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The problem with capitalism today, is it is in a feedback loop where the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer. The richer you are the lower your interest rates are on a loan because you are considered a safer investment. The poorer you are the higher your interest rates, because you are a high risk. It is more expensive to be poor, so you have less money to save and use to get out the cycle. While when one is rich they have excess capital, which they just can reinvest and use to increase their profits.

True, the rich are getting richer, but not at the expense of the poor.

If the poor were getting poorer, it would be better to be poor 50 years ago than to be poor today, right? But -- speaking for myself -- I'd much prefer to be poor today. The capitalist system has enabled the number of millionaires and billionaires to grow... but has also benefited the poor. Clothing, and food are all more affordable now than they used to be. Affordability of essentials is important to the poor. In 1950, food expense took up 1/3 of a household budget; now it's less than half that. And technology is now widely available to members of all social classes. Last year's billionaire smartphone (iPhone 6) is today's a middle class device.

And technology has enabled new businesses to form. That excess capital that funded eBay has allowed for thousands of small businesses to launch. That's a good thing for the lower class. On top of that, one of the billionaires created by eBay is giving it all away.

I really wanted to correct you and point out that Jeff Bezos has donated much more then 42 million dollars to charities but it doesn't look like he has. Many other Billionaires have pledged to give away at least half their fortune before they die. Bezos has not: https://givingpledge.org/

Looks like he is a greedy git!

Well, let's see, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have both been heavily involved in massive charity to the developing world, especially in regards to malaria. Apparently some billionaires are more than willing to do so without having guns pointed at them. And then there's the Giving Pledge http://givingpledge.org/ where a group of wealthy philanthropists have committed to giving most of their wealth to charity. That motivation is clearly partially out of peer pressure. So apparently peer pessure and empathy both work to get billionaires to listen, which is just like how normal people work. Imagine that. Of course, none of this is at all relevant to the issue at an, since neither assisted suicide laws nor the vast majority of our other laws are decided on by billionaires.

He should hoard money like Ellison...

Ahem.

A lot of people would just sit on their fortunes (Warren Buffet) or piss it away on political bullshit (Koch brothers). I know a lot of the crowd here is anti-Microsoft, but it's nice to see Bill Gates doing something with his hoard and something halfway-geeky to boot!

Yeah The Oracle from Omaha should give away large chunks of his wealth to philanthropic causes. Oh wait . . .

while gates apparently did it because it was 'expected' for the billionaires club

I remeber BG running around in the 80's telling everyone he was going to give most of his fortune away when he turned 50, I was surpised he kept his word. Gates and Buffet actually founded what you call the billionaires club, Bono is not a member but I also admire his generosity. This doesn't mean these people are saints (read the list, they're definitely not), but it does indicate they recognise where the money came from and are giving back the best way they know how. For that they should be immortalised (ala: Mr. Nobel)

[Buffett] has openly stated his disagreement with the concept of inheritance, and keeping in line with his beliefs, he has slated for most of his wealth (~90%) to be given away to various charitable organizations.

More importantly, Gates and Buffett have also pursaded roughly 50 gazzillionaires to make similar philanthropic pledges. As a cynical old fart I have to say I was suprised to find Zuckerberg and Ellison on that list.

And unlike Zuckerberg, [Buffett] is completely self-made, and is worth just as much (and has much more tangible holdings to his name, too).

Facebook is valued at ~$50B by share price. According to the Forbes 2010 rich list, Zuckerberg's personal wealth is $7B which is significantly less that Gates ($54B) and Buffett ($45B). At #42 of the Forbes list, Zuckerberg is notable mainly because of his age and the speed with which he accumulated his wealth.

He's the rich founder of MS, yet he's an awesome philanthropist and geek father keen to educate his kids properly.

You have stuff to learn from this guy.

One of the big things that his Brain Science Institute does is coordinating maps of protein expression ( http://www.brain-map.org/ ) -- a kind of Google Earth for an interior landscape. They've only catalogged a few hundred of the 10,000 genes that are expressed in the brain, and their visualization leaves a lot to be desired, but it's an important start for an enormous project that will take more billions than even Allen has to complete.