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Billions Donated to Charity
Anonymous Philanthropist writes " Warren Buffet , the world's second-richest man, announced over the weekend that he will soon donate 85% of his entire net worth, weighing in at around $37 Billion, to charities, with over 80% of it going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This makes it the single largest monetary donation in history."
Although, it's hard to believe that the timing is entirely coincidental... especially since Bill said he'd be leaving Microsoft over the next two years, and Warren said:
Visualize the world of wine
No wonder the foundation isn't returning calls.
this is fucking awesome
.cig
"The man who dies thus rich, dies disgraced,"
--Andrew Carnegie
How much of that money is coming from MS using it's monopoly and predatory practices?
I'd never pay that much to get into the Guiness Book of Records
$0
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Bravo, sir.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
I wish they would put the money into AI research. If it worked it would help poor people and everyone else more than anything else.
Regardless of any comments about the B&MG foundation or Buffet's motives... ...Jesus Christ, nice going Warren.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
I sincerely applaud Both Bill and Warren for their recent contributions. This is SO important, because they will set an example for other wealthy individuals. When the rich (and that means most of us in the West) start to realize that giving(rather than flaunting) wealth garners the most prestige, the world will be a far better place. Bravo!
Jeremy
Mark 12: 41-44
41 And he sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the multitude putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums.
42 And a poor widow came, and put in two copper coins, which make a penny.
43 And he called his disciples to him, and said to them, "Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.
44 For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living."
Interesting that a guy who clearly has a serious talent for generating wealth, only asks for $100,000 per annum salary.
Puts the salaries of other less talented CEOs who demand far larger pay packets into perspective doesn't it?
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --Albert Einstein
Isn't good enough for you? The prize for abolishing disease, starvation, education and humanity isn't worthy?
come on
if only they diverted a fraction of that amount to my charity, me. ;)
http://hoopsdonuts.com/
Wow, it's going to take alot of work to modify the pyramid to support a new top stone now.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
It's his right to do as he pleases. But donating to the Bill and Melinda show puts rather a lot of financial muscle in one place; with that kind of money he could have established his own foundation, for an independent view of things. Is the Bill and Melinda Foundation able to act in ways which might be other than in the interest of Microsoft ? For example, how would a funding request from Free Software Foundation, or Electronic Freedom Foundation, go down ?
Great, put all the money in one basket and trust the good natured people of the world triumph the mob of money whores trying to get at the money.
It's all bad money anyway; MS made all that money at the expense of innovation. The lost innovation could have cured the problem of ~7,000 children that die each day because of toxic water, the energy problem, the ozone problem, and pretty much everything else. If society simply used the technology avail and ignored the MS's of the world and patent trolls.. the world still wouldn't be perfect, but it wouldn't insanely suck freak dick like gate's.
I'm saying what is common sense, which always has to come off sounding from the far left, or far right, or whatever. In this case the far left. We're doomed by the language we are trapped in.
Stop invalid scientific research. Ask your local scientists to feed their lab rats with a phytoestrogen-free chow.
In a show of one-upsmanship, the FSF gives away free software to starving children in Africa. And SCO sues the FSF for violating its patent for giving free software to starving children.
Get some up to date info please... The last time that the data that page uses was SEVEN years ago. SEVEN.
Unless I missed something, your link didn't say anything to imply anything at all regarding the B&MG Foundation.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
"The man who dies rich, dies thus disgraced."
"Thus" was in the wrong place.
After a lifetime of not paying taxes on the billions, now he's still going to stiff the taxman even after arguing before Congress on what a "critical role" estate taxes have.
Nice.
Saying "prize" doesn't make it objective and a "humanity prize" could mean anything.
Seastead this.
Yeah, more Windows to starving Africans!
Table-ized A.I.
This passage is not meant to deride those who have earned much and given generously (as the parent seems to intend for it to do); it is intended to countermand society's view (throughout history, in all of society) which respects those who have power (which in many cases == money) and looked down absolutely upon those of modest means despite whether they are persons of great honor, dignity, and heart.
Certainly if those who have attained great wealth have done so via exploiting others then those wealthy deserve derision. But merely to be successful and powerful is not an indictment. The old camel-through-the-eye-of-a-needle quote is often misinterpreted in the same way. The meaning of that passage is to point out that with wealth comes great power and with great power comes great temptation. So if you don't have the wealth/power, it may be easier for you to live a clean/good life (i.e. to pass into heaven).
That's about the worst thing you could have said. Come back when you have thrown $37 billion ("scraps") at some school system or whatever you think is the best thing to save humanity from its own stupidity. THEN and only then can you talk. /.; the M&B Gates Foundation does not finance alcoholics and good-at-nothings - actually they are one of the few charities that DO follow up on what they finance and they withdraw funding if not satisfied with the results.
Really you should realize that what "this kind of people" wants has got *nothing* to do with you, they won't even acknowledge your presence because you're a worthless piece of... scrap. Do you really think they *care* about keeping you in line or any of the bullshit you were spewing? Geez, the arrogance. Oh and take the time to do your research before your next idiotic post on
Global warming is a cube.
Gates is an avid card player so he might even appreciate the analogy. He's done some evil things, but it came out all right in the end because he's donating practically all his winnings to charity, and doing so at a relatively young age. Had he not been so greedy and obsessed, a much broader spectrum of people in the software business might have become wealthy or affluent, and we would undoubtedly have had a more interesting marketplace ecology in the personal computing business over the past 15 years. But I doubt that the incremental contributions to charity would have had nearly the same impact that Gates and Buffett are making now.
He and Buffett will be remembered as great Americans for their charity, while his past role as founder and leader of Microsoft will be debated for decades.
Yeah, I wondered the same thing. Although we don't often think of charities as something that "compete" with each other, in reality they do; only instead of competing for business, they compete for places to spend money -- that is, projects to work on. They basically compete to out-good each other.
It seems like giving more money to one massive charity, although it might allow them to take on projects that are even larger in scale than before, is not as good for everyone as starting a second charity would have been.
Just think that you're some organization who would like to get some funding for something. Wouldn't it be better if there were two multi-billion-dollar charities you could apply to, instead of just one? That way, if Bill and Melinda had their fill of feeding starving [Asian/African/Mideastern] people this year, there would be another place to apply to. But by giving the money to one giant charity, in effect we create a monoculture: if you don't get any money from the One Giant Charity, or heaven forbid you're doing something that the One Giant Charity doesn't like or doesn't choose to support (cough*OLPC*cough), then you're shit outta luck. Or what if the leadership of the One Giant Charity goes downhill in time? Having two charities might serve as counterpoises to each other, keeping themselves honest. There are lots of reasons why a duopoly is better than a single overwhelming entity, even in the field of charities.
There's room in the world for more than just Bill and Melinda's pet charity...I would have liked to see something set up that could have given funding to the things that they choose not to support.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Gates isn't a nazi but he uses nazi tactics? Microsoft is evil? WTF??? My parents occasionally give me presents too. Nazi tactics? My boss runs a business that benefits 90% of people who uses her product, but has many unhappy customers due to a bad service ethic...is her company evil? Dude, get some perspective.
Good people do good things. And evil things. Bad people do bad things, and good things. It is not the result that assigns the morality, it is the approbation of the means, the intent, and total content of the person's character. I submit to you that you know basically none of these things about Bill Gates.
Oh, and p.s., Bill Gates, the person, is not isomorphic with Microsoft, the company; hasn't been since the halcyon days of, well, never. The company, if a company can be conceived as a group of people, was always more than him. I also take issue with the idea that a corporation, as an entity in itself, has a moral valence. People are good or evil; corporations are merely a mechanism for a group of people to do something efficiently in a capitalist system.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Also note that as much as this guy hates the M$ pyramid scheme, he used Excel 95 to provide his information...
An objective-driven foundation would seem natural for businessmen to push.
It isn't.
Why? Because they're afraid of what setting certain achievable and sustainable marks would do for their reputations.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Are you trying to discredit Mesna here? Not that it needs it, but damn, if you're actually an example of the smart women in of Mesna, give me a dumb blonde any day.
I really hope this is humor that I'm just smart enough to see where it's supposed to be funny, but not smart enough to laugh at.
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And I haven't even drilled down into the idiocy of the content of the post, for instance, confusing donating money to a CHARITY for donating money to a PERSON.
Buffet has a record of opposing tax cuts that help him stay richer, and of being a conscious and charitable person. So save your sour grapes.
Mensa, my ass.
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
Seriously, that's not funny. Maybe if their practices weren't so predatory then we wouldn't have to donate so much to charity because the original companies would still be around...
So, let's see here... the Gates foundation does things like fix up millions of kids with innoculations they wouldn't otherwise get, bringsd truckloads of networking infrastructure to places like New Orleans when the local government doesn't have a chance of procuring it on their own that fast, provides millions for scholarships, and so on. Are you actually suggesting that if Netscape had managed to make a real go at being a stand-alone business, or if BeOS had thrived, that there wouldn't be no place for the billions in philanthropy that Gates is doing?
Are are you certain that part of Netscape's plans included clinics in Africa? Or that despite Novell being largely annoying in so many ways, they would have somehow also gotten into fund raising if they'd pursuaded more people to stick with their NOS? You're trying to set up a false dichotomy just because you like demonizing Bill.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Gates obviously was listening when the man in charge of this asked for money :)
I thought you were talking about Bill Gates.
I'm glad to see so much money being donated, but I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed in Warren Buffet's choice of charities. I always thought Buffet was concerned that applying his money to numerous differnet causes and charities would be a waste of its potential and that the money would have a greater imapct if all of it was applied to a single cause. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, tackling many different problems like health and education, seems contrary to this idea. I was kind of hoping that he would choose a single cause like HIV/AIDS, Cancer, MS, Alternative Energy, Water Purification Techniques, etc. with the idea that such a large donation would be disruptive in nature and cause a surge in scientific research and even a boost in the number of science-based degrees awarded in higher-ed. Oh well, I'm sure it will still go to good use, so thanks for showing there are still some decent people in the world Warren!
" Coke is reknowned for having a terrible human-rights record (assassinating union leaders, distributing radioactive and toxic sludge to Indian farmers as 'fertilizer', etc)."
Why in the high holy fuck would CocafuckingCola have anything to do with nuclear/toxic waste. They make a soft drink for christsakes.
Thanks for the tip...think I'll send them a few bucks myself.
rj
We should always analyse such events with a great deal of realism.
Exactly my friend! We should note that this will be really beneficial.
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
/. is an abbreviation for a popular 'news for nerds' website also called slashdot.
M&B is an abbrevisation for Melinda and Bill (Gates)
Why is it the billionare philanthropists in the US don't finance prizes for objective criteria?
Because life is not some reality tv show where a conclusion is needed within 12 1 hour episodes with a final live show for that extra ratings hit.
Doing "good work" is a long and slow process and hard enough without quarterly process reports.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
You are truely a moron.
Do you honestly believe financing projects for new technology is better than financing projects for humanity? One may argue they're equally important but new technology will never out-weigh humanity.
Besides, it is his money and who really cares what he does with it... I believe this is the most noble thing he could have done - whether it be the Gates Foundation or any other foundation.
MS made all that money at the expense of innovation. The lost innovation could have cured the problem of ~7,000 children that die each day because of toxic water
Riiiight. Because Netscape and Apple were just on the brink of their new Magic Clean Water From Sewage For A Penny technology when Bill pushed them out of the way.
which always has to come off sounding from the far left
You think? I think you'd better not actually say crazy things in the same post you're using to lament that people (from the left, as you say in your example) sometimes seem to say crazy things.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
One of the strengths of the US academic science funding model is that the government tends hedge its bets by setting up multiple agencies with overlapping agendas. For example, in engineering, there's DARPA, there's the NSF, several of the armed forces have their own quasi-independent funding arms, larger states like California have significant grant programs, etc.
Yes, there is the inefficiency of duplicated administration costs. But the upside is, a truly good idea has a better chance of finding funding, even if the program manager at one of the agencies is not sold on the idea. This lessons the risk of a game-changing idea going unfunded.
Buffet would have been better off setting up an independent foundation making independent funding decisions, rather than doubling BMGs bets, especially since BMG really has enough money to pursue multiple large goals.
This is an old person trying to get into heaven.
"To further its work, the foundation currently has just over $30 billion in assets, a purse built up from Bill and Melinda Gates' gifts of $26 billion and appreciation in its broadly diversified investments (which at the moment contain no Microsoft)."
:P
Of course it contains no Microsoft, Gates isn't silly enough to invest in a company whose share price is going to shit with no real prospects of improvement in the forseeable future
That is not the case here. No one can afford to give away 37 billion dollars, not even the second richest man in the world. Only special people walk away from 80 percent of their life savings, whether they've saved a few bucks a month like that janitor who gave $2 million to the University of Great Falls or the laundry lady who gave $150000 to the University of Southern Mississippi, or they've amassed amazing wealth through high finance.
