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Gates Makes Largest Donation Since 2000 with $4.6B Pledge

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

#271

Post by pc86 »

Chathamization wrote: post #119
adventured wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gates and Buffett have, for many years now, publicly pledged to give away basically 99% of their wealth. Buffett's premise on not giving much of his wealth to his children, goes back perhaps 40 or 50 years now based on what he has said. According to Gates, an article that Buffett wrote for a business magazine, published ~25 some years ago now, informed and altered Bill's thinking on the detriment of giving such immen…

> Buffett's premise on not giving much of his wealth to his children I mean, it's still an insanely huge amount of money he'd be giving to his children (Gates as well). 1% of his networth is $762 million - you're talking about an insane amount some people are going to get just by being born (even after taking into account inheritance taxes and splitting the money among siblings). And we should also remember that char…

We'd all be much better off if they just donated it to the United States Treasury, wouldn't we?

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

#272

Post by Retric »

randyrand wrote: post #241
meric wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree on large marginal taxes on labor, you'd be targeting high earning surgeons rather than rich families inheriting wealth. If we want to tax capital, tax capital, and put a wealth tax of low single digit percentage point paid yearly. If you want to exclude people's first home, then do that.

I'm still not sure how much of a problem this really is. 88% of the very wealthy ($30+ million) in the USA made their wealth themselves. https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2016/10/10/where-... ...the best source I could find.

That's with a long history of estate taxes and strong economic growth. Also, if you look at Americans with 10+ billion far more than 12% inherited their money.

The US has been stagnating with lower GDP growth rate over time which will likely change these numbers. Because the low % of inhered wealth is mostly due to large numbers of new wealthy not children of the wealthy losing their money. http://www.lagunabeachbikini.com/images/2014/economy/RGDPgro...

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

#273

Post by Pigo »

peter303 wrote: post #80
Pigo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Zuckerbergs hundred million to Camden NJ was squandered. Too much money too soon. Plus a corrupt organization. Plus no one really knows how to make minority schools better. Its not from lack of trying.

I think this is exactly what I fear. No matter how much money we raise for curing cancer, it's not necessarily going to give us the cure for cancer. And now we have "charities" like Komen that exist purely to virtue signal while everyone's driving Bentley's. There's so much corruption out there, especially places like Africa where I know Gates has given a lot of love.

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

#274

Post by dragonwriter »

rusk wrote: post #253
mborch wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It most certainly isn't. The Wikipedia article has an accurate description. Google pulls a wrong definition for some reason.

The petite bourgeoisie is economically distinct from the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat social-class strata who rely entirely on the sale of their labor-power for survival; and also are distinct from the capitalist class haute bourgeoisie (high bourgeoisie) who own the means of production, and thus can buy the labor-power of the proletariat and lumpenproletariat to work the means of production. Though the peti…

The three basic classes are the working class which survived on wage labor, the petit borgeoisie that both rent labor and work as essential means of support, and he capitalists whose support is dominantly derived by renting labor to apply to capital.

The petit bourgeoisie is the middle class of the three. (The lower and upper middle class are both part of it.)

Bill Gates (the Microsoft one) parents appear to have derived wealth largely from his father's successful law practice, dependent on his own labor essentially alongside other rented labor, which would them petit borgeoisie, middle class. They were certainly at the quite high end of prosperity for that class, so upper middle class. (It's not impossible that they at some point crossed into the haut bourgeoisie, but the descriptions I've seen suggest mostly very successful petit borgeoisie.)

Bill Gates himself rapidly moved into the haut bourgeoisie with Microsoft's success.

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

#275

Post by dragonwriter »

olewhalehunter wrote: post #228
dragonwriter wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bill Gates was not upper "middle class", his household was in the 1% 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 th…

That archaic nobility distinction is useless to the conversation, especially when the most powerful men in the world we're discussing about have the background I'm talking about. https://www.dailysabah.com/columns/taha-meli-arvas/2017/05/0...

> That archaic nobility distinction is useless to the conversation,

It's not a mobility distinction,it's the classical distinction of classes in the capitalist economy (the bourgeoisie is a class in the preceding feudal economy, but there the whole bourgeoisie is the middle class, and the upper class is the nobility, not the haut bourgeoisie.)

