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Gates Makes Largest Donation Since 2000 with $4.6B Pledge

bloomberg.com

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Re: Gates Makes Largest Donation Since 2000 with $4.6B Pledge

#31

Post by sillypuddy »

SEJeff wrote: post #21

I'm surprised that people are asking how / why he is giving money away and no one mentioned his Giving Pledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge Bill Gates and Warren Buffet pledged to give half of their net worth away during their life or death to charity. They're practicing what they preach.

The man that inspired them... "Over the course of his life, Feeney has given away more than $8 billion.." "As of 2016, he lives in a rented apartment in San Francisco, with a remaining nest egg of $2 million"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Feeney

Re: Gates Makes Largest Donation Since 2000 with $4.6B Pledge

#32

Post by dopamean »

Pledging to give away so much of your wealth has interesting side benefits. You get to keep your money out of the hands of the government and if you're donating to your own charity then you also get to keep your family in control of the money.

I definitely don't mean to diminish the contribution of the Gates Foundation though. I often hear that they're one of the good ones.

Re: Gates Makes Largest Donation Since 2000 with $4.6B Pledge

#34

Post by joering2 »

adventured wrote: post #17
brianbreslin wrote: post #14

So what is his net worth made up of if he's donated all but 1.5% of his MSFT stock? His remaining MSFT stock is worth about $8B. What's the rest of his $82B made up of? - Edit- Nevermind, found it on here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_Investment

Cascade's investments are roughly 1/2 of his wealth. Bloomberg is currently estimating he's sitting on $43 billion in cash. https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/william-h-ga...

Honest question: can half of it for example $20B in cash, cure cancer? or HIV/AIDS?

Re: Gates Makes Largest Donation Since 2000 with $4.6B Pledge

#35

Post by sametmax »

slackoverflower wrote: post #29
revelation wrote: post #25

Read: has donated shares of Microsoft to his own foundation. Maybe we can give Gates the benefit of the doubt but for everyone else, this is just a tax scheme.

You do realize his foundation helped eradicate polio worldwide. Some of you HNers can't give people a break.

We do realize their PR tell you that.

What I know, however, is that I've been missioned in Africa by the gate foundation and that most money is wasted. Most stats are bullshitted.

What I know is that Gates have been misbehaving most of his life and that suddenly he is giving so much money he won from this time.

What I see is that a lot of people like you are very eager to forgive everything he has done, all the benefits he got from it, just because he is giving back what he took.

It's because of this that we can't improve our systems. A bit of PR and voila, all misdeeds are forgiven. Bad guys become saints. And people like you will spend their energy defend the story.

Re: Gates Makes Largest Donation Since 2000 with $4.6B Pledge

#36

Post by jimbokun »

joering2 wrote: post #34
adventured wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cascade's investments are roughly 1/2 of his wealth. Bloomberg is currently estimating he's sitting on $43 billion in cash. https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/william-h-ga...

Honest question: can half of it for example $20B in cash, cure cancer? or HIV/AIDS?

Gates seems to have put far more thought than most people into how to get the greatest net benefit to humanity from donating large sums of money. For example, he decided early on to fund development of a malaria vaccine, because it would save the greatest number of human lives for the amount of money he was donating.

So if anyone would know the answer to your questions, it would probably be Bill Gates.

Re: Gates Makes Largest Donation Since 2000 with $4.6B Pledge

#37

Post by lmm »

joering2 wrote: post #34
adventured wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cascade's investments are roughly 1/2 of his wealth. Bloomberg is currently estimating he's sitting on $43 billion in cash. https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/william-h-ga...

Honest question: can half of it for example $20B in cash, cure cancer? or HIV/AIDS?

All these things are open research questions; there's no roadmap to curing these things, there's a bunch of promising experiments that may or may not pan out. IIRC getting a new drug candidate through the full trial process costs maybe $1B for those that get as far as stage 3 trials (the final stage; most candidates will fail out earlier; conversely if a drug passes earlier trials there will probably be people willing to invest in return for a share of future profits, so you don't necessarily have to fund the full $1B yourself), but there's simply no way to know how many candidates you're gonna have to try to get one that works.

Re: Gates Makes Largest Donation Since 2000 with $4.6B Pledge

#38

Post by jimbokun »

Pigo wrote: post #12
zitterbewegung wrote: post #9

I am not sure if I recall correctly but wasn’t there a reason where gates wouldn’t donate all of his wealth at once and needed to do it in stages ? Also, maybe they can’t utilize all that cash at once. Therefore it would be best to be illiquid until you need the liquidity.

I don't know why, but I always worry when I see huge donations that poor management will see most of the money end up devious hands. But I imagine with that much money, there's a ridiculous amount of attention as to where it's going, and plenty of good people willing to manage it. But I assume everything is The Big Short and House of Cards out there.

Bill Gates puts just as much effort into making sure his charitable endeavors are using their funds efficiently as he did in making sure Microsoft spent wisely.

So in general I think your fears may be well founded, but I don't believe so in the case of Bill Gates donations.

Re: Gates Makes Largest Donation Since 2000 with $4.6B Pledge

#39

Post by bearjaws »

joering2 wrote: post #34
adventured wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cascade's investments are roughly 1/2 of his wealth. Bloomberg is currently estimating he's sitting on $43 billion in cash. https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/william-h-ga...

Honest question: can half of it for example $20B in cash, cure cancer? or HIV/AIDS?

Its important to understand, when anyone says "cure cancer", they are saying cure 100+ (mostly) unique diseases. $20Bn is not even close, try around 200Bn and 50+ years of research.

Maybe we will get lucky and find an amazing immuno-oncology drug that takes out half of them in the next 20 years, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Re: Gates Makes Largest Donation Since 2000 with $4.6B Pledge

#40

Post by melling »

dalbasal wrote: post #16

No mention of what project s the funds are going towards. There have been some good words from the foundation regarding the (health, primarily I believe) programs in Tanzania. I wonder if this is towards scaling those projects. Anyone have the scoop?

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/giving-pledge-new-billionaires-c...
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