Melinda Gates Resigns from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

People get divorced for many reasons but generally they don't want to be around each other any more and being co-chairs of a big foundation would make that pretty impossible. Business (or charitable) partnerships are like marriages in a lot of ways.

> The organization’s name will change to the Gates Foundation, with Bill Gates, her ex-husband and Microsoft founder, becoming the sole chair.

This is a common but bad take.

Firstly, there are a lot of taxes still involved. The Gates foundation still pays salary tax and sales tax and property tax and etc.

More importantly, had the funding remained parked in a savings account or stock portfolio without being realized, it would have been completely dead to the economy and untaxed. So there's probably a net positive to taxpayers to give people ways to unload their assets.

> we haven’t gotten anything particularly valuable out of the gates foundation

There could be an argument that the 501(c) tax code is too generous, but I don't think people are probably thinking through the implications of "qualifying" non-profits. If you made every non-profit prove that they were creating value, and also make them subject to taxation on all contributions, you would be effectively wiping out things like open-source software projects or Wikipedia, let alone your normal NGOs and community charities.