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.
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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.
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.
He should open low cost private schools and libraries. We’re going to need them.
Don’t even have to build new buildings in a lot of towns. Just renovate the Carnegie buildings that are still there.
Pretty sure most of his funding goes to poor countries
Yeah to trial untested vaccines there.
Are there any rich countries with malaria?
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:
Sorry Bill but it’s too late and not enough. I still want to eat the rich and that includes you.
Although I‘ll admit if all billionaires did this instead of - oh you know - investing in fascism and actively dismembering democracy globally I might feel different about this. But as things stand I am done with billionaires. We cannot coexist. Simple as that.
Isn’t he literally the only billionaire who has been donating a lot over the years?
But yes, fully agree. There’s no reason any person should be that rich. They’re cause and symptom of a fucked-up system
How did he get to be a billionaire? By standing on the throats of others, he could not have created that wealth without harm.
Yes I’m not disagreeing
I think a big problem with our financial system is people with wealth have the ability to siphon wealth out of companies through the stock market. Ultimately that company is paying shareholders with profit generated by the workers. A billion invested with just 5% dividends would take many lifetimes of constant work for an individual to pay off a single time, let alone every year. Yet that’s how it is. Billionaires get richer and richer and their blood sucking proboscis gets bigger and bigger.
We live in a financially feudal society where the Lord’s have no responsibility to tend to the land.
McKenzie Scott (Bezos Ex-Wife) is doing what she can to get the divorce money to where it normally doesn’t land, so if we eat the rich, i’d currently say she’s off limits, pending good behavior.
Dinner sentence with reprieve.
Absolutely not. I think others give a bit less, but they’re just not public about it.
Warren Buffet makes $5B annual donations to charities. He’s an investor, so if he gave it all out as a lump sum, he wouldn’t be able to make more to donate next year (and aside total received, many charities work better with consistent yearly funding)
… Can I have some?
I think if you go to Africa and start an NGO working with Malaria, then yes.
Bill + Melinda Gates Foundation is a fun litmus test for leftists because you either have to claim (and secretly hope) Gates is a fraud or admit that not all billionaires are evil.
To the average non-leftist it is very obvious he cares about humanity and is doing his best to help it.For the average supporter of the trump regime, it’s a globalist conspiracy—Gates is seen as a symbol of elite overreach, vaccine mandates, and technocratic control.
True. And as much as I hate to ally with a group that I see as mostly ingorant and foolish…
If I must to choose between Bill Gates and an ignorant Trump supporter - one of the two categories has ever helped me change a flat tire on the side of the highway.
I think they’re largely wrong for why they dislike Gates, but they’re not wrong that he’s on the opposite side of an unprecedented self-propegating wealth gap and class war, from the rest of us.
Yes but they’re hypocritical in nature. They elected another billionaire to lead
Agreed. They suck. I just try to remember that they’re still actually on my (non-billionaire) side of the class war, even though they’re ingorantly actively hurting our shared cause.
I’m not actually being generous though.
My motive is knowing that the billionaires really want me to forget that even maga clowns are my natural allies, and could still benefit my cause in the future.
And as much as I hate to ally with a group that I see as mostly ingorant and foolish…
There’s nothing to hate about it, sharing a view isn’t allying. Political ideologies are about having consistent positions, not blindly opposing others. In fact, when you strip away all their nonsense delusions, plenty of them have the same material needs and interests as you so there is inevitably some common ground. Like you said elsewhere, we’re on the same side of the class war, whether they realize it or not.
The foundation exists because of Melinda.
Bill is, and always has been, a sociopath. It’s a requirement to becoming a billionaire outside of inheritance. He ‘cares’ about humanity because it’s a useful vector through which to launder his reputation.
A truly uplifting story would be if he were advocating to prevent billionaires from existing. Any society which tolerates that level of wealth concentration is suicidal.
A truly uplifting story would be if he were advocating to prevent billionaires from existing.
Hell, he has all the means he needs to get ACTUAL progressives elected. The man is a piece of shit through and through.
What is your argument that it is not an advertising budget
Bill + Melinda Gates Foundation is a fun litmus test for leftists because you either have to claim (and secretly hope) Gates is a fraud or admit that not all billionaires are evil.
There’s no contradiction. Having that much money hoarded in the first place is a gross misallocation of social resources gained by not paying workers what their labor is worth, not to mention all the horrible acts Microsoft has committed to gain that profit. A leech who pays a few percent to charity is still antisocial and should be removed from society.
Billionaires are evil, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are all consciously evil. They’re “evil” like cancer.
Of course, many of them are consciously evil, too, but obviously that part is a choice.
Cool, give me some you weird old cuck.
Do it now motherfucker.
THIS. EXACTLY THIS.
It takes planning and must be done in stages? I suppose he does start with it now.
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
Maybe pay some fucking taxes first, Bill.
I’m fairly certain he pays every last cent he government asks of him.
The problem is that the government has been unwilling to ask for more, and the current one certainly won’t.He has been advocating for higher taxes for while though, like backing the Washington Income Tax initiative with his father:
Bill Gates Sr., father of the Microsoft Corp. co-founder, and about two dozen other supporters of Initiative 1098 turned in 350,000 petition signatures Thursday in Olympia, many more than the roughly 241,000 required to get on the ballot. The campaign says it will turn in an additional 20,000 Friday. Gates said that it was time “to make our tax code fair for the middle class and small businesses.”
He has been advocating for higher taxes for while though
Yeah, that’s called PR. The billionaires love living in a world where they can say they support something and take credit for that position in full knowledge that they’ll never actually be held accountable for it.
