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Gates Foundation To Spend All Its Assets
El Lobo writes "The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has said it will spend all its assets within 50 years of both of them dying. The foundation focuses on improving health and economic development globally, and improving education and increasing access to technology. It also focuses on fighting diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. The Seattle-based foundation plans to increase spending to about $3.5 billion a year beginning in 2009 and continuing through the next decade, up from about $1.75 billion this year." The Wall Street Journal (excerpted at the link above) called the foundation's decision "a decisive move in a continuing debate in philanthropy about whether such groups should live on forever."
For all the crap he gets here, its never been about the money with Bill. He lives in relative modesty for his income and has always maintained that his kids would only inherit a small portion of his wealth with the bulk to be used for charitable causes.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Funny you should mention that. He's doing just the opposite. Gates just bought 10% of PNM Resources, a gas and electric utility in Arizona. They don't do renewable energy.
Gates also owns major portions of Home Depot, Canadian National Railway Co, Republic Services (a garbage hauling company), several TV networks, Four Seasons Hotels, Berkshire Hathaway, and several Big Pharmaceutical companies. This is not the profile of an enlightened investor. These are the investments any Robber Baron would make to diversify his holdings.
Keep your eye on Cascade Investments LLC, that's Gates' personal holding company. He's still building his personal fortune, leveraging his monopoly into more areas.
I just think there should be some way to preserve it without complete dissolution being the best course of action.
"Should" is not a useful word in the real world, unfortunately. A foundation is insulated from all external pressures. This can be good in some cases, but it ultimately leads to uselessness of the foundation.
Everything is a tradeoff. When a foundation spends a dollar, that means the foundation is liquidating $1 worth of capital and labor in the marketplace. If they spend enough money, people lose their jobs, factories shut down, and new businesses are unable to find the resources (capital and labor) to start up.
Of course, that dollar is hopefully spent wisely. If it is spent wisely, the benefits will outweigh the aforementioned costs. With someone like Bill Gates in charge, I'm sure those dollars are spent wisely. After he dies, who will make sure the dollars continue to be spent wisely? There is no feedback cycle to correct the course when they start making bad choices. Businesses do have a feedback cycle: their resources are taken away from them when they become inefficient.
Donating to charity, although it makes you feel good, can actually be bad for society unless you make SURE your resources are used more wisely than where they were before.
The best economic thing a normal person can do for society is to produce as much as possible, and consume as little as possible. It's simple, but rarely said. However, here in the US (like most countries), we tax production and not consumption (or very little, anyway). There are a million ways to make consumption taxes progressive, just like income taxes, but without the problems associated with taxing production.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.