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.
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.
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.”
enters the lottory
What? Is that not how this works?
I’ve been sending his chain emails along since the 90s so he owes me some serious interest.
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.
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?
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
Lol
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?
Bill Gates looks so old these days.
That happens when you get old
On the upside, he’s 69 years old. Noice funny number.
Give it away now instead you piece of shit. If he actually gave a shit he would have donated it all to charities already. It’s just a billionaire farse, fuck him and the rest of em.
He is. He is already giving it all away. He’s been doing it for 25 years and he will continue to do it for the next 20 years.
You have to understand that his value grows over time and selling his stocks en masse would decrease their market value. He’s been maximizing the amount of good done very effectively.
His value grows from exploiting even more people.
You keep repeating the claim that selling his stocks rapidly would tank their sale value. Let’s see your math.
OH NO! OH GOD NO! The US Tech Workers! They’re being forced to use, oh god no, forced to use Visual Studio Code *vomits
Oh the exploitation!
First, pick up a book.
Second, you seem to be assuming all of his investments have only tech workers, and that they’re all very well paid.
Lmao
Stocks are an unpredictable mess of human behavior; you can’t put anything in a calculator to see what they will be tomorrow. It is based on market confidence.
90% of investors won’t buy claims of “It’s just for charity” and will only see a massive sell off of MSFT, and drain the rest in turn through panic sales. It’s how every stock exchange crash has happened (though it can happen to just one or a few companies)
The basic lesson for finance as in all things is whatever you want to do, it’s better to do it slowly over time. Even charities work better if they have funding over a long period to hire staff and plan events, rather than a sudden billion all at once for a room of 8 volunteers to figure out.
He’s been doing it for 25 years and STILL managed to reach 133 billion? No, I call bullshit. You don’t just accidentally end up with that kind of money while “giving it all away”, get real.
When you own shares of Microsoft from 1986 to 2025 yes you do.
So sell and donate. What’s the problem? That it is a lot? He had a lot of time to do that.
The problem is that it’s less than donate and sell over a span of 20 years.
he actually gave a shit he would have donated it all to charities already. It’s just a billionaire farse,
Just not his own goddamned
tax avoidance schemecharityYes, to actual charities.
Which are also tax avoidance schemes
Great tax avoidance. Pay 100% of that money to some charity to avoid paying 20% to government
Careful now. Don’t go painting all charities as a form of tax avoidance just because a lot are used for that.
There are many great charities for many great causes out there.
Depends if you are talking about big charities or actual charities
Don’t advertise scum. This guys is trying to literally spend 99% of his fortune to wipe off all the shit he has done.
Such heinous crimes such as:
Saving hundreds of millions of people from Malaria…
I think they’re referring to Microsoft violating monopoly laws.
Read what other have said in the thread, the guy corrupts everything he touches. Vaccines are a big business and the guy is all about making money.
Do it now motherfucker.
THIS. EXACTLY THIS.
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
Bank Robber vows to give away his stolen funds by 20 years from now to charities of his choosing. He’s one of the good ones! So uplifting!
Bank robber? Stolen funds? Huh?
I guess I will over-explain my snarky comment.
I’m making an analogy with robbing a bank, something that everyone would agree is a criminal activity because:
- Bill Gates is a billionaire. Billionaires hoard wealth that they cannot possibly spend in their lifetimes and use that excess wealth to influence our political processes to get what they want. The existence of billionaires is violence, just not the sort of direct violence we all recognize.
If you don’t find that point convincing:
- The only reason Bill Gates is as wealthy as he is is due to Microsoft being so profitable. I think it’s funny how quickly everyone has forgotten how anti-competitive and scummy Microsoft was during the 1990-2010s (and even today), and they definitely wouldn’t be where they are today without those practices. If you believe in free markets, this should make you angry, because competition is good for the consumer. Anti-competitive practices could be seen as a type of theft here.
A great deal of his wealth is unearned and comes at a cost to society in the form of an unfair technology market. He is the benefactor of a system who rewards those who have the most already, a system that allows your neighbors be homeless, sick and/or without basic necessities.
Kind of like a bank robber has unearned wealth. A bank robber (who got away with it!) giving away their unearned wealth to their favored charities doesn’t really belong in Uplifting News.
Oh those poor US tech workers, living in ghettos, forced to rely on Windows XP and Microsoft Azure in order to survive. Woe is they. How could Bill have done this to them? /s
Lol. As one of those tech workers I’ll never forgive Bill for making slashes the wrong way in DOS.
But also, his foundation does good work and I support it. The amount of hate he’s getting in this thread just builds up the amount of eye roll I have for anyone who describes themselves as a “leftist”
Still leaves him with just over $1 billion, enough for his great great grandchildren to live comfortably forever. Don’t be fooled, this is about tax breaks, not charity. Once you have over a billion in wealth, you’ve won the game of life. There’s nothing you can’t buy, there’s nothing you can do.
Don’t be fooled, this is about tax breaks, not charity.
And don’t forget, this is about laundering reputation. Hence the whole “in 20 years” crap.
Once you have over a billion in wealth, you’ve won the game of life.
More like the game of 100 lives. I’m using $10m as a gross estimation for what a person living comfortably needs to spend throughout their whole life. Sure it varies by country and other factors, but this amount should more than cover a lifestyle in which you literally don’t need to worry about a thing. No need for sketchy investments either: just stuff it in a deposit and you could live off the interest alone, but that’s assuming you have all the money at once.
Truly a financial genius to give up 99% of his wealth for tax breaks…
I figure he donates to his own charity and still has a lot of control over the money either way.
I wonder what thatd look like on his taxes.
Is it really about tax breaks, when the US doesn’t have a wealth tax? Would it prevent his children from dealing with inheritance tax?
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.
2022…I wonder how many people died to protect corporation’s profits in two years of a global pandemic.
The first US full non-emergency-use approved vaccine was Pfizer-BioNTech in August 2021.
Patent laws aren’t something they implemented to stop the vaccines, its the default stance which they, including the Gates Foundation, pushed to change for the greater good.
You didn’t need to explain that patent laws existed before 2020.
In May 2020, WHO, the Government of Costa Rica and other partners launched the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) to facilitate faster equitable and affordable access to COVID-19 health products for people in all countries. C-TAP, which is currently endorsed by 45 WHO Member States, was a response to the global Solidarity Call to Action. Its implementing partners include UNDP, the Medicines Patent Pool, the UN Technology Bank and Unitaid.
https://www.who.int/initiatives/covid-19-technology-access-pool
Medical patents do always cause death, of course. Artificial scarcity protects profits at the cost of lives. Bill Gates, and the Gates Foundation at first, opposed programs to allow poor countries to produce the vaccine themselves.
