There’s a recent report that he gave $100 million to AIDS research in India. Sure, the guy is an extreme capitalist and has more money than some small nations, but I do admire his philanthropy.
It’s fun to badmouth him and MS, but gestures like this make it hard to really dislike the guy just for his wealth. Sure the donations might be a PR scheme to put MS in a better light, but who cares? The money is going for a good cause.
A good cause and one helluva tax write-off.
I admire Gates for all his acts of charity.
But I wonder, how much does he have to give until it, y’know, hurts? When I donated to Sept. 11th charities it hurt me to do so. My mother-in-law makes maybe $16k per year yet she gives money to more causes than I can count.
I wonder if charity should be measured by amount given or, by the sacrifice involved. There’s a biblical story about this I think.
Anyway, glad he does this and many other charitable causes anyway. It’s startling how many of the uber-rich don’t. Seems that a regular person can be charitable but it takes the filthy rich to be a philanthropist.
EDIT: fixed “pilathropist” so everywon would no I’m knot kindling.
Oh, sure, but he could have allocated a mere $75 grand to have someone on staff who could fix the stutters in Combat Flight Sim 3?
(Sorry, just trying to keep in the spirit of the board. Nice thing to do there, Mr. Gates!)
You funny guy. :lol:
I mentioned this in my “It’s hard to hate Microsoft when…” thread over in the games section. Do I still get credit for being the first to bring it up at Qt3 or am I disqualified and/or lose points as I referred to it in the wrong section?
“But I wonder, how much does he have to give until it, y’know, hurts?”
Well I remember reading either a Time or Newsweeek article on his foundation(his wife and dad help run it) that he has given or will give something like 10-15 billion in MS stock to it in the near future. His inentions are supposed to be to donate most of it eventaully. Besides everything else people say at least it seems he realize that its slightly overkill for a single person to have 50 billion themselves. I’m sure he’ll keep 1 or 2 billion just to be safe though. :)
You’re kidding, right? About him not giving a lot.
He’s only donated about $24 billion, or about a third of his wealth, to his charitable foundation. It’s only the largest charitable foundation on the planet. It awards out millions of dollars each day to health and educational projects around the world (which it has to do by law… with that much money, the amount of interest it accumulates on a daily basis has to be spent or else it’s no different than a bank).
And Gates has made it very well known that he plans on giving away about 98-percent of his wealth in his will. Sounds kinda sucky to the GatesSpawn, but then, I’d rather have 2-percent of $50 billion (or whatever gawdawful amount it will be when he finally kicks it) than 0-percent.
I don’t think it’s fair to put expectations on Gates. Not at all.
I mean, the guy earned his money. He could keep it. He chooses to give it away. At his young age, he’s already given away more (yes, adjusted for inflation) than Carnegie or Rockefeller. It might not be as much compared to his total fortune, but again, look at his age. He still has a lot to accomplish. People with that kind of mentality… they just don’t stop. I mean, if he owned every piece of software on every computer, he’d find new areas to venture out into. When at last he owned everything, he’d probably jumpstart space travel just to expand his empire.
Expect to see the charity contributions increase drastically as he gets older. It’s also his plan to not just give it away. He’s got people watching that the money is spent properly and efficiently.
2 Corinthians 9:7 is apropos Andrew:
“Each one must do just as he has purposed in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”
I hope Bill is cheerful about it, although on some level I wonder if he feels like he’s “under complulsion.” If he didn’t give generously he’d probably be roundly criticized. It’s almost expected of him.
Did you know that his mother was on the national board of the United Way? Did you also know that she served as president of the University of Washington board of regents?
Gates was raised to be charitable and to believe in civic duty.
He was so busy building up Microsoft in his youth that he was totally fixated on that goal. But after his mother died, he slowed it down, got married, and set up his foundation.
Nothing like a reminder of your own mortality to put things in perspective.
Aaaaaah now everything is clear. Thaaaaaat must be how he learned to rip the hard earned money from peoples pockets. The United Way does good things, I know, but there is a lot of shady appropriation of funds going on. (Which I type with a significant lack of any evidence or examples.)