Would that we all had the principle and bravery to finally deny the love of money and consumerism. "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also". Whatever else Warren Buffett is, he managed to make the end product of his life's work into charity.
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
Before I know whether I should take you seriously, you must answer one question for me: do you, or do you not, wear a hat made out of tinfoil?
When this
article came out, the Slashdot community seemed impressed that Bill Gates was giving 750 million (or 1.5% of his net worth). 85% is a substantial donation. I don't care how wealthy he is.
While I agree with you that this was the best thing for him to have done, there are always other options. To go with what the GP said, he could have set it up as a contest to find a cure to something like AIDs with the prize covering the research costs plus a nice bonus. This could get a lot more focus put into research. But since there is no way to know if this would work or not, his actions are the best possible currently.
First off it's not real charity.
Much of it is simply targeted to block F/OSS. Even the actual charity parts deal with dumping millions on ineffective, corrective treatments involving expensive medications and getting some level of matching funding from the local governments. And those expensive medications come from big pharmas which, surprise, Gates is heavily invested in.
There is also a strong element of PR in the Foundation: since 1995 MS has had various plans on how to direct corporate giving in ways that guarantee the greatest returns to the company. We've also been seeing loads and loads of vanity puff-pieces appearing across a wide variety of news publications. The NYT even publishes ones written by (or ghost written for) Chairman Gates himself.
The point here is that in this case it appears that charity is simply being used as tool to affect the market in ways that lobbying and plain old sales can't. It allows individual institutions or regions to be targeted quickly with a level of speed that defending governments and businesses have trouble reacting to.
It's seems that with this infusion of funding from Buffet, MS, through the Gates Foundation, crosses the line from being a lobbying entity to being fully a political/ideological movement.
Welcome to the next level.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Coke makes radioactive waste? And has people assassinated? Bershire Hathaway used its "tentacles" to "screw over hundreds of thousands of homeless in the wake of Hurricane Katrina"?
You, sir, are either a troll or you have smoked so many SCO-linux licenses that you see AT&T trade secrets in the crawler at the bottom on Fox news, which you watch with your eyes closed, using only the filling of your teeth. The fact that you can still type leads me to conclude that the former is far more likely.
--MarkusQ
But why the Gates foundation? If Bill Gates is running that and he has the money to run it... why not give it to a charity that isn't being headed by a really really rich person. Why not like for a cure in Parkinsons? or Jerry's Kids?
disclaimer: This is in no way to belittle what he did, and it's a great awesome thing to do.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Don’t tell me you’ve bought into the right-wingers’ rhetoric on this issue. Not with that signature line.
The extreme centre is the paper's historical position. --Geoffrey Crowther
memorably screwing over hundreds of thousands of homeless in the wake of Hurricane Katrina
Hello, Mr. Troll.
Please try a little bit of reality in there, somewhere. B-H does not provide insurance to homeowners, or own companies that do. They re-insured insurance companies so that those had anything like the financial backing to even be in the insurance business at all. If you think you can raise the capital to start offering insurance to people who live below sea level in a hurricane zone, only charge them a few dollars a month because that's all they can afford, and then pay out enormous amounts to the residents of thousands of square miles while staying solvent enough to continue to cover the cars, businesses, and other customers you have all around the country... go for it.
Oh, and just in case you forgot: private insurace never covers floods. That's the government flood insurance program you're thinking about. Warren Buffet has absolutely nothing to do with that, never did, and never could. Just relax, have a nice cold Coke, and cool down before you post again.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
So you are continuing with your belief that your socks are both plaid and translucent? Unfortunate.
I have some great news for you them. There is a floor amount before the government sees anything. On a federal level that floor is at $2 million. State taxes vary from state to state b ut in New York, for example, the floor is $1 million. This article is one of the sources I found from a quick google search.
There is:
Reminder: Most relatively simple estates (cash, publicly-traded securities, small amounts of other easily-valued assets, and no special deductions or elections, or jointly-held property) with a total value under $1,000,000 do not require the filing of an estate tax return. The amount was $1,500,000 in 2004 and 2005. For 2006 through 2008, the amount is raised to $2,000,000.
From the IRS site.
Do you have mental problems? It the the fault of the poor
that they borrow more that they can pay for. Buffet
is providing a service.
The only thing that has left a hole in this word are stupid people.
What have you done for the world lately?
Ok SuperBanana - I have taken your wish seriously and I just wrote and passed a law that exempts the first $2,000,000 of an estate from any federal taxes.
The first $2M left behind to the family of a dead person will be tax free, and the federal government won't take a dime of it.
That ought to cover the total estate of any non-super-rich people you have ever known, giving their heirs 100% of every penny they ever earned - surely enough to cover Joe Q Public Sr's estate transfer to Jr (life savings too.)
Happy now?
Sincerely,
GWBush
(See also, Glonoinha's new Inheritance Tax Rules)
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
I was talking with a friend after recently watching a documentary on the exploitative practices of Wal-Mart Corporation. After discussing several different eminent billionaires' philanthropic habits, we eventually came upon Warren Buffet. I had read about his views on inheritance, but I've never really heard of him giving away much money to charities. That he can willfully and cheerfully do this is a hugh testament to the human spirit. In corporate America, we see backstabbing and deceit as the rules of the game...
It's just really nice to see something good happen for a change.
And I thought you were dead.
What is Mesna? I've never heard of it. Could you give a link to Mesna, or are you the aforementioned dumb blonde?
:)
Maybe you should ask a MENSA member.
Pedantry at its best.
Rich people can afford clever accountants to find the means to tuck away hundreds of thousands or millions for trust funds so that their kids never have to worry about whether their card will be declined at the grocery store.
Even the upper middle class can do this. Do you want to know the secret?
Life insurance. It's exempt from taxes. So if you've stocked away several hundred thousand, talk to insurance agents. You can make a deal for a big insurance policy that won't be taxed upon your death. It's not unreasonable to pay the insurance company 25-30% so that the government won't take 50%.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
What do you think it's made from?
It has been said before, but I think it's not that great that someone else is donating money for me aka the consumer.
Donations and sponsorship are now considered a good thing, for me it means that the product I bought could have been cheaper and that I could have donated the money myself.
As it is now, I'm stripped off my money and the ability to decide where the money goes. Makes me want to quit consumerism, which I'd rather not do since it's good for the economy.
Just a thought, you don't have to agree, of course.
What a terrible, terrible decision.
He should have better spent the money over the years, putting the money back into the cycle, instead of hoarding it.
The world would be a better place if the personal wealth of someone would be restricted to a reasonable value (no-one really needs more than, say, 10 million dollars).
Here's my next completely unrealistic wish:
The goal of companies should not be to create the highest profit, but the highest benefit for its employees.
(i.e. not making millions in profits AND laying off thousands people)
Coca Cola has come under fire in India for selling softdrinks containing pesticides, which in turn contain cadmium and lead, among other toxins and compounds.
United States / Death and taxes
Gilding the elite
Jun 8th 2006 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition
Whatever its outcome, the battle in Congress over the estate tax bodes badly for America’s fiscal future
IMAGE (Corbis)
WHAT weighty issues were preoccupying America’s Senate this week? Soaring health-care costs perhaps, or the fiscal consequences of retiring baby-boomers? Dream on. The country’s top lawmakers argued about a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, which had no hope of passing; a daft law to give native Hawaiians their own government; and repeal of the estate tax, a levy that affects only the richest 0.5% of Americans.
These skewed priorities may be blamed on Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, who sets the agenda and is an aspiring presidential candidate. To bolster his appeal to the Republican Party’s conservative base, he has been pushing for votes on issues the right cares about: flag-burning, gay marriage and, above all, getting rid for ever of the estate tax.
America has had this tax, a levy on the transfer of large fortunes between generations, since 1916. Like Britain, America taxes the estate of the deceased; most other countries which impose such a tax target heirs and their inheritances. The estate tax affects very few Americans (never much over 2% in recent decades, and now far fewer). In the late 1990s it generated just over 1.5% of all tax revenue, or around 0.3% of GDP. Conservatives long for its abolition, which is now tantalisingly close.
George Bush’s 2001 tax cuts created a paradox: the estate tax is in terminal decline, but only temporarily so. Under current law, only estates worth more than $7m for a couple will be taxed in 2009 (compared with a joint exemption of $1.35m in 2000). In 2010 the tax goes altogether. But since all Mr Bush’s tax cuts technically expire in 2011, the abolition lasts only one year. In 2011 the estate tax returns to its pre-Bush form.
This mess clearly needs fixing, if only to avoid a surge in suspicious deaths in Palm Beach in 2010. But how? The House of Representatives has voted several times to make repeal permanent. The Senate meant to do so last year, until Hurricane Katrina’s havoc made it look too callous to give a big tax break to multi-millionaires.
IMAGE
As The Economist went to press, it was not clear whether Mr Frist would succeed this time. Several Democratic senators support the tax’s abolition, but a handful of Republicans think full repeal is too expensive. By one estimate, repealing the estate tax would reduce federal revenues by some $776 billion, or around 0.4% of GDP, between 2012 and 2021. (The costs of repeal are more than the tax actually raises because the bean-counters assume that rich people will shift their assets in a way that reduces income taxes.) One possibility is a “compromise” proposal that would increase the exemption per couple to $10m and cut rates to 15%, a combination that would, in fact, cost almost as much as repeal. Even ardent Democrats agree that a big chunk of estate-tax relief must be kept permanently, perhaps by setting the rates and exemptions of 2009 in stone. That would cost “only” 40% as much as full repeal.
The eve of the baby-boomers’ retirement seems an odd time to abandon a small, but significant, source of tax revenue. If the tax permanently raised 0.3% of GDP, for instance, it would fix about half the hole in Social Security, the public pension plan. And with income becoming ever more concentrated among America’s richest—since 1980, the share of overall income going to the top 1% has doubled from 8% to 16%—it seems an odd time to abandon the country’s
The extreme centre is the paper's historical position. --Geoffrey Crowther
As some of us may know there is a project named One-Laptop-Per-Child that wants to "evolutionize how we educate the world's children".
They chose Redhat OS for their system after offers from MS and Apple to prevent monopoly and restrictions they will imply, and to protect children to be dependent to one company even for a charity like job like this.
But transferring so much money to a monopoly established charity foundation like gate's does not sounds good.
They can simply offer too much charity to poor people of their own products and just make them dependent to some companies.
Offering that amount of money as charity is not simply a good thing to do. The way you will spend it shows the real value of it not the amount of it.
Be like shadow in the light or darkness.KMZ
So this says something of the 'rich' mindset, that there's a certain prestige to being atop a high-profile list. In that sense, I hope a new list is started, keeping track of grand total charitable accumulations amongst individuals. This would be something actually admirable to be atop of, and would promote world good too. That way the otherwise stingy rich might be more encouraged to be charitable, without worrying about losing prestiage.
As some of us may know there is a project named One-Laptop-Per-Child that wants to "evolutionize how we educate the world's children".
They chose Redhat OS for their system after offers from MS and Apple to prevent monopoly and restrictions they will imply, and to protect children to be dependent to one company even for a charity like job like this.
I hope they spend some amounts for this project if they want to make some benefit for humanity.
Be like shadow in the light or darkness.KMZ
While Warren may trust Bill and Melinda to use the money wisely (he is older and probably anticipates dying before them), what happens when Bill and Melinda are gone too? What do we end up with? Well, we could end up with another Ford Foundation. In other words, it could end up straying from some of the common-sense approaches applied now, such as distributing mosquito nets to prevent malaria. It could degenerate into an organization with a questionable agenda, or an organization that simply parcels out donations to other orgs, the primary results of which are (though probably not intentionally) to finance the lifestyles of the "chattering class" in Washington DC and various other world capitols. So, Bill and Melinda, while you still have time, you need to figure out a way to keep that from happening. Poor people can't eat UN studies, and no "blue ribbon commission" ever swatted a single mosquito. When the visionaries pass on, it's inevitable that the committees take over. Maybe that's why Carnegie built libraries in his own lifetime. Today, many are still in use, and there's only so much lunacy that can take place in a building, whereas a monied organization can create no end of politically-oriented drivel.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
So were you joking with the Bill Parish article? Was that a joke. I'm just not getting it. (If it was, Huzzah, deliciously ironic.) I read the article and he doesn't say a single way Microsoft is creating a "pyramid", he just says a lot of conspiratorial allegations and never backs them up. He even goes as far as to pull some numbers out of his ass for the barchart up top. It's a prime example of propaganda technique and poor critical thinking. He even bothers to chide the company for talking up it's own stock. It's a true Michael Moore meets Microsoft, story at 11.
This is a hilarious article. I'm liking it more the further I read. This is BRILLIANT! Check out the pie chart titled "Microsoft is a Cash Machine" there's a 36% chunk labeled "Tax Loophole/Corporate Welfare". No references are provided, no method of calculation given. This has to be a parody.
I love this article!
Cheers.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. - Hunter S. Thompson
It's a form of disrespect.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
Warren Buffet, on the other hand, may dispose of his fortune just as he likes.
