Slashdot Mirror
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
this is fucking awesome
.cig
"The man who dies thus rich, dies disgraced,"
--Andrew Carnegie
I'd never pay that much to get into the Guiness Book of Records
Bravo, sir.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
I'm not a MS appologist, just thought that was interesting.
Visualize the world of wine
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/
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 ?
None of the $30 billion is coming from Microsoft. It's coming from Warren Buffet's stock in Berkshire Hathaway, the company he founded. The existing endowment of the Gates Foundation comes from Bill Gates' stock in MS, and is a result (if you will) of MS's monopoly and predatory practices.
There is a long tradition of this (supporting charities through monopolistic profits), such as the Carnegie Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Ford Foundation, etc. Bill and Melinda are following in the footsteps of their capitalist predecessors.
The question of whether a charity should accept money from donors with questionable business ethics has been long debated and never resolved. George Bernard Shaw wrote several plays about this question, and he didn't have an answer. His best was probably Major Barbara, in which the Salvation Army must decide whether or not to accept support from a gin distiller and an arms manufacturer.
Are you kidding me? That's absolutely rediculous. As much as I dislike Microsoft's monopoly, and Bill Gates' business practices, his philanthropic activities are much more than 'scraps thrown to charity to buy the hearts'. And Warrenn Buffett is certainly NOT donating 'scraps', he is donating 85% of his net worth, in the form of stock in the company that he spent the last 30 years building.
Moreover, I think the idea of spending that much money on AI research is absolutely ludicrous! You're telling me that AI is going to be more helpful to sick and starving children in Africa and other parts of the third world than medicine and food? The Gateses are actively engaged in curing disease and saving lives and you're suggesting that research into artificial intelligence would be a more intelligent philanthropic investment? If that's actually what you think then for god's sake read something other than Slashdot every once in a while because you have a magnificently skewed view of the world.
Visualize the world of wine
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).
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.
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)
Godwin much? Microsoft never hurt anyone. They made crappy products and made those crappy products unfairly dominant in the marketplace, pointlessly annoying millions. Big deal. The Gates Foundation is already saving the lives of thousands of children a year though throwing millions at the "low hanging fruit" of easily preventable deaths from things like diarrhea (which kills more people than any disease but pneumonia and AIDS).
Convincing people to use an annoying product on the one hand, saving thousands of lives a year, proabably hundresed of thousands a year in a few decades on the other. None of the people who's lives are saved by the Foundations efforts give a crap about Windows.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
Thanks for the tip...think I'll send them a few bucks myself.
rj
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.
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.
Microsoft is not evil. They engage in some unfair business practices, and make a lot of pretty mediocre products. To call that evil trivializes truly evil actions, like the ongoing genocide in Sudan. Do people on here even realize how fortunate they are to be able to devote their time to complaining about DRM or IE security holes? How many people have died because of Microsoft? Few, if any. How many people can be saved by things like vaccination programs? Millions. Gates is no saint, but what he's doing is good, and he deserves to be applauded for it.
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.
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.
"Today, with a $60 billion fortune, Gates is both hated and loved. Unlike many, he has promised to contribute over 90% of his wealth to charities when the big guy calls his number." 90% of the richest man is more than 85% of the second richest man. Gates is just being more low-key about it.
Even if we were talking about money that were aquired that way, then there is no undoing the aquisition of the money. Even if it was blood money, then $37 billion being put to good use can never be a bad thing.
Using an extreme example: If a drug baron donated a million dollars to charity it would still be a million dollars and would still make the world a better place.
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
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 dare you contemplate contaminating the holy waters of Europa! We will exterminate your civilization!
For a very simple reason: Buffett believes that Bill does a much better job of allocating capitol than your run-of-the-mill charity.
And he is not alone in this belief. The Gates Foundation has made big waves in the non-profit world by replacing a give-away-money-to-feel-better model with a run-a-charity-like-a-business model. That includes setting targets, measuring results, and providing incentives.
Incredibly enough, some people have higher priorities than space hotels or a moon base, things like not starving to death today, having children without passing HIV to them, or learning how to read. I know it's tough to empathize with such ignorant and short-sighted people but they are out there...
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?
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
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...
...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.
You heard it here first.
I hope they spend some amounts for this project if they want to make some benefit for humanity.
Yes, because spending money on AIDS research would be just pointless.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
A wild guess: you are healthy and non of your children have died of starvation?
Not everything is black and white. Giving a laptop to every child in India, think how many of those hundreds of millions of kids might be helped out of poverty by greater access to education and information. Pushing them out of poverty would enable them to live healthier lives and afford medicines and vaccinations which they might not otherwise.
Great, then please go ahead and do that: earn your own billions to spend on your own monumental projects.
