Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gates Makes Largest Donation Since 2000 with $4.6B Pledge

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 301 posts

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

#161

Post by chirau »

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...

Interesting... So he owns 5% of Berkshire and 45% of Four Seasons. Nice

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

#162

Post by Veelox »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #78
teamhappy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument usually is that by donating your money to a charity that you control instead of paying taxes you effectively undermine democracy.

The majority of federal income tax receipts go to military spending [+] (ignore social security and healthcare, those are funded out of compulsory payroll taxes, which is distinct from federal income tax); you're doing more social good (in general) by diverting wealth to charities that promote social welfare than giving that money to the federal government (I'm sad to say). Sometimes democracy is wrong. More social p…

Numbers for the 2016 Fiscal Year, all in Billions

Pensions 996.0

Health Care 1,121.2

Education 126.2

Defense 829.1

Welfare 377.2

Protection 37.7

Transportation 92.4

General Government 52.5

Other Spending 79.2

Interest 240.0

Total Spending 3,951.3

Defense as % of total: 21.3% (851.8/3999.5)

Defense as % of total minus social programs: 57.3% (851.8 / (3999.5-1011.6-1107.4-393.2) )

Note, the programs listed under Pensions, Health Care, and Welfare account for 62.8% of the budget. While you are correct in your statement, I don't like your conclusion. We should spend the 2.5 trillion on social programs more effectively not try and 3.3 trillion the same way.

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

#163

Post by joshuahedlund »

canoebuilder wrote: post #124

eradication of Malaria (1000 deaths daily, much more suffering and cost to society). If great efforts are made to eradicate diseases in an area that has historically been subjected to various diseases such that the local population has adopted the reproduction strategy of having large amounts of offspring to counter premature deaths, but upon eradication/reduction of said diseases there is significant delay in the ab…

Gates has addressed these concerns with scientific data showing that "when children survive in greater numbers, parents decide to have smaller families."[0]

[0]https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/Resources-and-Med...

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

#164

Post by toomuchtodo »

Veelox wrote: post #162
toomuchtodo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of federal income tax receipts go to military spending [+] (ignore social security and healthcare, those are funded out of compulsory payroll taxes, which is distinct from federal income tax); you're doing more social good (in general) by diverting wealth to charities that promote social welfare than giving that money to the federal government (I'm sad to say). Sometimes democracy is wrong. More social p…

Numbers for the 2016 Fiscal Year, all in Billions Pensions 996.0 Health Care 1,121.2 Education 126.2 Defense 829.1 Welfare 377.2 Protection 37.7 Transportation 92.4 General Government 52.5 Other Spending 79.2 Interest 240.0 Total Spending 3,951.3 Defense as % of total: 21.3% (851.8/3999.5) Defense as % of total minus social programs: 57.3% (851.8 / (3999.5-1011.6-1107.4-393.2) ) Note, the programs listed under Pensio…

> While you are correct in your statement, I don't like your conclusion. We should spend the 2.5 trillion on social programs more effectively not try and 3.3 trillion the same way.

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/us-military-spe...

https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/wolrd_military_...

"The U.S. outpaces all other nations in military expenditures. World military spending totaled more than $1.6 trillion in 2015. The U.S. accounted for 37 percent of the total.

U.S. military expenditures are roughly the size of the next seven largest military budgets around the world, combined."

We spend too much on military spending, full stop.

EDIT: Sidenote: Social security and Medicare very efficient as-is. They simply need more resources.

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

#165

Post by and0 »

canoebuilder wrote: post #124

eradication of Malaria (1000 deaths daily, much more suffering and cost to society). If great efforts are made to eradicate diseases in an area that has historically been subjected to various diseases such that the local population has adopted the reproduction strategy of having large amounts of offspring to counter premature deaths, but upon eradication/reduction of said diseases there is significant delay in the ab…

"Diminished prospects of the world at large" more accurately describes the world after your post, not saving millions of lives.

This is what happens when you either have no empathy in your worldview or an extreme racial bias.

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

#166

Post by Retric »

pc86 wrote: post #147
Retric wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to 'take it back.' But, I feel donations should not be tax deductible. Why should I subsidize anything someone feels is worth donating for?

Well, only certain kinds of donations are tax deductible. You can donate $10,000 to me right now but you're not getting a penny back from the IRS if you do. The bar to become a charity could be a lot higher but it's not exactly a rubber stamp.

If I pay you 10,000$ you and I pay a tax. But, there is a separate gift tax deduction and small gifts. https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

Donations are really a 3 way tax break, I don't pay taxes on the gift, you don't pay taxes on the gift, and I don't pay income taxes on the money I use as a gift. (The arguable forth deduction is I don't need to realize capital gains before giving a gift.)

PS: The only way to actually lower taxes is to lower spending. Anything else is just shifting the burden to someone else.

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

#167

Post by dmoy »

canoebuilder wrote: post #124

eradication of Malaria (1000 deaths daily, much more suffering and cost to society). If great efforts are made to eradicate diseases in an area that has historically been subjected to various diseases such that the local population has adopted the reproduction strategy of having large amounts of offspring to counter premature deaths, but upon eradication/reduction of said diseases there is significant delay in the ab…

The US fertility rate is less than half of what it was a century ago, and less than a third of what it was 150-160 years ago. European fertility rates are similarly down by fourfold or something. It does not take many generations at all for fertility rates to drop precipitously once child mortality, women's education, etc go up. Your underlying premise "there is significant delay in the abatement of the overproduction strategy if it abates at all" is probably not correct, for any reasonable definition of "significant delay".

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

#168

Post by sctb »

jtx1 wrote: post #134

"Think of the children". What a sad way to begin a rebuttal. Quite unfitting of HN. Speaking of empathy, can we have some for the European countries currently being invaded?

Please don't start off-topic flamewars like this. We detached this flagged subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15020486.
Post reply on HN