I gotta say it... when I read this, I thought that this story would definitely be the one to highlight the average youth and inexperience of the slashdot membership. And from reading through some of the comments, this has certainly been confirmed.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
World is full of ignorants who prefer seeing the UN feeding the poor to stay healthy and kill each other instead of removing dictators who fuck up their own countries.
The same ignorants that don't appreciate investing good fortunes in innovation/progress/science. Oh well I shouldn't care to answer to fucktards like you anyway...go keep whining and demonstrating for gay rights or something
Other spelling errors aside, I like the misspelling of "superior" as "superiour" 'cos, being in her sig, that one's misspelt in ALL of her posts.
Travelling forward in time at a rate of 1 second per second.
And the irony is that a life of luxury does not even make you happy.
Leaders / Copyrights
A radical rethink
Jan 23rd 2003
From The Economist print edition
The best way to foster creativity in the digital age is to overhaul current copyright laws
IMAGE (Reuters)
CRITICS have derided a 1998 extension of American copyrights as the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act” because it stopped early images of the Disney company’s mascot from entering the public domain. But such laws, they argue, are no joke. Extending and strengthening copyrights, they claim, will help a handful of big corporations crush creativity in the digital age. On the contrary, say Hollywood studios and big record companies. Without stronger copyright protection, a wave of piracy will destroy their industries, depriving consumers everywhere of a broad choice of movies, music and books.
Last week America’s Supreme Court weighed into what is rapidly becoming a nasty worldwide battle about the scope and enforcement of copyrights, by rejecting a challenge to the 1998 law on constitutional grounds. But even as it upheld the law, the court expressed misgivings. Blistering dissents from two justices dismissed the 20-year extension of copyright as unwarranted, and even the majority’s opinion hinted that Congress’s decision may have been “unwise”.
The court’s ambivalence is understandable. The growing quarrel over copyright is just one of the many difficult issues thrown up by the spread of the internet and related technologies (see our survey of the internet society in this issue). But of all these issues, the copyright battle is becoming one of the most urgent, and bitterly fought, because it could yet determine the future character of cyberspace itself.
Both sides have a point. Digital piracy does indeed threaten to overwhelm so-called “content” industries. As the power and reach of the internet continue to grow, the illicit trading of perfect copies may well devastate the music, movie and publishing industries. The content industries want to protect themselves with anti-copying technology, backed by stronger laws. So far, they have been at loggerheads with technology firms about how to implement such schemes (see article). But a deal between Hollywood and Silicon Valley is likely eventually. Critics are right to fear that, when such a deal is struck, it will be in the interests of big firms, not the public.
A grand new bargain
The alternative is to return to the original purpose of copyright, something no national legislature has yet been willing to do. Copyright was originally the grant of a temporary government-supported monopoly on copying a work, not a property right. Its sole purpose was to encourage the circulation of ideas by giving creators and publishers a short-term incentive to disseminate their work. Over the past 50 years, as a result of heavy lobbying by content industries, copyright has grown to such ludicrous proportions that it now often inhibits rather than promotes the circulation of ideas, leaving thousands of old movies, records and books languishing behind a legal barrier. Starting from scratch today, no rational, disinterested lawmaker would agree to copyrights that extend to 70 years after an author’s death, now the norm in the developed world.
Digital technologies are not only making it easier to copy all sorts of works, but also sharply reducing the costs of creating or distributing them, and so also reducing the required incentives. The flood of free content on the internet has shown that most creators do not need incentives that stretch across generations. To reward those who can attract a paying audience, and the firms that support them, much shorter copyrights would be enough. The 14-year term of the original 18th-centur
The extreme centre is the paper's historical position. --Geoffrey Crowther
How is trying to eliminate Guinea worm disease and other diseases not an objective criteria?
Planned Parenthood advocates adoption foremost, although abortion is in the cards. It probably isn't the morally perfect operation, but the core mission of educating to prevent early-age/unexpected pregnancy is certainly commendable. If you've got to choose between nothing or the sort of help PP can provide, I'm pretty sure the answer is clear. That is, unless you want more unplanned events to take place, after which the young not-yet-fully-developed people can make up their own mind, with no assistance.
Old Warren is giving them a friendly tap on the nose to the effect of "you call THAT being charitable? Try this for size--and I'm not giving it to anything with my name on it, either. THAT'S charity."
While I think it's great that Mr. Buffet has decided to give the lion's share of his estate to charity, it troubles me that people (and the press) fall all over themselves to shower him with accolades and make him out to be more generous than the average citizen. Mr. Buffet could give away 99.9% of his entire net worth and still have $37,000,000 in the bank. There are no hardships or risks involved in his donations.
Contrast this with charitable contributions made by an average middle class worker. If a family man earning $50,000/year donates $100 to charity annually, he is making an actual sacrifice. That's a week's worth groceries. A tank and a half of gas. Half the monthly electric bill.
So, who is more generous? Mr. Buffet or Mr. Middle-class-working-stiff? Who is more deserving of hosannas?
While points don't mean much to me, I think it is wrong if a sentiment is grounded in a particular belief rather than effort to instigate to mod something "troll".
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
The Walton's are the stingiest greediest family ever. They could learn a thing or two from Buffet and Gates. I'll be sure to give all my money to charity before I go.
For that price we could have hotels in space, a base on the moon, another on Mars, mining in the asteroid belt, a probe on its way to Alpha Centauri and a probe drilling down do the oceans of Europa. When people throw away good money like that it makes me so angry, I just want to go out and make billions myself so I can spend it on something people will actually care about in a thousand years time. That's it, I'm going to start applying some of my math skills to speculating on the markets.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
The past thirty years have made the rich even richer, while unskilled first-world workers have seen their wages stagnate and billions of poor people now live somewhat more comfortably and may soon enjoy a decent material standard of living. Capitalism is not all bad.
How about something reasonable? You could deal with tuberculosis (it's coming back, even more drug-resistant than it was) or one of the many insect-borne parisitic diseases.
Who the fuck modded this flamebait?? This post even contains links to back its theses!
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
One of its biggest aims is to stop the spread of HIV.
Too bad he doesn't have a very good track record in stopping virusses...
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Finally the Gates Foundation will be able to fund purchase of Windows Vista by all the schools in 3rd world countries!
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Do you think he had a Scrooge McDuck-style vault filled with gold doubloons? He's an investor for Pete's sake, which by definition means that his money has been out circulating through the world to finance other peoples' dreams. When you say that such a man is worth $n dollars, you really mean that his outstanding loans are approximately worth $n dollars.
Have you ever read about how well such societies tend to do historically?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Would you rather them perform street abortions, which killed alot of the mothers?
Abortion is here to stay, it will always be around, it's best to have it in a decent medical enviroment to provide the safest way to do it, then let mothers bleed to death from the 50 buck guy down the street.
Signed,
Reality For Life
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
OK, Warren has a big house for midtown Omaha, but anyone who can stand a mortage on a $200k home can live in his neighborhood.
http://volcanovixen21.elowel.org/index.php?l=view
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
You left out the whole passage where Jesus said that ~"what you do to the lesser you do unto me". This is where Jesus said he was hungry but he was not fed, etc. You say that people misinterpet the eye of the needle quote but if you take that quote in conjunction to the one I just said you can interpet it as it is out duty to help others in need. Now with that in mind, could it not be argued that you can become rich simply by not putting an effort to help others? After all, you can think of wealth as a relative thing, an unequal exchange of goods and services which ideally is based on effort and skill (not skill of executing fraud mind you). And yes, with such riches come great responsibilities, but when you have billions of dollars while many come no where close, isn't that a big gap? It would seem reasonable to say that he has lots of power and there is lots poverty, sickness, starvation, etc. Also other threads have pointed out that he has been related to distastefull business practices in Coca-Cola (pun intended, shoot me for it).
Here's another way to look at it. Is it possible for him to devote more effort to helping his fellow man? If so, would he be as rich? Point and case right there.
Capitalism, and it's players strive (conscious or subconsciously) towards monopoly. When monopoly has been achieved prices rocket, when prices rocket people cannot afford their merchandise or services, when people cannot afford things (but more and more is produced more and more efficiently) there will be discontent people.....They're not giving away anything, they are patching their flawed system to be able to keep going. The world as a whole is richer than ever, and the gaps are big and not exacly diminishing...unless you count it in a very absolute manner, which is flawed. I truly believe he's doing it out of philantropic reasons, not many humans can stand watching endless suffering, even fewer humans can stand the thought of being part of the cause for it. Colour me cynic.
If you're not familiar w/ Planned Parenthood, this is a tax-payer funded organization whose primary operation is killing unborn children.
However, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation did give $110 million to save newborn lives. I think that is a more noble cause than trying to save the life of a so-called "unborn child". The "unborn child" is probably not wanted by the parent(s). The parents may not have the financial means, or even the emotional capacity to raise a child.
The National Right to Life Committee has 21% overhead. They raised $1.8 million, and they spent $2.3 million (overspent by almost $0.5 million). They pissed away 1.8 million on educational resources. So 1.8 million later what exactly has changed? They may have coerced a few hundred single mothers into having unwanted children. They haven't put a dent in the number of abortions annually.
You know there is this other tax-payer funded system called Children Protective Services for all the unwanted and mistreated children. The Pro-Lifers could be a bit more effective by actively supporting the Foster Parenting system. At least the state government is putting money into at least two solutions, not to have, or to find a good home for those who aren't wanted. The Pro-Lifers are pissing their money away on propaganda fliers. Ironically the fliers are sent out to other Pro-Life donors. I am sure that is a really effective strategy.
I want Bill to apply his "evil" skills here as well. With such a monumental pile of money, they could buy the entire US government from President down and make them do something useful for the world for a change. Think about it, instead of spending $500B on Iraq, Gates/Buffet $50-70B could buy the government and spend this money on curing cancer and AIDS.
My Mother used to slap me for saying this but somehow it just seems appropriate here.
Supposedly, it only took three nails to hang the last 'perfect' person on a cross!
Everyone of us reading and responding to this article owes at least a small amount of gratitude to Bill Gates and the OS we love to hate.
Don't see the Chaney, Bush, Petroleum folks being benevolent now, do we? Or how about the greedy pharmaceuticals......
Mr.& Mrs. Gates and Mr. Buffet have both my admiration and have ever so slightly renewed my faith that there are "NOT EVIL" companies out there. Lets, hope that some day in the future more will follow in their example.
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It simply wastes your time and truely annoys the pig"
Unless it's sitting in your wallet that is, it's only cold hard cash which ever stops. Money sitting in a bank account is being used by that bank to invest in stock markets etc. It's being loaned out.
Deleted
Here's ingratitude for you.
Rich people hoard all their people and they're labelled greedy.
A man works all his life, and finally, nearing retirement gives away almost all his fortunes and he is also looked down upon.
You just can't win in this world...
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
If you're interested, there's a similar story in the Bhagavad Gita (I think).
A king has organized a huge offering to the Gods when in the middle of the Yagna, he notices a mongoose that is oddly colored. Half of its body was normal and the other half was covered in Gold. The mongoose was rolling about on its normal side in the Yagna arena. The King halts the yagna and asks the mongoose what it was doing. The mongoose then tells them a story:
It narrates the tale of a poor family about to sit down to dinner with the few rice cakes they had managed to save over a week after starving in that period. They suddenly hear a beggar at the door. They usher the man in, bathe him, clothe him and sit him down to dinner. They serve him half of the rice cakes they had saved and watch as he eats, making small talk and fanning him with palm leaves to keep him comfortable. After eating them, he begins to lick his fingers which prompts the mother in the family to bring some more rice cakes from the kitchen and put them in the stranger's plate. He eats these too and starts licking his fingers again. The mother then brings the rest of the rice cakes and serves them to the stranger. He eats and is obviously sated and gets up to leave. The family then leads him to the door. At the door, the beggar turns into Indra (the king of the dEvataas) and tells them that this had been a test and that by their graciousness and humility they had obtained the right to travel to heaven together and led them away. The mongoose who had been watching from the bushes then went into the now empty house searching for any morsels left over. It tripped on the doorstep and rolled on the floor of the house. It was astonished that the part of its body that had touched the floor had turned gold.
The mongoose then tells the King, "I've been on a quest, visiting holy places, to find a place as holy as that house. It appears my quest hasn't ended" and leaves.
'tis but a scratch.
37B may be a lot for one man, but that's $6 per person in the world.
My point is what matters most is not the amount of money but how you spend it. The amount of "good" you will do depends tremendously on it. Sure helping health, food etc is a plus, but there is no bigger help you can provide to the world than economical help. Where did these 37B come from? What really matters is wealth creation. It might be far more useful to develop credit,investements and promote market economy in the world. The old teach how to fish trick. The biggest chance for the third world right now is globalization and many people seem to forget it. Hey I'm not telling Warren Buffet how to spend here, the net influence of giving that money to charity will be positive, but we should not forget that what makes the world a better place in the long term is wealth creation, not redistribution.