Yo this motherfucker fights diseases that kills millions and absolutely is nowhere near Musk or his shit filled ilk
Stop consuming right wing propaganda. This dude tries more than most let humans be human fuck sake not like he set this system up
But doesn’t support FOSS tech
I’m not going to praise someone for throwing in an amount that, to you and me, is equivalent to a few dollars. Proportionate to our income, I’ve donated more to fighting malaria than Gates. This is basically purchasing PR.
Stop consuming right wing propaganda.
I’m on the FOSS instance, we’ve been hating Gates since 1976.
not like he set this system up
He’s one of the very few people with the individual power to change it.
This dude has that button box that says “press me for a million dollars but someone somewhere will be hurt” and he spends his days pressing that button over, and over, and over, and over again.
If he wants my affection, he needs to do this now. I will 100% change my tune if he wakes up tomorrow and donates 99% of his wealth here, in the US.
Also, I think the world would be a better place if people didn’t simp for billionaires. His business practices are robbing all of us of value we should be getting for our taxes.
donates 99% of his wealth here, in the US.
Why would he do that when he could donate money to helping the worlds poorest people have access to clean water and education…?
His business practices are the result of a very toxic business landscape that operates on corrupt business practices.
He still spent a good chunk of his wealth battling something
He also invented that toxic landscape, ever heard of E.E.E
And that is exactly what he and his class makes sure of via their politics and clandestine political
briberylobbying efforts.
Good guy bill, saw him also giving shit to Musk as well recently
Bill Gates accused Elon Musk of killing poor children as he announced Thursday that he would donate his remaining fortune to his charity
What a turn around from the 90’s
Don’t get fooled, nothing changed he just step up his pr game
what’s to be fooled with? i appreciate that he donates and advocates to help people with his money
there are plenty of other billionaires you’ll never hear of and they’ll never have to hear you complain because they don’t step into the limelight at all and just horde their money instead
He donates as a form of investment to avoid paying taxes and to clean his image.
i don’t really give a shit why he’s donating and i don’t know why you attach yourself to conspiracy theories like a trump supporter, he’s donating, he’s helping, that’s all i need to know:
Before the Gates efforts on malaria, malaria drugmakers had largely given up on producing drugs to fight the disease, and the foundation is the world’s largest donor to research on diseases of the poor.[139]
With the help of Gates-funded vaccination drives, deaths from measles in Africa have dropped by 90 percent since 2000.[140]
The foundation has donated billions of dollars to help sufferers of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, protecting millions of children from death at the hands of preventable diseases.[140]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gates_Foundation#Criticism
They have an entire criticism section that doesn’t even list everything people in this thread are saying.
Are you aware where you are and how lemmy works?
Gates is an unusual man who deserves a lot of praise. Most billionaires only want to build monuments to themselves. Gates has picked off a lot of projects that have virtually no chance of being funded by anyone or anything else. That’s epic and legendary.
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Agreed.
We eat him last.
The sad thing is that even if he gives away 99% of his wealth he will still be obscenely rich. Multitudes richer than the average man.
That’s not necessarily sad. It can show all these billionaires that they will still be ridiculously wealthy without hoarding
Ridiculous wealth is still a hoard.
That’s very true. No body needs a $500m yacht, like Bill Gates has. I think Zuckerfuck has one too. Elon doesn’t look like a boat guy to me. Although… he might have a submarine. Let’s hope it’s carbon fiber.
Also these people: Zhong Shanshan, Zhang Yiming, Ma Huateng, Colin Huang, Robin Zeng, William Lei Ding, He Xiangjian, Lei Jun, Jack Ma, Wang Chuanfu, Huang Shilin, Li Shufu, Wang Wei, Lu Xiangyang, Qin Yinglin, Qi Shi, Dang Yanbao, Zhang Zhidong, Zheng Shuliang, Wang Xing… to name a few.
Yes.
Since you mentioned a lot of Chinese names, I have to give their government props for jailing and executing[1] a few of them. [Further reading]
But I thought billionaires couldn’t exist under communism? I’m sure there’s a diagram around here somewhere. Oh here it is.
The communist mode of production isn’t a magic switch that a communist movement can suddenly flip on. That would be silly, capitalism didn’t just suddenly appear and create billionaires like that either.
If you’re actually asking that question sincerely, this article I already posted gives a concrete answer to your question.
I’m pretty sure a billionaire hoards by definition
So then, Bill isn’t a billionaire, by definition?
But honestly it does kinda fit, someone like Elon Musk is a billionaire with the sole goal of gaining more useless wealth at any costs, while Gates kinda realised over three decades ago that he has so much already he doesn’t have a need to actually get more.
He’s already given around $100 billion in donations, and probably actually would have ran out of money by now if not for the fact that even though he has sold off his Microsoft stock from the initial 45% down to just around 1%, that 1% has been growing like crazy -15 years ago, it would have been worth around $2.5 billion, today it’s over $40 billion.That original 45% would be worth 1.5 trillion today, btw.
I’ve been sending his chain emails along since the 90s so he owes me some serious interest.
Bill Gates looks so old these days.
On the upside, he’s 69 years old. Noice funny number.
That happens when you get old
But I thought being rich would stop that!
Sure, I’ll do it after I’m dead.
Or maybe not. Guess you’ll have to outlive him to find out if he’s just a scummy billionaire like the rest.
Someone’s public relations department is working overtime so Billy boy doesn’t get eaten.
Making good the enemy of perfect.
Like him buying all farmland he can get hands on? That’s not ancient history. Or him monopolising vaccines? That kind of “good”?
Is everything he does good? No. Is this story about a good thing? Yes.
Only if you buy his PR.
He’ll be 90. That’s not all that unlikely
? This isn’t the giving pledge, which is ALSO still active. The Gates Foundation is massively increasing its budget so it won’t survive in perpetuity, trying to fill a portion of the gap created by the death of USAID.
There are many things to be mad about. This is not one of them.