Man, it sure does put a damper on criticizing someone you don’t know at all when he goes and does stuff like this. :wink:
Yeah, there is the story Jesus told about the widow who gave basically everything she had (and as a widow in those days, you had no source of income) versus the rich folks who gave a tiny percentage of their income. The point wasn’t that the rich folks were bad - it was that the widow was giving all that she had.
Gates is apparently a very sincere philanthropist. There are a lot of very rich people who don’t give anything. I wish I had the reference here; I was reading an article listing a number of Hollywood types who were ranting and raving about the government not giving enough to this cause or that cause, and they did the investigation into how much these particular celebrities had given themselves - we could take up a Paypal donation here and accumulate about the same amount in a few days.
Don’t forget that Gates Sr. was actually one of the biggest opponents of the repeal of the estate tax. He and a number of other of famous billionaires put out front page ads in major newspapers arguing that the estate tax was an essential part of American charitble work by discouraging the extremely wealthy from attempting to horde their fortunes and pass them on wholesale to their children, thus creating a landed aristrocracy the likes of which Europe has.
And it was widely believed that Gates Sr. was also speaking on behalf of his son.
Or, as Gates Jr. put it today in an AP article posted on the NY Times web site:
"I realized about 10 years ago that my wealth has to go back to society,’’ said Gates, a father of three who says he was influenced by his own parents’ practice of regularly donating to charity.
"A fortune, the size of which is hard to imagine, is best not passed on to one’s children. It’s not constructive for them.’’
Another cool thing, Gate’s billions let him finance a trip where his father and President Carter toured Africa and wrote about it, diary style, on Slate. Say what you will of Carter, and I’m sure people have things to say, but I’d love to finance a trip for my father and an Ex-President to go on.
Wasn’t Bill’s philanthropy in large part begun by his wife? I’m not discrediting it, I just heard that she’s the one who led him down this path. More credit to them both (I almost wrote, “More power to them” but that’s not possible).
His father and his late mother were the ones who nudged him down the road of charitable work. It’s a family cause.
Melinda Gates (his wife) is a extremely private persn, even in Seattle. And since she’s left Microsoft, the one thing that she has allowed herself to work on is the foundation work. (That and popping out Gatelets). She’s on a lot of foreign trips, acting as a First Lady of sorts.
The head of the foundation is a woman named Stonecipher, and you know just how powerful the foundation is when every African leader can tell you where she is at this very moment. Next to the POTUS, she’s probably the American they most look forward to getting in their country. If she’s visiting their country, they sure as hell know about it.
Gates is also smart about his donations, he just doesn’t throw money down, they have to prove their worth and be accountable.
I can’t find the exact quote or article, but a few years ago he was at a conference for high tech companies talking about helping poorer nations etc. There was talk of a smart card system so African villagers could all share one computer back at the village, Gates rightly pointed out that these people would probably rather have some food then surf the net. A little bit of a downer for those Silicon Valley philanthropists who think charity is laying cable and getting the poor on the net.
Chet
Say what you will about Bill G’s company, but he and his wife are basically the largest private philanthropists in the world. And that’s not an exaggeration.
Last year they gave over a billion dollars in grants. With a “B”. Nearly 1.5 billion the year before.
And it almost entirely goes toward two main areas: research and relief for terminal diseases like AIDS and cancer, and bringing technology and education to the impoverished.
If Bill lives to be 90, he’ll basically give away every penny he has. I read somewhere that he’s leaving like 10 million to his kids - enough for them to get a start doing what they want to do in business, but little enough that they’ll have to honestly make it work to succeed.
Here it is (from the gospel of Luke, Chapter 21):
As he looked up, Jesus saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. “I tell you the truth,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”
Yep. One of the other major opponents was Warren Buffet. Definitely increased my esteem for the man. Buffet is also on record saying he sees no reason why capital gains should be taxed at a lower rate than wages. He said something to the effect of he doesn’t think loaning out his money is near as hard work as that done by our teachers, police, and firemen everyday and there is no reason why he shouldn’t have to pay the same tax rates they do.
Thanks Ydejin.
See everyone? Jesus thinks my mother-in-law is more generous than Bill Gates!