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Bill Gates has donated over $36,854,000,000 in his lifetime

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Re: Bill Gates has donated over $36,854,000,000 in his lifetime

#11

Post by rednukleus »

arbuge wrote: post #3
stackcollision wrote: post #2

Even if you don't like Windows, you've got to admit that Gates is a good guy.

Indeed - or at least he's become one. Something good did come out of Windows after all...

Windows has been a good product for the average user since 1995, and has been great since Windows 7; it's just their business practices that were a problem. And to be honest, they were hardly the worst offender there either.

Re: Bill Gates has donated over $36,854,000,000 in his lifetime

#14

Post by mjn »

tseabrooks wrote: post #8

How much of the Money donated by B&M Gates Foundation is Bill's personal money vs Money raised from donors? Not trying to diminish his donations, just genuinely curious how much money foundations like that raise form outside donors.

Depends on how you count. The endowment is mainly (all?) Gates's money, but a substantial proportion of the annual spending is funded by Buffett. That's because, rather than donate money to the Foundation outright, Buffett set up a recurring-donation program structured in a way so it feeds directly into the Foundation's annual program spending.

For 2011, it looks like the Foundation spent $3.4 billion total, of which the annual installment of Buffett's donation accounted for $1.5 billion, so a little under half.

Re: Bill Gates has donated over $36,854,000,000 in his lifetime

#15

Post by fdw2 »

arbuge wrote: post #3
stackcollision wrote: post #2

Even if you don't like Windows, you've got to admit that Gates is a good guy.

Indeed - or at least he's become one. Something good did come out of Windows after all...

An interesting, speculative discussion would be to examine if the harm (if any) that came from Microsoft's monopolistic activities is out-valued by the good done by Gates in his foundation.

Where would the value captured by Microsoft and Gates have been redirected if MS didn't have a monopoly on the PC industry until recently? My guess is not fighting tropical diseases- but where?

Re: Bill Gates has donated over $36,854,000,000 in his lifetime

#16

Post by dfxm12 »

rednukleus wrote: post #12

Can someone please change the title to say "has donated", since "had donated" implies he is dead. Or that the took the money back.

That's not what the pluperfect tense implies in English. It simply means something that took place prior to a moment in the past [1]. There is still some ambiguity that could lead a reader to infer that Gates is finished donating money.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_aspect#English

Re: Bill Gates has donated over $36,854,000,000 in his lifetime

#17

Post by mdpye »

I don't want to suggest that this has not been a good thing overall, but donations of this sort are a highly political act, and can't escape being in spite of any intention.

An interesting (I found) examination of the the effects of such a volume of donation coming from a single organisation can be found here:

http://newint.org/features/2012/04/01/bill-gates-charitable-...

Again, not saying it's not a net good, just that it's perhaps not a perfect model to pursue either.

Re: Bill Gates has donated over $36,854,000,000 in his lifetime

#18

Post by danielweber »

This is a bad way to measure philanthropy, and I think Bill Gates would agree.

Anyone can dump money on a problem. But Bill Gates's money is still finite, and he has tried to make his money be the most efficient at solving given problems. He measures the stuff he does and sometimes finds out he goofed.

I'm not exaggerating when I say he's likely one of the top 5 people in the world at knowing how to spend billions of dollars to help people, because he has the most motivation of anyone in the world to know how to best spend billions of dollars.

Re: Bill Gates has donated over $36,854,000,000 in his lifetime

#20

Post by rednukleus »

dfxm12 wrote: post #16
rednukleus wrote: post #12

Can someone please change the title to say "has donated", since "had donated" implies he is dead. Or that the took the money back.

That's not what the pluperfect tense implies in English. It simply means something that took place prior to a moment in the past [1]. There is still some ambiguity that could lead a reader to infer that Gates is finished donating money. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_aspect#English

To me it implies that the event took place prior to the end of his lifetime, which implies that his lifetime has ended.

"Has donated" carries the correct meaning and is unambiguous.

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