To impress future generations, make sure to engrave your achievements. Something along the lines of:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
While you're doing that, I'm glad someone is humble enough to spend resources on mundane problems like world pandemics, disaster prevention and recovery, ineffective education systems, and other issues that cripple long term development (economic and otherwise).
You know, the kind whose solutions will be required to make the achievements you propose into sustainable contributions to the advancement of humankind, instead of an excercise in the comparative studies of metaphorical male genitalia.
But maybe that's just my own foolish priorities; I'd prefer to have those space colonies self-sustaining and bubbling with life, trade and commerce rather than live and die in the span of a sudden monetary intervention.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
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!
Or even better - pay off roughly 0.5% of the U.S. national debt!
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.
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
Not just for questionable business ethics, but apparently for not being proud of Bush: "in 2003, the American Red Cross refused a 1 million dollar donation from the Dixie Chicks."
So the laptop project is the only way to "improve education and ultimately the quality of life"? Give me a break. There are plenty of other projects BMGF could fund to improve education other than the laptop one.
I'd also argue with saying that AIDS affects only a "statistically insignificant portion of humanity". Roughly one million sub-Saharan Africans died of AIDS last year (cite -- this site claims two million but we'll stick with one), out of a total population of around 650 million. That's 0.154% of the population. Compare that to the United States death rate due to cancer: 0.188% (565,000 deaths out of a population of 300 million). I'm sure you wouldn't say cancer affects a statistically insignificant portion of humanity.
Even when looking at the world population as a whole, it's not all that insignificant. The industrialized nations bring down the death rate. But since the laptop-for-everyone project specifically targets third-world nations, and most AIDS deaths occur in third-world nations, it's not entirely fair to take into account industrialized nations. This makes the disease that much more significant.
AIDS is destroying Africa and devastating other countries as well. Even in the richest nations such as the United States AIDS is a huge public health problem.
Money spent on AIDS research is money well spent. AIDS drugs (from AIDS research) have done much to help people living with HIV continue to live normal or less-painful lives for many years. Drugs also have dramatically cut the transmission rate at birth (mother-child).
Africa in particular has been damaged in terms of economics, stability, and security by the AIDS epidemic. Here is a site with AIDS rates in the adult population in Africa. Notice that for 15-49 year olds the sub-Sahara infection rate is estimated at 8.4%! Some countries have infection rates of over 20% such as Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Life expectancy at birth in some countries has dropped below 40 years!
A major reason other countries do not now have such high infection rates is large, expensive national programs have been established to prevent the spread of AIDS. Here is some information about the Caribbean where some nations have managed to dramatically reduce HIV transmission rates by the use of new drugs. Cuba, which has a large public health apparatus, is notable in its success against HIV/AIDS.
Just Thank You
The thing is: To advance the species, we need both. We already have $30b doing the here-and-now stuff. Why not put the other $30b to the "next-decade-or-century" things?
Because, you know, there's one thing everyone seems to be forgetting about Africa: Every child you save means one more life spent in poverty, misery and starvation, and five or so more childs to save 15 years down the road.
I say fix up the place first before you bring in more people to inhabit it. But maybe that's because I'm a European and uncomfortably close to what might blow up very soon. We already have mass migrations from northern Africa to southern Spain. Some perspective beyond "saving everyone we can today, fuck tommorow" is certainly asked for.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Over the years, Warren Buffet has been asked repeatedly in interviews why he doesn't give more to charity. His answer has always been a variation on the following, from TFA:
Or, to put it another way, Buffett's job for the past several decades has been to manage other people's money in ways that were far more profitable than they could manage it themselves. In his mind, every dollar that he had was actually a dollar he was managing on behalf of the charity that would get his fortune when he died.
He acknowledges that there was self-interest in this analysis; as he puts it, he was having a great time managing Berkshire Hathaway, and didn't want to go through the "grind" of setting up a foundation that could effectively distribute his megawealth. The fact that Bill Gates had already gone through that "grind" on his behalf was part of Buffett's incentive to give away his money now.
Another part, according to TFA, was the death of his wife Susan. Buffet says that he always figured he'd die before her, and he could trust her to give away all their wealth in an effective way. The fact that she predeceased him forced him to rethink his plan.
Arr! Read The Government Manual for New Pirates!
Buffet has made it clear many times that he is planning on giving most of his fortune away, and only leave "small" amounts to his children. The only new thing is that he's decided to give a significant part of it while he's still alive.
Frankly, since the guy is 75 I don't see anything weird about that. He's held the shares so long anyway, it's not like those shares are contributing much to his lifestyle. And this way he does get to enjoy the positive attention.
As for tax exemptions - sure, he may get some write off's, but nothing to make up for giving away 90% of his fortune.
150k per year seems pretty damn nice to me. That would not make you solidly middle class. You don't have to be a billionaire to be considered wealthy. The average household income in this country is closer to 50k per year.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
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.
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.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com