\u262D = \u5350
But if you did, you'd see that two of the conditions of the gift deal with this - specifically
and
Meaning that the gifts to the Foundation only keep going while one of the Gateses keeps running the thing, and that they have to spend all of each gift (plus 5% of whatever else they have) each year, to prevent them from keeping it.
Cue The Sun...
OK, I'm not a Christian, so I haven't spent a lot of time studying and interpreting the New Testament. But it seems to me that you're laying a lot of complicated interpretation on this passage. And why? Are you afraid that Jesus will come across as a Marxist? Or worse, a liberal?
A poor person who shares what little they have is making more of a sacrifice than a rich person who gives away billions — and still has billions left. That's a simple fact. It doesn't mean the rich person is evil. Nor does it mean that person who points it out is "sour grapes".
Since I'm not a Christian, I'm not entitled to say who is and who isn't a Christian. But I suspect the Carpenter of Nazereth would not look kindly on your attempts to denigrate those whose sense of their own Christianity conflicts with your neocon ethics.
Hasn't been made from that for over a century now.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
"This just in, an anonymous person has just donated $37 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Our analysts are stumped as to who it could be" :D
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
Furthermore, I have seen statistics showing that salary now represents the majority of income for those in the top 10%, compared to the seventies, where investment returns greatly overshadowed salary. Unfortunately, can't find a reference at the moment, nor can I remember if the top 10% was based on income or wealth.
Still can't find the link, but here is another article from the economist complaining that american shareholders are too generous with their CEOs.
Andrew Carnegie gave way more than that. Keep in mind inflation. Andrew gave a way a larger percentage of his money and tha was more than this amount. He did a lot of small donations, however, not a big one.
I realise you jest, but this has a grain truth in it.
This is what the purpose of religion is. It's to encourage generosity and good-will from people, and to give a compelling incentive for it (ie eternal suffering if you don't). I'm not saying Warren is religious (I know I'm not), but I acknowledge its lasting, profound effect on the values of society and how it has provided a very important counterbalance to selfishness.
A little offtopic, I realise. Sorry.
Oh and, by the way, Go Warren!
...little pathetic, hate filled lives you people lead. A man gives away a vast fortune and all you people can do is complain about how that's not really all that much. $37,000,000,000 is going to help a lot of people in third world countries. Oh, I'm sorry, you're bitter that he didn't donate the money to the EFF or the FSF to fund your little pet projects.
Convoluted tax system!
Libertas in infinitum
You heard it here first.
So were you joking with the Bill Parish article? Was that a joke. I'm just not getting it. (If it was, Huzzah, deliciously ironic.)
A lesson on intelectual integrity from someone who has learnt the meaning of irony from Alanis Morissette? Now, this is hilarious.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
Funny, the Microsoft software I use on my computer lets me use MY computer as I see fit as well.
So as I said, what are the "Champions of Free Software" like oh RMS or ESR doing for charity?
Free Software Foundation
High schools (and schools in general) do need an update. For an illustration, I will provide this advertisement:
Simon's Rock College of Bard exclusively admits younger students who have not completed their high school education. Many alumni go on to become scientists, activists, etc. Ever heard of MoveOn.org PAC? It was started by a Simon's Rock student. I personally have had great success at Simon's Rock. I have avoided wasting two years in a high school that did not offer advanced classes. Generally, I would describe Simon's Rock as a top quality liberal arts college. It is true, though, that early college is not for everyone.
The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has funded a program at Simon's Rock to teach teachers who will later work in new early college programs the foundation is setting up.
If you think about it, there are many features of our education system that date back to Plato, at least. I do not claim to know how to perfect education, but I do claim that it is time to try some changes.
Off topic: Usually pronouns that are not at the beginning of sentences are only capitalized when they refer to deities. And yes, I love Linux and hate Microsoft software.
Simon's Rock College
/rubs hands devilishly
because I do not know Warren Buffet.
But here is my speculation :
Let's say he has come to the conclusion that aids was the major threat to the world population.
But he does not know what criteria to use when it comes down to how to best spend the money.
So he thinks about what would be best for Joe, a one year old kid in afrika that contracted aids from his mother when born.
If he does not get adequate treatment, he will probably die within ten years.
After a while, he has narrowed down his alternatives to two :
1) Give it to the United Nations, which would probably spend ten years arguing how to split the research facilities evenly among the member countries (that is the optimistic version).
2) Entrust it to the guy who, using sleazy tactics, wiped away all the competion in the desktop OS market within ten years.
Joe does not really care which OS africa runs, or if Australia was cheated out of an extra chair in microbiology by Turkmenistam, which struck a backroom deal with Luxemburg.
If I were Joe, I would probably vote for Bill Gates.
I am all for charity (I volunteered at a homeless shelter once a month for years), but I also think that money could go to research and legit startups even if the foundation distributing that money was non-profit.
Too often times (but not always) a free handout does more harm than good. It's that old saying "give someone a fish, they eat today, teach someone to fish they eat for life..."
With that amount of money I think a LOT of groudbreaking research could take place in the medical fields, the tech sector, and even in the aerospace industry. Also reinvesting it in American business/education can give us a heads up over the up and coming Chinese.
Libertas in infinitum
So, who is more generous? Mr. Buffet or Mr. Middle-class-working-stiff?
Neither. If you read Slashdot regularly you would know that Bill Gates is more generous. Idiot.
it's been proven that sending the money to it's final destination will reduce the number of middle men and allow more of it to go where they had intended.
shouldn't they have just given it to SCO/Caldera?
Margaret Sanger was not a racist. Although she believed in eugenics(in the pre-Hitler days, a lot of people did) and Hitler's method of eugenics was quite racist, Sanger made clear statements against Nazi racism and clearly said that her eugenics(which is crap, but that was before we knew enough about DNA and such to know this) was not racist.
You wanna know who the real racists are? The ones who want abortion banned. Such beliefs are based on the stupid belief that women aren't smart enough to decide for themselves and a hatred for poor people, many of whom are minorities. Banning abortion makes the poor poorer(more mouths to feed for the poor, may not matter much for the rich to have 6 kids but feeding them does put a serious dent for the poor) and therefore decreases the quality of living for minorities in America even further. Adoption, you say? Adoption doesn't work unless the child is completely full of defects and white(the people who can afford to adopt usually don't want a black baby unless they need PR), yet again screwing minorities.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Hes not as 'giving' of a person as he seems. He has several agendas, and his $ comes with strings attached inorder to advance his agendas.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Sure it makes everyone feel good, but charities and good causes can quite accidentally destroy local markets putting local producers out of business and turning them into dependants. This devastates shaky economies and creates dependancy cultures.
A good use would be to create a global interest neutral micro loan bank which loans small amounts to individuals in 3rd world countries to pay for improvements. It could also lobby the world bank and developed world governments to get rid of agricultural subsidies, trade barriers etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_loans
On the other hand, education and health are always good ways to spend the money, though they'll skew the market for both.
Deleted
In an attempt to compete with its rival, Google has recently announced Google Charity Beta.
The concept of a moral center doesn't have a place in my morality. I don't really understand the concept. Morals can be thought of as a prescription for success, and as such, a company should have no problem acting morally. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality
Wheee! Watch M$ stock start climbing.
And before you whiners start telling me how many children the BM foundation has saved, let me remind you that the American taxpayers do far more to save children in a given year that this shelter for criminal behavior will do throughout it's existence.
Just another attempt by the filthy rich theives to justify their theft.
Al Capone gave children food and candy when he wasn't sodomizing their mothers or murdering cops.
kids in the jungle don't need to know how to use a friggin computer they need a steady healthy diet. WTF are they gonna do with access to a computer? Make a MYSPACE account?
WHy doesnt he just hire poor people to go around feeding other poor people insteading giving money to this sham of a charity.
I'm sorry to be so harsh, but the parent is just bullshit - and since somebody had the insight to mark it Insightful, I could not resist. It has been shown countless of times that public prizes are one of the best return-on-investments in the world of R&D. For every dollar you spent on a prize, about 10 additional research dollars pour in from other private sources as companies and individual teams scramble to win the prize.
Granted - not all "good work" that's needed lies in the R&D area. But plenty of it does (think cure for AIDS, cancer etc.), and for those objectives prizes are a damn good way to spur innovation.
Or it could become something like Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which was set up as a tax shelter for Howard's aviation income and now is by far the largest private funding organization for high-risk, high-impact biomedical research.
I'm guessing they can afford the lawyers it would take to write the foundation's mandatory goals into it's charter.
he will be cutting the feds and state a check for the
lost estate tax right? After all he is totally opposed
to repealing the death tax... but apparently not opposed
to finding ways around it.
I wonder if this really is the largest donation in history, if you recast it into inflation adjusted dollars, and compare againt the largesse of Carnegie and others of his ilk?
Gates' philanthropy is all well and fine, but stop a moment to think where that money came and is coming from. It's sucked out of the Western economy, making everyone a little bit poorer, by means of anticompetitive practices that make computing that little bit more complicated, time-consuming and frustrating. Much of it ends up distorting the economy of Redmond (and Washington), before it gets anywhere near the Gates Foundation.
In the alternate universe where Netscape triumphed, it doesn't matter that there isn't a Gates Foundation splashing money at worthy causes; the world economy is that much more efficient, more vibrant, more wealthy, that millions more kids can afford (slightly cheaper) inoculations out of their own (slightly improved) resources without relying on charity, that local governments can (with a slightly improved tax base) can procure (slightly cheaper, faster, better) network infrastructure themselves, that thousands more kids can afford to go to university without scholarships (they're slightly better off, and fees are slightly lower).
Millions of Westerners, that small amount better off, can and will contribute more to charity, mandate their governments to spend a little more on research and foreign aid, and be better equipped to resist the protectionism that keeps the developing world poor.
Siphoning money out of the economy and dumping it on a few spots (with massive leakage along the way) is no recipe to a better world. State taxes can - when administered correctly - have a net positive effect; and at least you and I have a say on how they're spent. The Microsoft Tax is indubitably a net negative, has no accountability, and the collection process is a disaster for the development of technology.
>As it happens, we use inequality to motivate people, but the downside to this inequality is that when the owners of wealth end up deciding >to "reallocate" it they have no guidance or requirements to do it in the way the people who originally made the wealth would want. >That's why having competition in charities is important and why I find their extremely tight focus on health and US education concerning. >What about disaster relief? Oh, right, the Gates' can only do so much at once so tough luck.
Well, see, that's the nice thing about being the owner of the wealth - you don't even have an obligation to reallocate it the way anyone wants but yourself.
I don't understand this hand-wringing that says somehow the will of all who helped create the wealth have some say in its dispersement. Everyone who helped make the wealth traded away their say in what happens to the fruits of their labors for a paycheck - just like you and I do voluntarily every day.
If someone has the talent to orhestrate an empire by getting people to voluntarily contribute to that empire, by God, the fruit is theirs, and theirs to do with what they will.
Thus if Warren Buffet wanted to take 100% of his fortune and donate it to one-legged polka-dotted red-headed African sheep herders, or any other incredibly narrow-focused venue, that is entirely his right. It doesn't matter a whit what the millions of employees and customers who made the fortune think about it - they already got fairly compensated for their efforts.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Three other posts say same thing.
"The rise of democracy was driven by the citizens' desire to escape from the paternalistic and arbitrary charity of those with money. They accomplished this by replacing charity with a fair, balanced, arm's-length system of public obligation. The principle tool of that obligation was taxation." ... [charity] ..., they can afford the taxes which would ensure that we do not slip into a society of noblesse oblige in which those with get to chose who and how to help those without."
"... if they can afford
- John Ralston Saul
Still, my hat is off for Warren Buffet. He himself has campaigned for a tax code that shifts the majority of the tax burden to the corporations and the rich, and away from the middle class. But if the second richest man in the world can't afford the lobbyists to push that idea through, what hope is there?
...and yours and mine don't correspond. I would criticize your conception of morality as lacking an important element (a proximate and conscious capacity for choice) which goes beyond a programmatic conception of "rules for success". I have a real problem believing that morality (proper choices, even suceessful choices, by your formulation) can be programmatized, because the situations that require moral choices are highly variable. Since a corporation is a union of several disparate moral agents, none of whom are required to shoulder actual moral responsibility for the action of the corporation as a whole (the twin magics of limited liability and compartmentalization of bureaucracy), there is no singular agent capable of applying the moral programme, if such a thing even exists. Thus, no moral center (that's what I meant by the concept).
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
OMG! You're citing a Slashdot comment to back up an arguement??
The United States one of the richest countries in the world. Yet, we have a lousy president and congress. The United States does not need money. The United States needs a good president and congress. Warren Buffett should keep his money and run for president and/or congress.
For those of us with wealth or who will inherit wealth but, have the instinct to give the bulk of it to those who actually *need* it.
One thing that forever gave me pause on this front was that certainly in the media, there is an all-pervasive message that amassing of wealth is a means unto itself, is the idyll of modern society and that those who don't subscribe to this iconaclasm are somehow loosers... pinkos or "just don't get it".
