Didn’t he say this a decade ago and is now more rich than he was back then?
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:
If you really want to help people, buy media, buy politicans and get REAL change that will actually last.
Did he stutter?
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
Sure. The Gates Foundation gives the money to the Totally Not A Tax Dodge foundation which quietly pays the Gates kids as much as they want. I’m sure it will be more elegant than that, but that’s the basic grift.
Meanwhile, Gates uses his reputation as a philanthropist, and all the soft power from controlling billions to further his own interests and cement his personal philosophy as the only option.
The charity means that the American people have no control at all over how the money is spent, so the plebians have to beg at their door for money to be used in the way that Gates says it must be used.
foundation which quietly pays the Gates kids as much as they want
Any sources?
You’re asking me to cite a source for Gates’s donation to the “Not a Tax Dodge Foundation”? After I said "I’m sure it will be more elegant than that, but that’s the basic grift. ”
Please go look up the term “hypothetical”. You might want to investigate the Onion too.
No, I’m asking for articles about payments made from the Gates foundation to the Gates children.
It’s the first I’ve heard of this and I’d like more details.
I will say, the business of fake charities is so common that it does sound almost preferable to make their own, and actually understand where aid is needed in the world.
It’s an old topic for me, but I do remember hearing about the B&MGF working on clean water solutions in other parts of the world.
Also; Warren Buffett recently pledged to the charity, while having his own trust for his kids. That action wouldn’t make sense if the charity just existed to protect family.
American people have not been known for wise choices lately.
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
“plans”
Can we quit running billionaire’s PR campaigns for them? These people are not our friends, and giving back a portion of what they stole (always in the most public way) doesn’t change that
To his kids and their charities? Reminder that Bill gates is every bit as exploitative and evil, he didn’t become a billionaire by paying fair wages. This is all PR to try and save his reputation as everyone turns on billionaires. Like buffet, he just shuffles his money to his kids and calls it charity
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.
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)
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.
To his charity? Oh Bill, you shouldn’t have. Go fucking die billionaire scum…
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.
I’ll give him credit for it when it fucking happens
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.
Using all his money and influence to advocate taxing the super rich significantly would be helpful.
He does actually. https://observer.com/2024/09/bill-gates-bernie-sanders-tax-wealthy/
He and warren are some of the smarter billionaires, they realize having infinite money is not actually very useful.
Not to say there’s any thing good about there being billionaires in the first place, but there is a spectrum.
Buffet has rescinded his giving in favour of leaving a trust to kids…who are senior citizens. If you cant stand on your own by then, you dont deserve to make it.
His son recently gave half a billion to Ukraine, out of pocket. I get the impression they At least have their minds on the right side of history.
What would be great is if the trust is designed to be given to charities, rather than for his kin’s space flights. But they may do that anyway.
The other gave money so he could ride along with ICE
I don’t believe there is a spectrum at all. If you keep going to get to that level of wealth you have a fucked up mind. Most people would be content and stop.
Now I could see that if you make something and go from nothing to selling for a billion then maybe, but even then I’d want rid of most of that wealth as I don’t need that much.
Well if you just manage your money properly, it grows. I would argue it’s better to do that and give you money away rather than not manage your money properly. In the end, more money goes to good causes that way.
If they “stopped” that would mean leaving their money in a bank account sleeping. The only entity benefiting from this would be the bank.
Bill Gates deserves a lot of shit for creating the original big tech monopoly. But I’ll say this about him: At least he’s not hoarding his money to build a secretive compound to hold hundreds of kids he spawned with right wing crazy women for the purpose of creating a future master race.
How do you know this? It would cost less than 1% of his wealth, and it was an objective of his good friend Jeffrey Epstein.
Yes, but, why does he have to spread the spend now over 20 years? After which he still has like a billion left. If he gave that all away, those 99% right now, he still would be a billionaire AND have maximum impact with his money. Sorry, he can’t be excused either. Good intention but again there is some ulterior motive behind this “slow” spending. Like always.
He could be rapping kids and that would still be less nefarious than having created windows
So many bsods
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.
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.
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
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.
Maybe he could have started by not stealing that money in the first place. We funded that shit with the window tax
you seem to be all over the thread defending gates. Do you really think this is how a good willed person helps people? by preventing vaccine patents, and using impoverished kids for testing.
He’s creating pathway to funnel his money where he wants it, his own family, with least criticism, and defended by short sighted stringent followers like you.
You think preventing vaccine patents was the bad outcome? I don’t even know how to begin with that, I don’t feel any need to defend if that’s your stance.
