundering, not some uncharacteristic Scrooge-like change of heart. It’s a simple trick and we shouldn’t enable it and defend Gates for it - we are obliged to re-iterate that Gates is still a greedy billionaire. Because Gates isn’t the first to play this transparent trick and won’t be the last.
Why wait, just do it already.
Individuals hoarding wealth is bad for society.
Because he wants to benefit personally from his wealth and be seen as a good person.
And the idiots will keep eating it up
I mean, 99% of his wealth gone still leaves him with over a billion dollars. Might be more of a logistics and planning issue.
This is correct.
He’s gone in depth about this a number of times, where he talks about the complexity of using philanthropic money effectively. For example, is a dollar better spent educating poor children, or building wells in rural communities? Providing bed nets for malaria, or treatments for tuberculosis? And then once you decide on the cause you will put your money into, how do you ensure the money goes where you wanted it to go, rather than being syphoned off by bureaucrats, reallocated to spurious pet projects, or lining the pockets of some local warlord? And once your money has gone to the cause, how do you measure its impact to ensure it was money well spent? Do people actually use the well? Does it provide clean water? Does it work reliably? Did rates of malaria actually go down, or are people too lazy to use the bed nets? Etc.
These things are complicated and take time to figure out. Hence why all the “donate it now” comments are ridiculous.
Do you have a comprehensive plan on how to immediately spend 200Bn USD evenly and fairly only to the most impoverished people on earth in such a way that maximises longterm benefit more than spreading it out over 20 years?
Also, if you sell off 200Bn USD worth of stocks in a day then you’re not going to make 200Bn USD off the sales.
Yes, as a UBI. The average person is so poor that “means testing” it is just a waste of time and money. Poverty is very expensive - a high “interest rate” - so $1 donated today will have a drastically higher impact than $1 in 20 years, even adjusting for inflation.
Also, Gates’ wealth is now diversified enough that slippage would be minimal. And doing it suddenly without notice prevents speculators selling ahead of him and then buying back afterwards, which would essentially siphon off the wealth.
Dude, even just planning and organizing a UBI takes time and effort.
It would start with a billionaire requesting people’s personal data (because he couldn’t publically admit to having it through dark sources) and who wants to do that?
He also couldn’t afford a UBI in every nation on the planet; right now his help is focused on countries with far worse standards of living than the USA.
A UBI for 340 Million Americans from 200Bn USD comes out to about…
Tap tap tap tap
$588.23 each for exactly once. Saving 0 children across the world from starvation, malaria, or dehydration. You could also try distributing that money directly to poor regions but thats such a terrible idea that its on the same tier as immediately releasing Afghanistans funds to the Taliban.
Nobody is suggesting that we limit it to the USA. That would be about a week’s pay for the average person, saving lives right now, not maybe in 20 years.
Alright then, fine
200,000,000,000 / 8,222,255,289 = 24.32Enjoy your free pizza I guess
Gee, do I want to explain why this is stupid so you can celebrate your ignorance here too, or
Do it now motherfucker.
Yeah, I mean, a quick Google search shows his net worth at 133b. 113b x 0.01 = 1.13 billion dollars.
For context, bill is 69 yo, and the average US male lives to about 76 yo. That’s a difference of six years, or 2190 days. That means that Bill would have to scrape by on just $519,000/day.
That sounds an unbearable way to live. /S
THIS. EXACTLY THIS.
It takes planning and must be done in stages? I suppose he does start with it now.
Maybe pay some fucking taxes first, Bill.
Don’t give it away.
If you really want to help people, buy media, buy politicans and get REAL change that will actually last.
You giving money to random charities does fuck all, except give you tax breaks.
We need change in the political system so that we don’t need fucking charities for basic needs.
He does give money to politicians and the Gates Foundation does as well:
Is this supposed to impress anyone?
I find it lovely that he’s racked by guilt over his legacy and tries to do something about it.
he has been milking that good will cow for decades
And it’s working. His charity is extremely visible, while the public doesn’t understand how much he took and deadweight lost with his monopoly.
It’s like a burglar breaking your window, stealing your TV…
…
Years pass…
…
Here have a free TV! I am so generous!
But his charity works abroad a lot, so isn’t it more like a burglar stealing your TV, selling it and buying lifesaving drugs for third world children for the money?
lobbying the gov for strict IP law, he buys pharma stock before awarding the contracts for buying all the drugs to make money on that as well
Billions in deadweight losses 30 years ago is part of why they aren’t already making their own lifesaving drugs by now, and why the drugs are still so expensive. He stole their TV too.