Suddenly I feel less inclined to by a mansion with my inherited millions then I do feel inclined to simply give the money away to try to help the billions of people who live in poverty in this world.
Could you really live with yourself knowing that you were part of the problem of people suffering, instead of part of the solution ?
I couldn't and I won't. Perhaps I'll just be a great big looser for the rest of my life and perhaps all I'll ever really be useful for, is divesting my family's millions to the poor. But, all things being equal... I just can't accept that money is the point of life and as intelligent humans we all *must* do our part to facilitate justice in the world.
Leave yourself enough money, to live comfortably and to allow your kids to have a good chance in life but, don't be a decadent waste of space, instant gratification is never gratifying and truly intelligent beings cannot be barbarous to other intelligent beings.... you either subscribe to a perpetual predatory capalist dystopia or you don't.
Beam me up !
so you must be 3rd richest man, then?
::
:: rimshot
The IRS is the one organization that you don't want to fuck with. Remember, these are the guys who took down Al Capone.
Bill Gates liquidates all assets of Melinda & Gates Foundation and vanishes into thin air as the World's richest & second richest man...
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
google reports that "adoption" appears 86,800 times on plannedparenthood.org. Abortion appears 91,000.
It's all about context, of course, but PlannedParenthood makes big money on abortion.
a few years ago it grossed $58,554,300 in abortion income. (Planned Parenthood 1998-1999 Annual Report, page 9)
Their gross income was almost $900M last year!
According to their 2003-2004 annual report:
Planned Parenthood aborted 138 children for every adoption referral to an outside agency. During Gloria Feldt's first full year as president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (1997), the group's abortion/adoption ratio was 18:1. Throughout her tenure, abortion numbers have consistently increased and adoption referrals have regularly decreased, resulting in the dismal 138:1 statistic.
I think that these statistics (which can be found in under 5 minutes of googling from many sources) belie the concept that adoption is a primary component of the PlannedParenthood agenda.
Let's stick to the facts and not rhetoric when it comes to this issue. If PlannedParenthood really cared about kids, they would spend much of their profit to fund adoptions which are expensive due to governmental oversight. Legal fees are astronomical. As it currently stands, their abortions are a major profit center.
My money goes to Hope for Orphans, a church adoption ministry
and the Rockville Pregnancy Center.
Good thing for those of you reading this that your bio-mom chose to let you live rather than "terminating her pregnancy"
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Like the subject line of another one of these posts, "you failed ECON 101". I got an A+, btw.
... oh god, farming. The government has been screwing up farming for a century, and it just realized it a few decades ago. I think your information is outdated; farmers don't destroy their crops on a large scale anymore afaik. In any case, U.S. farming is one of the least capitalistic markets in the country. It's been infected with sick government intervention due to farmers trying to avoid having to sell their farms and do something more useful.
You use the most anti-capitalist markets in the United States (monopolies and farming) to bash capitalism. See a little problem there?
Monopolies are one of those things that "shouldn't happen". If they do happen, capitalism has failed in that market and the government needs to go in and do something. Capitalism isn't perfect, and if it creates a monopoly, the government needs to intervene and fix it or bad stuff will happen (like Microsoft, though copyright messes up capitalism too, but that's a separate issue).
Farming
Your complaint about "business and the stock markets" makes no sense. Those are different entities. Businesses make things. The stock market doesn't, but provides incentives for people to make things. It takes a relatively small amount of resources, so doesn't hurt much. A lot of people game the stock market trying to get rich quickly. Most of the time they end up poor instead because these people are stupid. So what?
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
The problem is that while $1 or $2 million is a lot of money by most standards, it's not hard to have a family farm or a family business that's worth more than that. That means the heirs often can't take over the family business, and must instead break it up or sell out to some bigger business that can afford to buy it, simply to pay the inheritance taxes. So a tax aimed at the super-rich ends up killing family farms and medium-sized businesses.
(Not that this sort of consequence is new: when the current income tax was created, voters were assured it would only apply to the rich, and the average working man would never pay it. Riiiiight....)
But here's what I wish Buffett had done: set up a foundation devoted to private enterprise in space, then hire Burt Rutan. We'd probably have hotels in orbit and on the moon within 15 years.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Secret ingredients.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
must be realy pissed at him. they probibly were expecting to have all that money themselves.
..guess he'll be wastin' away in Margaritaville searchin' for his long lost sugar and salt just a bit longer. Some people claim that their's a woman to blame, but I know, it's all Bill Gates' fault...
You can return defective children to Wal-Mart. They will give you store credit without a receipt.
The rich and the upper class use nonproft foundations to mold the American political culture, specifically to influence leftism towards multicultualism & identity politics, and away from economic leftism, such as progressive taxation, unionism, and universal healthcare. This started decades ago. The rich created a pseudoLeft here in America, a Left that would not threaten their fat wallets. They use the pseudoLeft to divide and conquer us. See my sig for more on this.
Homo Sapiens Americanus--A documentary in p
I think the parent poster brings up an interesting point though, about charity vs. sacrifice
If I were to give away 85% of MY worth, I'd be homeless and relying on the charity of others. Mr. Buffet does not have that problem. He can donate billions and not suffer. because there comes a point at which having more money just means a higher number. If I had ten million dollars, I could do a lot. If I had twenty million, I could do a little more. If I had a billion, I could do pretty much anything I'd want to do. If I had ten billion, or a hundred, would anything change? What does $30 billion get me that $20 billion doesn't?
His donation is fantastic, and I'm staggered, but he does not suffer as a result of giving this gift. All this means is a lower number in a computer somewhere, and that's it. His charity is outstanding, but his sacrifice is non-existent.
What the bible passage quoted is trying to say is that it is sacrifice we should truly applaud, because giving of yourself is far more difficult and far more noble than giving what you have left over, and in the end, that is all Mr. Buffet is doing - giving away what he has left over.
If he was planning for a long time, why wasn't he executing the plan? Perhaps I'm a little off on this, but it strikes me that getting the money in play would be a better idea if his long-term goal is doing good. Otherwise, he's doing what every rich old white guy has done: leaving a legacy before he dies.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
NYS "Teacher of the Year" John Taylor Gatto suggests the whole thing is a sham from K through 12 and beyond -- designed precisely to make people submissive factory workers, mindless consumers, and obedient soldiers:t m
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.h
On the large topic, while I agree with you on someplace like Simon's Rock beinggn worthy of support given the educational system we have now, I think this "donation" shows the folly of a certain type of monetary philanthropy.
Spend your life essentially suppressing innovation in software (and when you can't suppress it, buy it) like Gates, or spend your life making corporate sharks smarter like Buffet, and then think you can make the world a better place by essentially propping up a failed idea like compulsory schooling or subsidizing big Pharma?
Just shows how out of touch the biggest players running much of the US economy are with the worlds needs. If you ask the people in Africa, they say they want sewage systems and working economies and political systems (other than the sham ones left over from European colonialism or US corporate-friendly interventions) more than Polio vaccinations. And yes, people have asked, there was a New Yorker article on this Polio vaccination issue a couple years back, specifically talking about Africans' comments how money would be more cost effective spent on getting raw sewage out of the streets rather than vaccination, but the money was earmarked by charities only for vaccination. Most of the improvements in public health in the developed world have resulted from better nutrition and better sanitation and cleaner water.
The deep problem is that that the things the world desperately needs -- truly innovative people, free-as-in-freedom software and content, sustainable decentralized economies, flexible distributed manufacturing of most goods and information, are the very things the people with the most wealth in the world have been fighting against their whole working lives (to make sure they get most of the profits of a centralized system). Why think they might suddenly wake up when they get old?
National security has similar problems -- hard to get a central govenment dominated by the interests of big centralized power structures to admit that any concentration of power and materials poses an inherent security risk which may outweight the profitability to a few of the centralization.
Sounds like a case of "group think" here to me. Sad to see Buffet get sucked into it, but just because you are good at one thing like earning money, does not mean you are good at another, like effectively giving it away or choosing those who can. Sad to hear his wife did not get her chance to play a role in that -- sounds like she might have done it really well.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"Anonymous Coward" was rarely so appropriate a title.
If you actually believe this crap, have the balls to sign your name and risk your karma.
If not, shut the fuck up.
...which at times may be a fundamentally irrational thing -- demanding as it does that one do the *right* thing (perhaps at great personal cost with little obvious gain) rather than the most reasonable one.
Nearly everything you do is of no importance, but it is important that you do it. -- Gandhi
...like he did by getting the US DoT to lean on the Brasilian government to shut down existing donations of AIDS drugs from Brasilian companies to Africa, so Bill's drug companies could do almost the same thing albeit much more expensively and grandiosely (but of course much less effectively as well, and I'm sure there's a virus joke tucked away in there somewhere).
Once you watch Bill's history and see how much effort he puts into chasing money and power, a lot of his behaviour becomes predictable again.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Even more humorous is your spelling of Mensa.
I would assume you are not a member };-]
So f*ckin what? Unless they cough up the dough and give it to those less fortunate they aren't doing sh*t. For all the good FOSS claims to be, its pretty shallow when you compare it against the actual good that the Gates Foundation does.
Plenty... if you stop making the mistake of working through the system, with its own tools, in an attempt to fix it. That's like releasing multiple-murderers on their words of honour and expecting a pleasant outcome.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
"The timing is just happenstance"
sounds like you are lying.
nobody, i repeat, nobody just moves 37 billion on a whim or co-incidence.
there are even two statements in the story that show otherwise.
1 buffet and the gates' are close friends. buffets would have known about gates' resignation far sooner than anyone.
2 condition of buffet's donation is that the gates are involved in their foundation. wonder what they are planning.
now tell me again how this is judt happenstance. reminds me of the comedy "arthur" where he holds a sign saying "hey brother can you spare 750,000,000?"
now the question is not that it was planned, but why are they trying to hide it. history does not look too kindly on the charitable foundations of the ultra rich. many of them are little more than clever tax shelters. for the rich that do not like this comment, i will point out that the ultra weathy have historicslly been far more effective at amassing their fortunes, than creating charities that actually made any social impact. this is probably more about keeping the governemt's hands off this money.
want to wipe out aids? tb? oh shure lets set up a fancy society that says nice things. we can pay retail for these drugs, and the kickbacks will fly. why not buy a pharma company or 2, along with the ip to it. then give the drugs to those who need it. fyi tb is on the rise in the us, and prison popultaion has 5x the rate of tb infections. fighting tb indeed. for me, i'll belive in these foundations of the ultra rich when i see results. just moving money around does not impress me.
>For every dollar you spent on a prize, about 10 additional research dollars pour in from other private sources as companies and individual teams scramble to win the prize.
How worthy is the cause if you need to create an artifical prize for people to do something?
>Granted - not all "good work" that's needed lies in the R&D area. But plenty of it does (think cure for AIDS, cancer etc.), and for those objectives prizes are a damn good way to spur innovation.
The market for an AIDS or cancer cure is huge. You don't need carrot for those things.
The R&D stuff takes a long time and lots of hard work that seems to go in circles for the most while. Not something that fits a "prize-for-the-winner" method unless you are willing to settle for handing it out years from now. (Which by then a lot could have changed.)
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Such a brillant response, especially in light of my response to the other genious tells me that you obviously are a Mesna member. Congratulations!
P.S.
I know you Mesna folks don't have a lot of time on your hands, what with being so smart and important, so I bolded the important parts. Kind of destroys the subtlety, but I know you Mesna folks don't have time for such pedestrian things. What with being so busy being smart and all. Congrats on that 98th percentile thing.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
You got as far as "more complicated" but forget that the rich people create most of those middle class jobs. Taking money from the rich (as taxes) means fewer jobs and/or lower pay, which equals a smaller tax base. And it goes on from there...
Or to get back on topic: If Warren Buffet had been taxed to the point where he was unable to amass this, he never would have been able to give tens of billions of dollars to charity.
It's easier to take money from the poor and dead than the rich because the rich have the resources to defend it.
or Warren Buffet - I would like it to be known that I will follow in the exact same footsteps as Mr. Warren Buffet. I'm just thinking whether I should contribute 85% or 95% of 40 billion to charitale causes because I'm definitely not going to leave it to my children so they can piss it away into nothingness or, worse, spend it for stupid selfish stuff they may think is appropriate for them.
What a selfless act... I want to work for this man. Fuck. I was in tears when I read it. Did he have any reason to do this (forget looking good - I think he's way past 'looking good')? No. He chose to do it. DAMN!!!!
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
I've seen a few posts on here criticizing Buffet and/or Bills accumulation of wealth. As a member of the free world, I am absolutely SICKENED! Do you not know the meaning of freedom? Do you not know the fundamentals of a free and prosperous society? What sort of society do you want to build exactly? Well, you better build it somewhere other than North America, move to Cuba or something PLEASE.