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

#276

Post by JoeAltmaier »

dragonwriter wrote: post #274
rusk wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The petite bourgeoisie is economically distinct from the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat social-class strata who rely entirely on the sale of their labor-power for survival; and also are distinct from the capitalist class haute bourgeoisie (high bourgeoisie) who own the means of production, and thus can buy the labor-power of the proletariat and lumpenproletariat to work the means of production. Though the peti…

The three basic classes are the working class which survived on wage labor, the petit borgeoisie that both rent labor and work as essential means of support, and he capitalists whose support is dominantly derived by renting labor to apply to capital. The petit bourgeoisie is the middle class of the three. (The lower and upper middle class are both part of it.) Bill Gates (the Microsoft one) parents appear to have der…

Aren't those categories unactionable? I mean, a lady owns a beauty shop, spends 10 hours a day ordering supplies, doing payroll, managing advertising, hiring and fireing, somehow she's not working class because other people are involved and paid by her? A guy like Bill Gate's Dad is categorized middle class because he works alone, sort of, despite essentially bossing around his clients with autocratic decisions made in the quiet of his office?

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

#277

Post by rtpg »

rtx wrote: post #266
rtpg wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core problem is that society has to rely on the whims of these people to solve problems. In an alternative universe we tax people more and ensure malaria eradication _whether or not Bill Gates personally decides to do so_. There are obviously coordination problems (not saying that "government can solve everything!", there are difficulties there too). But having huge organizations ask for donations from people is…

Resource allocation is at the base of all our problems. And capitalism has been the best solution so far.

extremely debatable. In the US, almost no national infrastructure was built through private means (though often privatised later). Private healthcare has been a disaster at maintaining a healthy public. An insistence on having government work happen through public contractors has generated massive conflicts of interests and made us end up with the most expensive infrastructure building process in the world.

Just because the Soviet Union fell over doesn't mean that capitalism has somehow been proven to be "the best solution".

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

#278

Post by jimbokun »

sametmax wrote: post #98
jimbokun wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You don't remember MS lying, cheating, doing illegal things and corrupting governments ? See, that's the problem here. You have completely forgotten how bad it was. The fact the industry and society did well despite that is not relevant.

I do remember, and felt pretty much the same way you do now at the time.

Over the years, my views towards Microsoft have softened.

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

#279

Post by rusk »

dragonwriter wrote: post #274
rusk wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The petite bourgeoisie is economically distinct from the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat social-class strata who rely entirely on the sale of their labor-power for survival; and also are distinct from the capitalist class haute bourgeoisie (high bourgeoisie) who own the means of production, and thus can buy the labor-power of the proletariat and lumpenproletariat to work the means of production. Though the peti…

The three basic classes are the working class which survived on wage labor, the petit borgeoisie that both rent labor and work as essential means of support, and he capitalists whose support is dominantly derived by renting labor to apply to capital. The petit bourgeoisie is the middle class of the three. (The lower and upper middle class are both part of it.) Bill Gates (the Microsoft one) parents appear to have der…

Okay ... this is another one of those slippery terms. As a onetime student of European history I got hung up on the etymology [0]

Historically, the medieval French word bourgeois denoted the inhabitants of the bourgs (walled market-towns), the craftsmen, artisans, merchants, and others, who constituted "the bourgeoisie", they were the socio-economic class between the peasants and the landlords, between the workers and the owners of the means of production

I was incorrectly equating "upper class" with these "landlords", but I guess as of the French revolution, with the Aristocracy overthrown the semantics shifted and "haute bourgeois" became the term for the ruling class.

Contemporarily, the terms "bourgeoisie" and "bourgeois" (noun) identify the ruling class in capitalist societies, as a social stratum

I would contend that the modern phenomenon of "the 1%" more closely resembles the aristocracy of old than Haute Bourgeois but I would be at odds with accepted terminology.

So yeah Bill Gates is from a Bourgeois background (particular grade is unclear) but arguably now occupies a distant Aristocratic stratum beyond Haute Bourgeois.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeoisie#Etymology

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

#280

Post by Retric »

adventured wrote: post #217
Retric wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Donations are really a 3 way tax break 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 pe…

According to the US tax code you really do have to pay millions in taxes on a 100 million dollar gift to someone else. If they are in another country then that country's tax code applies and they might need to pay even more money.

Here is the actual form: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f709.pdf

19 If line 18 is less than line 17, enter balance due

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