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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 $1.75 billion this year." The Wall Street Journal (excerpted at the link above) called the foundation's decision "a decisive move in a continuing debate in philanthropy about whether such groups should live on forever."
One thing I really like about the philanthropic gestures from the Bill and Melinda foundation is that their fortune is new money and it all came from selling software to the middle class or above. It's literally taking (willingly) from the rich and giving to the poor.
Maybe they want to help the most people the can right now rather than making them wait a few decades?
Something tell me that the guys who run multibillion dollar foundation might've thought of that. My guess is that the principle could do more good in the hands of organizations (especially, IMO, OLPC ;) than sitting in a bank. That is: even more good that the interest the bank pays on it.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
It's great to see them want to spend ALL of their money on charity and that they will liquidate their assets to do so. A cynical person might say that any large pile of money will attract people more interested in themselves than the charity's mission. Making the organization spend them money will insure the money goes to the immediate purpose.
Given such intents, it's strange to see the foundation money spent buying independent newspapers. The Contra Costa Times and the San Jose Mercury News don't seem to have much to do with AIDS.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
They tend to invest in doing things that will persist for generations
Like Creationist education?
(Also: why does this get modded down to Troll or Flamebait almost instantly, whenever I post it? Is it unreasonable to question where some of the Gates/Buffett largesse is going, considering how much Gates rambles on about the importance of science education to future US competitiveness?)
Cheap energy costs about $1000/KW (yeah, yeah, $1/W, but the quotes are all in KW) to install, so $50 billion translates into about 50 GW of power, a huge number no doubt. To put it in perspective, the most recent estimate a bit of googling spits out for yearly, worldwide energy consumption is 338 exajoules, which about 11000 Gigawatt-Years. That's a really huge number.
Given that $50 billion represents about 2 days worth of economic activity in the US alone, it isn't real important what they do with this particular $50 billion, especially in relation to a task as monumental as providing energy for a global civilization.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
One great example: Borges..especially some of the Nobel prizes (such as literature) are mostly given to people with certain political affiliations..