GROW UP! So essentially you are saying that nobody should have any incentive to start up any company or pursue any entrepreneurial venture at all whatsoever except for charity. Why don't you leave the U.S. and go start your own socialist country or better yet move to a socialist country and see how happy you are! I find jealous attitudes such as yours utterly disgusting.
Just because you're not competent to start your own wildly successful billion dollar company doesn't mean you have the right to that kind of attitude. Grow up and lose the guilt trip on the entrepreneurs. HECK, it's not like he was in the Mafia or something. Though some of you anti-microsoft zealots might squeal otherwise. They were both competent entrepreneurs and investors plain and simple. If you aren't competent, your motivation for bringing them down is simply JEALOUSY, nothing more. Like I said, go move to a facist/communist country or found your own and spout your garbage there!! It will be more than welcome! However you have the right to your own opinion here, sorry but I can't say that much for there, whichever country you choose.
The remaining 15% of his net wealth is a lot of money (some 6+ billion dollars), so don't think that his kids will not get a share. But yes, I do admire him for donating the 85%.
Are those still around?
I don't think I've ever seen an actual orphanage in my lifetime.
Closest thing I can think of to it would be a group home, but not all the kids that live in group homes are orphans (hardly any, in fact).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The problem is that while $1 or $2 million is a lot of money by most standards, it's not hard to have a family farm or a family business that's worth more than that. That means the heirs often can't take over the family business, and must instead break it up or sell out to some bigger business that can afford to buy it, simply to pay the inheritance taxes. So a tax aimed at the super-rich ends up killing family farms and medium-sized businesses.
I don't think I know any "family farms" that aren't knee-deep in debt. Exactly where are these millionaire farmers you knows that aren't mega-corps?
What?
What evidence do you have to actually make the blanket statement that he's set the industry back a decade?
Links?
Books?
Anything other than opinion pieces?
Frankly, there is no death tax, but there is a birth tax. Everyone born in this country is born with a large debt that eventually they will need to pay. The boomers don't really care about the national debt because their kids and grandkids will be the ones that pay for it.
My comment to the ultra-wealthy who wait until they are about to die before they put their excess to good use is... "You've had 10 billion dollars for 30 years and NOW you decide to put the excess to good use?!?!?! Where the hell were you last year?"
It's things like this that make me wish there were a god to teach them the error of their ways...
Support SETI@home
I don't think the parent post even implied any judgement about whether the effect of the law was good or bad.
I think you're post indicates you're looking for an argument though, to the level that you're reading what's not there.
Businesses use objectives all the time. Military uses objectives all the time. The reason is clear -- so you clearly see when you are making progress toward your goal.
Any businessman who can't set objectives designed to move the state of things closer to his goal must have been given his money by someone who could.
Seastead this.
Great. Get yourself some world-class mentors. Read books by Robert Kiyosaki, Phil Town, and play with the concepts in Elliott Wave (DOW) Theory.
If you find you like short term trades (5-days to 10-weeks), look into Swing Trading.
Best of luck.
goto comment
If you read the article Buffet has never used the funds that he's now donating.
Buffet and his wife Susan shared the same perspective on wealth and charity. As she was a few years younger the plan (which has been the plan for 20-30 years) was that when Warren died his wife would oversee the philanthropic dispersal of the fortune. It sounds like Warren trusted his wife deeply and in a way this would be a final gift to her, something to give her a reason to keep on living after he was gone. Philanthropy seems to be something that always was more of her interest than his - the lunch meeting that Buffet has auctioned off for charity for years (this year I think it brought in $400,000) was her idea.
Sadly, she died in 2004.
If Buffet were legacy chasing, we would expect him to start a foundation in his own name. But he doesn't care about that, he wants his money to make the world a better place. So he's giving it to an already existing foundation.
From my perspective Buffet has been and is doing everything for all the right reasons. Why invent reasons to knock that down?
It's about time one of the richest leftist Capitalists starting giving away fish.
The estate tax is (usually) not double taxation.
Learn first, talk later.
He's done some evil things, but it came out all right in the end because he's donating practically all his winnings to charity
His "winnings" represent an insignificant fraction of the financial, legal, and professional harm he's caused. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted supporting the Microsoft monopoly. Horrific laws have been passed in support of non free software which threaten America's core values. Finally, Microsoft has directly and indirectly harmed the reputation of the entire computing industry. We shall see if Gates gives away his billions or not, but the harm will linger long after he's gone and perhaps longer than his foundation.
Bill Gate's share of Microsoft's wealth is a fraction of the net earnings, which in turn are only a fraction of the revenues and those revenues represent only a fraction of the cost of the Microsoft Monopoly. His company, at his bidding, suppressed less costly software but purchase cost is only the beginning. There's also the cost of accounting for the crazy licenses his company created and maintaining sub par software. His software not only takes about five times the manpower to keep working, a whole industry has sprung up around it's flaws, anti-virus, backups, upgrades and so on. Under those circumstances, the efficiencies he promissed companies never materialized and the cost of paperwork at most companies remained flat. Bitten this way once, most of the "partner" companies never made the move to Windows XP. These same costs, due to vendor intimidation have been born and passed on by private and government agencies from power and light to public schools.
The money wasted on IT at many companies is only the beginning of the harm he's done to the reputation of the computing industry. Through tireless marketing and FUD, he has damaged the reputation of all computer professionals, even going so far as to smear the reputations of those who would point out even the most trivial of money saving alternatives such as Open Office on Microsoft instead of Office. Much of the public now thinks of M$'s "sharp" business practices as normal industry ethics. What's worse is they are encouraged to act the same way - to fink on their friends and employers, to make diabolical contracts that screw the other guy, to tell any lie you have to if it will make a sale and to harm your "competitor" aka your peers as a matter of normal business.
I don't need to say much about the DMCA and other nasty laws that have been passed. They are all part of valuing money above your neighbor.
It will take decades for the harm Mr. Gates has done to subside.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
My thought is that one of the motivations behind avoiding a more competetive charitable structure (something like X Prize as the original poster noted) is that it plays well.
If you have ever looked at modern charities from a financial standpoint, they're awful. Inefficient, poorly directed, often corrupt. Look at the Red Cross.
Something needs to be done about charity in general, because it is a money pit.
That was the original poster's sentiment, and I agree.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
I'm a conspiracy-nut, but the two richest men in the world just decided to get out of the game at the same time. I'm betting that something like a big war, pandemic, or something that history is going to want to pin on someone is going to happen. I'd hate to be one of the people 'at the wheel' when the ship hit the iceberg. These people know what's coming before most of us do, I'd keep a close eye on international affairs with China over the next two years.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I agree with commending Mr. Buffet for these actions. If he thinks the B&MG Foundation is worthy of such largess, then it probably is.
But for the rest of us, why wait until you reach their heights? Tithe now. You will be in very select company.
Well, apparently, you only have to fool the majority of people for a little while.
I wouldn't consider what doesn't go to the workers as "surplus value of their wages"* for the simple reason it's in both parties interest for different reasons to support the infrastructure that makes that "surplus" possible. In fact it's possible because of the aggregation of effort.
*In fact that's a oversimplification. Wealth can be generated from means not directly related to the workers. e.g. investments.
Look, I'd love it if you are right. But I'm not convinced that you are. But it looks like you are accepting, as an article of faith, that once someone puts $1 trillion into AI research, that your vision will infact comes true, that your super intelligence will in fact arrive. Truthfully, I'm not convinced that a $1 trillion investment into AI will yield anything more than the same amount into a space elevator, asteroid prospecting, a hydrogen economy or anything else.
Please spare me your utopian visions. I want them to be true. But the burden is on you to provide a shred of evidence that they are achievable. Think about all of those sci-fi authors from the 1930's that thought that we'd all be flying around by now in personal jetpacks. And I do not believe that this was the result of simply not enough investment.
I find it questionable that simply buying $1 quadrillion of hardware will make your super intelligence any more likely.
Purchase != Donation.
It is a donation when you have no choice or intention to use said crappy software. Of the hundreds of dollars each of us has given in this way, what fraction has gone to this foundation and then what fraction of that is actually spent on worthwhile projects? Pennies, no doubt. This should not really make anyone feel better about paying the M$ Tax when they buy a new computer, pay their student tech fees or any other monopoly rent extortion.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Way to go Warren - that is a move that I think everyone can truly respect, and if I had that kind of money I hope to have the balls to do the same. Respekt Mon!
There are 10 types of people in the world; those who can read binary, and those who can't.
Sorry dude, I dont understand the reasoning behind your highlighted (and misspelled) words.
I would assume they were directed at "Mensa Girl" and not myself, as they are typical of the garbage she has been spouting.
Cure your ignorance my fellow
http://www.ssa.gov/history/hueyappend.html
In the last several years(sometime after the tech bubble popped), various laws have reformed the tax schedule & it now takes into account non-cash payements like stock options & company perks (AFAIK).
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
From a monopoly company to a monopoly charity, eh. ;-) Btw, what are the pecking order for charitable orgs in terms of funding?
It doesn't matter how rich you are.
Once you have sold your soul, you can't buy it back.
See you in hell Billy and Warren.
I'll be the guy with a pitchfork with the stunning Penguin logo on it.
Obnoxious Bastard (from Hell)
Is that a SCSI connector or are you just glad to see me?
In fifty years, people will complain that they cannot afford to buy a flying car, bionic arms or whatever. Their dissatisfaction and feelings of social inferiority will persist even though they will enjoy luxuries that are now reserved for the very rich. The capitalist rat race, taken as a value system, must inevitably lead to something you might call "relative poverty;" one escapes it by renouncing the egotism that competes and the idolatry of business.
Because they compete for ground water with farmers in third world countries and it's to their benefit if the farmers go out of business. And their plants dump toxic waste into surrounding land and they don't want to pay third-party costs (ie, the cost of polluting the environment).
Any single charitable organization with lots of money is going to put the kids to shame when it comes to corruption, hookers, drugs, and graft.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
At least Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are saving lives with their money. What are you doing for the world? Evangelizing the technology-cum-religion jihad that seems to be so popular with people like you? Well, I'm sure future generations will thank you for that. From the very bottom of their hearts.
All such accumulations of vast, winner-take-all wealth represent, in part, the poor negotiating skills of the employees. Give the money to America's labor unions so that middle-class Americans can negotiate health care and homeownership for themselves, and so that there were be fewer and poorer megabillionaires possessed with the impulse to bestow their charity on the third world instead of here at home.
He is giving money to people who only treat the symptoms of social ills rather than the source.
He should put it into a trust fund to be used paying lobbyists in the worldwide captials...
lobbyists who will remove the injustice of anti-union laws, "right to work" laws, the DMCA, the EUCD, the laws in many states directed toward putting the poor in jail simply for being homeless, the BS laws establishing "free speech zones".
lobbyists who will put pressure on politicians in developed nations to extend more foreign aid to the peoples oppressed under dictators.
It is the apathy and immorality of politicians which causes this crap.. you need to dedicate billions to eliminate the cause, not the symptoms.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Unbelievable!
/. is certainly not that place.
After watching Slashdot go the way of Usenet and become all trash and no real discussion, the childish, uninformed, and downright selfish comments posted in response to Mr. Buffet's amazing announcement has finally made me realize that it is not worth the time anymore.
If folks knew anything about Mr. Buffet, (or even RTFA) they would know he is a straightforward person with an amazingly successful hands-on approach to investment management. This is a guy who has gone his own way over the years because he has refused to invest in things that others proclaimed to be easy money simply because he did not understand them. He has never put his money (or that of his investors) into anything that he did not research and understand.
I know exactly nothing about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, but the simple fact that Mr. Buffet has give then ANY money, let alone a large portion of his net worth, tells me that they doing something right.
Here's hoping I can find a place where people actually have frank discussions about topics they know and care about, and actually take the time to RTFA, because
So long, and thanks for all the fish! - D.A.
Jorgie
Non-profits are a protective layer of Capitalism: http://www.namebase.org/roelofs.html
Very good read.
Already bought. Are they really doing anything useful now?
I think not.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
I have just become a charity!
Pandering to the lowest common denominator would be less frequent if more people were prime numbers.
More to the point, it trivializes the evil of the earlier monopolists in American history. Nobody's ever accused Microsoft of having dozens of labor organizers killed...
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
...drink a margarita in his honor.
Oh? Wrong Buffet you say?
OK. I'll still drink a magarita in his honor.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
That is fucking cool.
You give your kids toy even if you know (s)he will brake it next morning. You know playing with toys teaches her/him many things.
US kids have many techs around them (at least rich ones). many other kids have just stone and wood(! not all) around then to play.
I think letting them at-least to play with some tech ( I say atleat becasue there is much more in the project) will have a big influence in their education and them maybe for human society.
Be like shadow in the light or darkness.KMZ
I find it odd that some of the biggest capitalists think that the proper way of dealing with social problems is through the kind of central planning that the communist contries were using. Whether the planning is done by the central committee or by a $60b foundation really makes little difference--it's still a solution that involves a few unelected people doing economic and social planning with little accountability to the public and no market forces.
