211–220 of 301 posts
What accounts for this monstrous difference? He has cashed some out over the years, but not ~$80 billion worth.
Although there are many cynics, it's quite remarkable the impact on the world donations can have. Here's what their foundation has actually been doing with the money: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/Resources-and-Med... I wouldn't be surprised if private donations will eventually be responsible for the eradication of Malaria (1000 deaths daily, much more suffering and cost to society). If you're in tech yo…
Malaria will be eradicated by CRISPR if anything. It's almost a waste to try and fully eliminate it any other way.
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Yet many want to 'solve' the problem of the 0.1% being so wealthy and as a result let the government do most of the charity work instead. I think this would be a huge mistake. The mega wealthy donate a larger percent of their income than any other income group (which makes complete sense). We would be losing a ton of donation money. Yes this is a tangent. But I think its an important point to make. On top of that, ev…
There's a difference between someone who went from upper middle class to billionaire, like Gates, and someone who inherited most of their wealth, like other people. I don't think lumping them together into a monolithic N% is productive for purposes of discussing policy.
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I didn't like the way Microsoft acted as a monopoly, but the tech industry managed to survive and escape Microsoft hegemony. Microsoft made some terrible software, but Office is actually very good overall and can argue has led to real productivity gains for many businesses. (I realize this can be debated endlessly.) Everything I've read indicates Gates takes his philanthropy very, very seriously and is having a real…
> Everything I've read indicates Gates takes his philanthropy very, very seriously The problem is that he controls that narrative.
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There's a difference between someone who went from upper middle class to billionaire, like Gates, and someone who inherited most of their wealth, like other people. I don't think lumping them together into a monolithic N% is productive for purposes of discussing policy.
Bill Gates was not upper "middle class", his household was solidly in the 1%, he had computer programming access at his private school (this is 1968), and his mother's friendship with the president of IBM at the time was the reason he got contracted to write DOS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates#Career
Seems to have been a successful petit bourgeoisie, or upper middle class, family. In traditional understanding of class relationships in capitalist society, the middle class isn't mostly middle income but well above; the majority of society is the working class dependent on wage-labor. The upper (capitalist or haut borgeoisie) class is a very thin layer.
The modern American media generally uses a different model which where “class” would more accurately be called “income group”, rather than focussing on relation to the economic system; this gets confusing in conversation when people could be using either model. In that model, Gates family was clearly upper class.
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You are talking about children dying... And you are also making the assumption that only Europe can contribute to innovation, and Africans can only be a burden on their neighbors and will never become contributors. I would agree that if the solving of a crisis like Malaria results in population growth, we need to plan on success and also focus on supporting infrastructure for those people. But I think you are saying…
I don't know if that was an intentional flattery tactic to get me to read your most more closely, but it worked, thanks, regardless. I'm surprised if the post read as "more children dying is the obvious optimal path," that wasn't my intent. I'm meaning to draw attention to the fact that if we are going to have outside interventions into societies that have drastic effects on those societies, then the outside interven…
You had thoughtful comments about women in tech, crypto currency, and some others I liked as well.
We share a lot of the same opinions, I just want to make sure we are not proving the ammo for the next Dr.Gobells.
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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 gif…
That doesn't make sense given the sums we're talking about. If I give someone $100 million (non-charitable), I don't have to pay an extra tax on the giving, I only pay taxes on the income. You're referring to a very specific gift tax scenario.
The majority of the Gates Foundation giving is not within the US. The people on the end receiving should not pay taxes on that as it pertains to the US. Further, the Gates Foundation giving within the US will frequently end up taxed after the gift via income taxes on salaries (whether we're talking about scientists, secretaries or in the field workers receiving foundation dollars to operate as part of a charitable organization).
The scope to the triple tax premise is, in reality, dramatically more narrow.
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Are you serious? This is almost too goofy to merit a response. Yes, when a billionaire gives away billions of dollars he's not accountable to anybody else. Why the heck would he be? If he were, then he wouldn't have donated it in the first place but would have just "invested it" in a company he created and controlled. There's no way to spin this where donating to a charity is more evil than what all the other .1%s do…
Think about it for a second. He didn't really give the money away he gave it to a charity he controls. That gift reduced the amount of taxes flowing to the public/government vs if he cashed in the stocks himself personally. You and I are paying more on a percentage basis to the government.
He is in fact giving immense sums of his money away. You should indeed think about it for a second. The Gates Foundation has expended tens of billions of dollars so far.
Fact quote from their site:
"Total grant payments since inception (through Q4 2016): $41 billion"
"Total 2016 Direct Grantee Support: $4.3 billion"
That is an extraordinary sum already. That money is gone, it is not under their control. They're spending $4.x billion per year at this point, that money is non-recoverable, it gets spent. Over time, the fortune is extinguished, as they're forced to give 5% per year. Get it?
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You assume the spouse is not wealthy. Wealthy spouse turns 1:2 into 2:2 which is stable. Interest can also slow for the occasional al 2:3+ growth. Europe has family's that have maintained wealth over the past 500+ years. "That’s according to a recent study by two Italian economists, Guglielmo Barone and Sauro Mocetti, who compared Florentine taxpayers way back in 1427 to those in 2011. Comparing the family wealth to…
> That’s according to a recent study by two Italian economists, Guglielmo Barone and Sauro Mocetti, who compared Florentine taxpayers way back in 1427 to those in 2011. Comparing the family wealth to those with the same surname today, they suggest the richest families in Florence 600 years ago remain the same now. I recall that study. They were still a multiple orders of magnitudes less wealthy, and that ignores any…
A different view on Gates' charity work: [1] Some highlights: "The first question concerns accountability... The Foundation is the main player in several global health partnerships and one of the single largest donors to the WHO. This gives it considerable leverage in shaping health policy priorities and intellectual norms..." "‘Depending on what side of bed Gates gets out of in the morning,’ he remarks, ‘it can shif…
Gates also acts as an economic enforcer for the IMF, quite literally using his charitable giving as a carrot/stick to force nations to accept policy decisions and often crippling loans from the IMF. But you don't have to take my word for it, listen to the man himself: During the panel, Bill Gates and Jim Yong Kim concurred on the need to leverage increased private sector financing in development through business-frie…
Do you know examples where the countries wanted something while Gates and Co wanted something else?