171–180 of 181 posts
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What percentage of his time and net worth has Bill Gates given to those in poverty over the years?
You should also ask what percentage of their net worth he has taken ? He is getting richer every day.
Compared to say how much ZANU-PF has taken.
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Compared to where ? $2 isn't even worth the same, depending of the place you are in the US.
Most people in the US are within a bicycle ride from a Walmart or similar discounter. (New York City is a notable exception). So $5 is has similar buying power throughout the US. I know because I spent 5 months cycling through the US on a tiny budget. For calories you would buy ramen noodles. Aim for 2000 calories per day or more. For Vitamins and fibre, buy apples ($1.11 per pound). At least one apple per day. An ic…
Poverty is directly correlated to large family size. This is true all over the world.
There are so many folks in the comments who seem to be focused on a particular narrative. There's a lot of comments saying "It's so much better than it used to be!" While true, this feels to me like a deflection. It seems to come up any time inequality is mentioned here. It feels like an excuse. "yes things may be hard for someone making $2 a day, but they're better now so it's all ok." I find it to be a distraction.…
>> I don't care if things are better than ancient times. The world population living in poverty has decreased from >1.7 billion to 700 million over the past 25 years. So, it's not a comparison to ancient times. We've made considerable progress in just the past couple decades. There's still a lot of work to be done, and we should celebrate the progress made at the same time.
I did this in college for a week as part of a $2 dollar a day challenge for a student microfinance club. I knew well enough that it was near impossible to do it accurately in the U.S. where costs are inflated for basic things, and I also was discounting things like my tiny rent and what not, but I wanted to just go through it once as an exercise. I had $14 and I used most of it to stock up on dry beans. I think I end…
To be fair, $2 probably goes a little farther in Africa than the US or Europe. $2 a day in the US is impossibly little. I'm almost sure that food stamps would equate to more by itself.
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Is he greater than, say, the guy who founded DFS Group, who has now given away all his wealth in line with his plan to do so which he set in place decades ago? Edit named wrong company initially
Ummm, yeah? Bill Gates has also famously committed to giving away substantial parts of his wealth to charity, and has even gotten other billionaires to do the same. Although, let's not actually compare greatness here, anyone voluntarily giving away their vast fortunes to charity deserves applause in my mind, and saying that one is greater than the other is kind of pointless.
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The achievement is ... Mao died?
And probably Deng Xiaoping's re-architecture of China. Still, what caused the advance does not diminish the success of humanity. Progress is progress.
It is? Don't you think, there can also be progress in the wrong direction?
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Ummm, yeah? Bill Gates has also famously committed to giving away substantial parts of his wealth to charity, and has even gotten other billionaires to do the same. Although, let's not actually compare greatness here, anyone voluntarily giving away their vast fortunes to charity deserves applause in my mind, and saying that one is greater than the other is kind of pointless.
But he gave it mostly to his own charity, as far as I know, so he still has some control over it. So it is not the same, I think.
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For about a year I lived off ~$16/week(not including rent) here in Sweden (which is not known as a cheap country to live in). I could just about get by and put away some meager savings. But those savings were continuosly lost to random unforeseen expenses in the $20 range. In my opinion it's not possible to live like that for any longer stretch of time. As soon as an emergency presents itself, you're wiped out and en…
I wonder if this would get a lot easier with a group. Like, is it easier for 50 people to survive on $100/week of food than for one person to survive on $2. Obviously not practical for most western lifestyles, but I'm just imagining the various economies of scale around making a big pots of soup, chili, hummus, baking bread, etc. All of these things are labour intensive but can be done extremely cheaply if you're wor…
Yes, and this is basically the financial norm for the poor. Everyone has some money coming in, and the precise amount varies, as does the need for money ("unforeseen expenses in the $20 range"). So large families provide financing internally; when you have less money to hand than you need, you get help from your extended kin, and when you have more than you need, it goes to help your kin.
This is often phrased as "borrowing", but it isn't really; these transfers aren't supposed to be paid back.
When variations in income and expenses are backstopped by a group of dozens of diversified people, you can live right on the edge of your average earning power. When you're a single atomized person, you have more need for a buffer of savings, because your income and expenses are so comparatively erratic.