Mind you, given that our government just wasted $320b on a useless war that has made us less safe, it's probably still better that this money ends up in the Gates foundation than in our government, but long term, there is something more fundamentally wrong with the way we deal with problems than can be fixed by donations, no matter how big.
It takes 12 years for Sweden to give away that amount of money to development countries, and we have had a goal of paying that amount since at least 1968. So I'm not really impressed.
Talk about some serious begging the question. Congratulations!
1. Pay Software Developers very little
2. Profit
3. Give the profit to a bunch of idiots not willing to get an education.
4. Another World War
5. No more idiots for a generation
6. Go back to step one
Dick!
He would stop DRM-fucking his software.
He's a fucking hypocite. Why not give windows out for free to users?
He enjoys ripping off the declining middle class.
But in the case of many African countries, and other impoverished nations (as demonstrated throughout history), all any money from the B&MGF will accomplish is the following:
(1) Tinpot dictator will quietly (and enthusiastically) accept X m/billion dollar donation.
(2) Said dictator will announce in state run news media that he strong armed a major American company or the American government into giving money to his country, and of course, that the public will receive the fruits of that action.
(3) Said dictator will actually spend maybe $100 on constructing shack with a toilet in the center of the capital city, build another mansion for himself with the remaining funds, maybe buy a few hundred thousand rounds of ammo and some more surplus AK-47s for his army.
As long as his army has ammo, he doesn't have to give a damn about AIDS, food, infrastructure, et al. For the remainder of his constituents who haven't figured out they've been had, the state run media will announce that the US corporation/government weaseled out on the deal, and that he was a victim of circumstance.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Burton Lo
11585 Caminito La Bar, #19
San Diego, CA 92126
760-917-0219
blo@27.org
June 25, 2006
Mr. & Mrs. Bill & Melinda Gates
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
PO Box 23350
Seattle, WA 98102
Dear Mr. & Mrs. Gates,
I have two sincere hopes for this letter: 1) that you get a clear sense of the gratitude I have for your examples of character and, 2) that I'm not the only to relay these sentiments to you.
Mr. Gates, I've been a computer professional for over 20 years and have followed your career over that span of time. Ms. Gates, I noticed a profound change in public image of Mr. Gates upon his marriage to you, a large part of that in the form of this foundation that you've built together. To both of you, I stand and applaud loudly for your efforts and generosity to the rest of the world. I've repeatedly been inspired by your examples of charity and I thank you.
Upon today's news of Mr. Buffett's generous charity, I felt compelled to share with you all how much of an impact you've had in my life and, I believe, others. My personal fantasy is that without the two of you leading by example, Mr. Buffett may not have been as generous of himself. Of course, that is without any basis in fact, but my heart hopes that more people will follow what you, now three, have proffered. I know that you are contributing much more than quantifiable donations to our world and I believe the generous aspects of your character and love are more precious and more effective than the very significant funds that you provided.
I offer this letter as a token of my support to your efforts. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
Sincerely yours,
Burton Lo
something very nasty is going to go airborne, and things will get even less lovely than the resource wars and global warming shit we are descending into. gotta go, wake up! MOD ME UP BECAUSE I'M RIGHT kthxbye
everything is closer than you think.
From TFA - he has 'plegded' to donate several stock packages over a quite lengthy period of time, so 37 bil. is just an assessment based on current value.
Now what this donation entails is not specified directly - does it mean that the entirety of the funds will be transferred or just the interest/profit made on them? unclear from TFA.
Now Buffet is 75 right? IIRC there is quite a large tax on inheritance estates in the US, so why not set up these trust funds with the base fund itself leased for 20 years, refundable to Buffet or his heirs once the set time expires?
Add to that the tax exemptions, prestige and political clout he gains by this and this starts looking a bit different than at first sight.
http://www.orphanage.org/ idiot
If Copyright is life of author + 70 years(for the purpose of helping an author's children, I presume), so why not have a death tax on copyright material?
Perfect PR. And that's all it is.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Do you thing all Bills ruthless business practices have guilt tripped him in to starting Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. If Bill had done good all thought his buisness life then what would be the need for the Foundation, he could have just retired feeling good, but no. Could this be the start of proprietary charitys where Bill exercises private ownership, control or use over an item of property, usually to the exclusion of other parties. Personally i would not trust Bill or any thing that came out of his corner. Bill fancy a UFC fight as i would love to mount you and punch/smash you face in, until the canvas shows, now that would be some charity work.
Insults do not help you make your point. The link was enough.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Just Thank You
It is marked flamebait because any thing other than praise for O! Chairman Bill, his products, his property and his works is flambait.
Have shame and repent your doubts of all-wise, all-benevolent O! Chairman Bill.
Ted Turner promised a billion dollars to the UN and failed to deliver.
Actually, when you think about it, Buffett's business model has always been to find an intelligently-run company with a good product, buy into them, and then use his business expertise to help them do more of what they've already been doing. That's exactly what he's done here, only with a charity instead of a business. Or, as Buffett puts it in TFA:
Also, it's not like Buffett is just putting a check in an envelope and mailing it off to Bill & Melinda to use as they see fit. His donation buys him a seat on the board of the Gates foundation. I'm sure he'll have a big impact on their decision making, even if he downplays it in typical Buffettian style:
Arr! Read The Government Manual for New Pirates!
That would have been charity if that infrastructure had not been set up to exclude non-MS systems. As it is, it is an investment, a way to squeeze people who are on the rocks into his technological roach motel. Even FEMA joined him to make the problem worse.
If that infrastructure had been set up to be fully interoperable with other systems, then yes it would have been philantropy / charity. As it stands, it is simply an investment to exclude competitors and potential competitors from that market (once it recovers).
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
In these two cases. Both men seem to be genuinely charitable in a way that most people would approve of. But thats luck. What if one of these men had been a right wing anti-semite, or a highly fundamnetalist religious supporter of creationism? How many top-quality creationist schools could bill gates fund accross the USA? What if he had extreme views on abortion, extreme views on anything for that matter?
:D
If you had a tax system that took more of this money and gave it to the state, then the state would be spending that money, not these guys. That means *in theory* that it will be spent on what the population considers (through the ballot box) to be important. It just so happens that we got lucky this time, and the two richest men seem to have sensible ideas of what to do with our money.(Im typing this on a copy of windows XP, and using a microsoft mouse)
I'm not knocking either men, good on em, but I think its worth discussing the fact the we have an economic system that gives individuals more power to change the world than many small countries. That *can* be good, it can also be a total disaster.
discuss
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
I don't know where you got that idea but its totally wrong.
The ultra rich are never impacted by the death tax.
The death tax is simply a method by government to take even more money from an individual or family. It works for the most part because the majority of Americans will never be affected by it. Anyone who normally would be is pretty much protected by good money managers. Its the people in between who get screwed. Think families with farms in developing areas, there have been numerous stories about them losing their land when the parent dies because the value has become so much that they have to sell to pay the taxes on the estate.
What I don't understand is the willingness of people to tolerate a death tax. There is no moral reason for anyone to suffer this tax. What right is there to take away money from a family just because the head of it died?
Jealousy is the root of the tax. The government exploits this common trait to take money it is not normally capable of doing so. After all the siblings "didn't earn it" so they won't miss it. People don't need "All that money". Want more BS lines? Yet people fall for that shit all the time. Politicians exploit it, look at Paris Hilton - they use her as an example yet she doesn't stand to inherit much of the fortune as she is low on the list. Yet ignorance serves the politicians well.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
In MY mind, anyone who makes something of their life (e.g. earns lots of money) from nothing is hopefully more likely to do more good than bad in this world.
If you're just given money, I think you're more likely to be a "spoilt brat" and do no good with it...
I know there will be many exceptions to what I've just said, but in general it would be interesting to prove one way or the other.
"Robots buildin' robots...now, that's just stupid."
And until we reach that idiotic day, of course you are right; all capital allocation is useless without some direct application of labor.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
as all the richest people in the world just start handing the richest man in the world money like he needs it or something, hmmmm, I am just waiting for the announcement, "Gates foundation aquires apple: Bill back in computer industry, when asked about his old friend competing with him, Balmer could only manage 'chair' in other news Jobs is still a worthless hippy"
Did someone say cake?
Original poster shouldn't be modded "interesting". For heaven's sake why are haters/racists tolerated on Slashdot?
I always wondered if Warren Buffet was bad, good or neutral.
Now it looks clearer: either he is as bad as BG, or somehow he got conned into it.
Or maybe he has so much vested interest in Microsoft shares that he really need to pump 37billion into their marketing department.
Well the fact that the CIA, NSA, FSB, Vatican Swiss Gards and the Mafia all are after your
skin is not a proof that your feeling of dread is unrelated to paranoia.
WGA doesn't do anything wrong. I could care less if it phones home. I don't use my computer for illegal activities, and I most assuredly have nothing to hide. I also have a firewall that allows me to turn off any outbound traffic should I deem it needed.
HDCP isn't Microsoft's fault, it's the RIAA's fault, so go bark up another tree on that one. Never the less my computer is a computer, not a DVD player, and I'd MUCH rather be looking at a 40" TV than my 20" monitor. Again, its exactly how I see fit to use a computer.
What do I get when I use free software? Nothing I don't already have using software I paid for, except for better hardware support, the ability to run all the software I want to run, and MUCH more importantly, no rabid long hair, sandal wearing, long beared hippies telling me how good it is to hate Microsoft and how OSS will free the world...
Installing Linux doesn't give you anything.
I've been a Warren Buffet fan for a long time. (Though have never been able to replicate his investing success). Here's one guy that's got life figured out. As of a few years ago, at least, he was still living in his home in Omaha, Nebraska for which he paid less than $40,000 decades ago. To get a sense of his spartan style - check out how plain http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/ is and consider that one stock in his company makes google look like child's play.
brevity is to be valued
Contrast this with charitable contributions made by an average middle class worker. If a family man earning $50,000/year donates $100 to charity annually, he is making an actual sacrifice. That's a week's worth groceries. A tank and a half of gas. Half the monthly electric bill.
If Warren donated $100, it would still be the same power bill, a tank and a half of gas, a week worth of groceries (given the same house / car / stomach).
Donation is about motivation. You do it because it is the right thing to do.
Its a shame that the projects that the Gates Foundation contribute to are all aimed at human issues. If there's one thing on this planet were not short of, its humans. All the human problems and drug companies behind them already receive billions from other charities.
They're not contributing at all to ecological or wildlife welfare, which is where real emergencies, shortages and long-term issues are, and is by far the most underfunded and underpublicised. Also nearly all these planetary issues are directly caued by human and corporate greed, which is a singularly appropriate area for the worlds richest man to focus on.
I actually wrote (nicely) to ask the foundation about that but I got a one line reply saying they were to busy to answer questions.
The number of lives that will be saved by this tremendous fortune is uncountable. I think what is most interesting about this is that the person responsible is a capitalist and an athiest. Many socialists think capitalists are nothing but greedy, and many religious people think athiests could never be moral people, yet this man just announced the greatest gift to humanity in history!
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
That's the problem: You (and many millions of others) want "some rich guy" to pay your way. If he pays for your education, that's a job that he can't provide to someone who may need it, like you. Shouldn't people have to work for what they get?
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
So, this money is for medicines and food for the third world. Medicines that have already been established as proprietary drugs from "Big Pharm". It makes sense that putting a band-aid on someone's boo-boo is touted by the media as a fantastic philanthropic act, but only when it's on such a large scale. The media caters to average Joe Middleclass, and these ideas sound high fantastical to him, or at the very least his wife.
Trying to sell proprietary drugs to third world countries with AIDS problems seems kind of silly when you could be teaching them how to use condoms, and providing condoms for their use, so as not to contract and spread disease in the first place. Or how about, God forsake it, a religion and discipline enough to not have to screw eachother (literally) in order to cope with life in that setting. This brings to mind the theory of natural selection.
Missions work is far more effective if, instead of using a tool to fix their problems, or even giving them the tools to fix their problems, you teach them how to make their own tools and invent new ones when they're required.
I believe that it takes a whole lot more than drugs and band-aids to improve the third world.
Spending Resources on Defense leaves Less to defend.
It is an avoidable disease for the most part, don't have unprotected sex, don't share needles, you probably won't get it. That's as much a "cure" as you're supposing Diabetes II has. There are tragic cases where people who didn't make mistakes still got the disease, but don't suppose that those comprise any serious percentage of those afflicted. The Aids rate in Africa is truly stunning and disturbing, but with a rate that high it is obvious that more money needs to be spent on Aids EDUCATION than a blind search for a cure at this point.
Hey Misean friend, your website isn't responding. Drop me an e-mail.
It may bother you that he gets accolades, but look at it this way: If those accolades encourage a society in which the rich become more generous and philanthropic, then why not?
"There are no hardships or risks involved in his donations."
That is exactly the point, and that is the point he IS MAKING with the donations.
Quote: "Ted Turner, whose philanthropic activities I admire enormously, once told me that his hands shook when he signed a $1 billion pledge. Well, I have zero of that. To me, there's just no emotional downside to this at all."
Exactly why he should recieve the amount of attention he gets -- money doesn't mean that much to him, and it SHOULDN'T to others.
If someone can "...think of no other human being who as/is going to change the world in such as positive way as Bill Gates" there are only three possibilities:
... Sheesh. Bill Gates is the son of a banker got lucky and took advantage of a mistake by IBM and then using illegal business practices increased his wealth exponentially. Later, feeling the typical nouveau rich class guilt, he donated money to a philanthropic foundation. Not enough to personally inconvenience himself, mind you, but enough that the ignorant start yelling "OMG BG is the roxor!"
1. Insanity
2. Alzheimer's
3. A paid MS shill
Hello, McFly? Ghandi, Clara Barton, Willam Booth, Mother Teresa, Louis Pasteur, Thomas Jefferson,
I've said this to the BG cultists over and over, but it bears repeating: BG's "philanthropy" is meaningless... to BG. Show me some single mom struggling to make it who give $10 to the United Way and I'm impressed. If there's a middle income family donating 10% of what they make to charity, I think that's noteworthy. When a man gives away a portion of his wealth, but it's so little that he never notices (except for the fawning news articles), that's meaningless. Think widow's mite here.
The mistaken hero worship in the parent is so smarmy it's sickening.
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You don't have to be in a poorly educated country to have unhealthy sexual beliefs/lifestyles. Homosexuality and IV drug use are bad ideas when it comes to remaining healthy, regardless of how much money you have.
Constitutionally Correct
"Often"? How often? And what is a "big job"? Does making $50,000 (or Euros, Pounds, whatever) a year qualify? $100,000? $1,000,000?
Secondarily, are "connections" bad? How did you find your job? How did all of your friends and family find their jobs? "Often" people find "small jobs" because they have "connections" with people that know about other jobs. Why should it be any different for "big jobs", as long as everyone is qualified? I know, a big "if", but I'd be willing to bet that a higher percentage of those in "small jobs" are less qualified for their positions than those in "big jobs".
The fact is, people with no wealth in the family "often" improve their financial situations. I come from a relatively poor family, have no formal education (exactly two quarters of college), and I make more than 90% of Americans from a job in a nice office with nice people. I made well-informed choices, met many people in industries that paid more than mine, and then I pulled myself out of a situation where I'd make less than 80% of Americans for the rest of my life because I had a desire to do so. No one handed me a thing, and I'm sure I'm not the only one in this situation.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
...that's the sound of a joke flying over your head.
I admire Warren Buffet. Lighten up.
And don't get raped. And don't get a bad transfusion from a third-world hospital.
Tell me, Mr. Dobson, just what exactly goes on in that little head of yours.
Apparently some one can't handle the truth.
0 031215.htm ...: lawreview.kentlaw.edu/articles/77-2/Vanderwarren%2 520Final.pdf+charitable+organizations+scandals&hl= en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=9 ...
0 031215.htm
A trivial search kicks up these...
The results show that most people remain confident in charitable organizations despite scandals or other investigative reporting done about the way...
http://www.brookings.edu/views/interviews/light/2
Much less impressive in scale than the United Way or American
Cancer Society scandals, but comparatively far more devastating is
the pending case of theft that occurred at the Illinois Federation of
Families.
http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:bPwtzC5queIJ
Bob Edwards: This a hangover from the scandals that occurred in several high-profile charities?
Paul Light: Absolutely. It's a consequence of scandals across the board, controversy surrounding the Red Cross disbursement of the September 11th relief funds, the Catholic priesthood scandal. I mean, practically every scandal out there stuck to the charitable sector, and Americans have become more dubious about making investments, if you will, in charitable organizations, investments in either time or income.
http://www.brookings.edu/views/interviews/light/2
Charities work well on SMALL scale locally. On a large scale, they become corrupt organizations that throw elite parties, spend lots of money on salaries, and provide entre' into the upper social circles for the people who run them.
Just this weekend, they had a special involving actual survivors of the holacaust. One of them was a lady who has seen a grand total of $3600 while growing increasingly angry watching *billions* be collected, spent on nice museums, fancy parties, travel, etc. by lots of people who never spent a day in a concentration camp.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
That would be what I discussed in my original post about a small percent of cases which are truly tragic, but much much more rare. Are you implying that the number of people who have aids due to rape or bad transfusions is higher than the number of people that have Malaria simply because of where they live?
You had me, and you lost me...
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The Gates Foundation is already worth over $50 billion dollars, add to that Buffet's 30-40 billion. Now how much does the Gates Foundation give away each year??? 1-2 Billion, their assets are probably growing faster than they are giving, which to me is a scam/sham whatever you want to call it. And they are making you accept it because it's under the guise of human equality? I think Buffet is a good man who was fooled by Bill into giving him the money. Now you have the 2 richest men combining their wealth into the hands of 1. The Gates Foundation is probably more powerful than most governments and by giving to the poor, it will garner the support of the masses. That much money, power, control, and influence should never be in the hands of a single man. And when he cures AIDS or something, everyone will worship him. I happen to be a christian and I'm reminded of a scripture: Matthew 7:20 "Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them." Most people here agree that Bill's business practices were bad...morally reprehesible even... So to me if he doesn't accept his wrongs and he's doing good but not in the name of God(I don't care any God), then he believes he's justifying his bad works by his good works, which means he can still do bad(evil) and justify it by good(feeding the poor). I don't know about you but I'm weary of ANY man/woman with that much power, no matter how good it looks! If you don't think he has power, Gates and Buffet single-handedly shorted the U.S. dollar, the most powerful economy in the world. "Wake Up!" - Rage Against the Machine Hopefully, I won't get killed for writing this... but at least I have BALLS!
While I see your point, I think you failed to grasp mine. My point had nothing to do with Mr. Buffet in particular, who, based on his public persona, appears to be less affected by his enormous wealth than other wealthy people.
Exactly why he should recieve the amount of attention he gets -- money doesn't mean that much to him, and it SHOULDN'T to others.
While maybe money shouldn't mean anything to the guy living paycheck-to-paycheck, but it does because of the reality of his situation. A loss of income of any kind could leave him and his family without food and shelter. Mr. Buffet has no such consequences to fear. That was my point.
New Orleans has and still does badly need investment. However, don't confuse who will benefit from the donation of an infrastructure locked entirely into one single company's product lines: It's not New Orleans.
In other words, that corporation has made an investment, which that same corporation expects financial gain from. For New Orleans, it's just another foot on the neck holding it down.
New Orleans has nothing to gain and a lot to lose by getting locked into a defective network infrastructure that, in addition to all the other defects of that product line, locks out other vendors entirely, thus eliminating competition and the benefits of the free market.
Locking out competition is not charity. In fact, from the way American values used to be described and looked up to, preventing a free market (by locking out competition alone or in combination with other means) is just down right anti-American.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Farmers often had millions of dollars in land, but very little real wealth. The problem was every generation they'd have to sell off half the farm to pay the tax. Meanwhile a large corporation would move in and buy up the land. Hence the death of the American Farm. These are the people we want to protect by eliminating the death tax. The question is, are there any left to protect?
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The thing every one wants to know is; will he still be the second richest man after having done this?
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
There is no moral reason for anyone to suffer this tax.
Don't worry. Dead people don't suffer anymore.
While I'm sure this philanthropy will save or improve countless lives - it unfortunately will serve only as a half measure.
The best way to smooth the path to the singularity is to empower those (like many who read slashdot) who have a genetic predisposition to enjoy problem solving and have very little interest in power or the aquisition of material goods.
(basically those genetically predisposed to be the least likely to actually suceed in most current political systems)
I believe a nation created with such a ruling class would serve as a blueprint for other nations to follow - much as America has in the modern age.
Such a nation could share its technological achievements with the rest of the world using the open source model of data sharing.
In short order a new renissance could sweep the world creating an excess of resources that would wipe away the old world order for an increasingly cooperative new one.
That would be a better investment of these resources.
Until technological advances enable basic resources to become plentiful - economic manipulation and international sabotage will work in direct opposition to this form of institutional philanthropy.
All taxes provide an incentive to taxpayers to reduce the taxes they pay. The death tax therefore provides an incentive for the private sector to find a means to eliminate death. Kind of like the Ansari X prize, but with a much bigger upside. Immortality of the physical or other kind.
Gee, the primary components needed for that "fetus" to turn into a "child" is....
a) food
b) shelter
c) time
I get your point. I *must* be an ignoramus.
Wait - In order for me to be an idiot, you must have a point. Can you explain to me the mysterious process you know of by which a fetus transmogrifies into a child? As far as I can tell, there's no mojo there. Conception is amazing, but in a matter of mere days, the "fetus" is amazingly indistinguishable from a "child."
Thanks for playing.
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
It is not a barrier, but neither is it an enabler. Unfortunately I am not rich.
Stick Men
> He's not giving all of his net worth to charity when he dies, but it's pretty
> close. Which is why this story made me wonder if his death is impending...
Many folks are speculating that he's been thinking about this ever since his wife Susan died back in 2004 (they had been married since 1952, although separated since 1977, his wife set him up with his current live-in girlfriend Astrid).
Apparently Warren's original plan was to leave all his money to his wife Susan (who has been his closest advisor on all charitable matters) to figure out how to set up a foundation to distribute their wealth to charity. Most likely, plans probably changed when Susan got cancer and died. One can just wonder what an event like that can do to your thoughts about your own mortality and the possiblity that your live-in girlfriend could accidentally mess up your carefully planned life-time donation strategy and he probably just decided to take matters into his own hands to make sure it was done to his satisfaction.
Just a thought...
First of all, I hate when people say such and such a thing is unfair. I think that the concept of fairness stems from a sense of entitlement, and the unwillingness to deal with with a changing environment.
Second of all, I don't think saving money is such a great virtue. In the end money is meant to be spent, and if you're going to be saving it, you should be able to justify that action with the idea that your money will be earning you more money in some sort of investment.
If you're unwilling to spend your money while you're alive, I don't see why you should be allowed to spend money when you're dead. If you have a large estate and you're concerned about it not going to your children, then give it up and live more modestly. If you're unwilling to sacrifice for your children's benefit now, they're probably not worthy of your money after you're dead.
-------
Incite and flee.
It would have been more fitting to mod you +5, Troll. Trolls like to eat babies too, don't they?
Actually, as a parent I'm sickened that you got any positive moderation at all. Then again this is socialist save-the-whales-kill-the-babies slashdot so I shouldn't be too surprised I suppose.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Microsoft gives away lots of software, for free, there are also lots of Microsoft programming tools available for FREE... No they ain't FOSS, but they are free...
FYI, although it seems to make sense that charity would benefit because of tax policy, the correlation between taxes and charity is markedly weaker than other factors. Analysis of tax systems around the world and over time suggest that charitable giving correlates inversely with high tax rates, especially among those paying the highest of marginal tax rates. (read: leave money in rich pockets, and they tend to give it away.) ...and the top factor: religion. Churchgoers tend to give more (even to non-church charities) than their non-church-going peers.
As for the Estate/Death tax: this is a social/values debate (not a substantive budget, or social issue). It's not about the money. It's about who gets to say what is done with other people's money- especially when a lot of people think they shouldn't have that money. It's not a real budget issue- it raises a negligible portion of all federal revenues. It is, for those who qualify, more or less voluntary- it really applies to those who don't do the estate planning to avoid it. Put your estate into a trust, control the trust, but own very little of it. Finally, nature takes care of whether intergenerational wealth transfer really works all by itself. According to Stanley and Danko (in their book The Millionaire Next Door) over 85% of millionaire households today are first-generation wealthy, and in their book they document a strong inverse correlation between receiving 'financial assistance' from parents and being wealthy, confident, secure, and healthy. Most kids who depend on their parents for financial security never grow up financially, take fewer risks, and statistically under-perform their peers in terms of lifetime earnings.
I read in this passage (Mark 12: 41-44) the same basic message as most of the teachings of Jesus. That of placing ones self interest below ones compassion for others, especially those of lesser abilities and of greater needs. Marx actually came close to the same ideal in "from each according to ability, to each according to need. However Marx was attempting to codify such into a social structure, something that did not really have anything to do with the ideals or intents of the individual regardless of how lofty the goal. I believe that Jesus had the correct approach in that his teachings were almost always directed at coaxing a selfless compassion for the welfare for others in individual hearts. Society after all is merely a collection of individuals with at least some common ideals and intentions. This was intended as grass roots building of a kind and noble civilization based on love and compassion. Sadly many Christians I have encountered seem to misunderstand this most basic of testaments. You don't simply do these things out of fear because an all powerful and vengeful God insists you do them. You need to cultivate the softness of heart that makes YOU WANT to do them out of love and compassion. But then this interpretation of Jesus's teachings is from old agnostic me.
Matthew
You're obviously a fucking racist. No wonder you're sucking twitter's dick. Did you know he's a racist too? He hates Indians and Chinese.