Maybe? I don’t really care. It’s true that a small fraction of Gates’ net worth can do a lot of good. But his army of PR people are trying to get people to believe that he’s given all his money away, when he still controls the overwhelming majority of his fortune. If he wanted to give away his fortune he could, like the hero I linked to above. That guy didn’t hire any PR people, because he was too busy giving away all his money. Bill Gates does, and those PR people are telling you what a great guy he is.
That guy I linked to gave away 7 billion dollars. He has 2 million dollars left. The Gates Foundation has given away 21 billion dollars. Bill Gates still controls the 50 billion dollar Gates Foundation endowment as well as his personal fortune of 120 billion dollars. Guess which guy you’ve heard of. The guy with the army of PR people.
Well, that’s not really what I’m getting at. It seems like you’ve deemed The Gates Foundation “a bullshit foundation” because Gates hasn’t given more of his money to it, or maybe even worse, because Bill Gates hasn’t given more of his money to other people. Maybe I’m just sick of these incredibly lazy takes that flatten everything down to one dumb extreme or the other. It can be true (in fact, it almost certainly is) that Bill Gates is using his charitable donations to the Gates Foundation to shield his net worth from taxes, he should be giving away much more of his money, and the Gates foundation is completely legitimate and doing tons of good. Jesus fucking Christ. I’ve been interacting with many of the posters, including you, Keed, for like a decade, and most of y’all are smart, thoughtful people. But it seems like lately everyone is just losing their god damned minds with more and more polarized takes. Everyone should get off the Internet for a couple months, it’s rotting our goddamned brains. /rant.
I’m not saying the Gates Foundation isn’t doing good work or isn’t legitimate. When I say that it’s a bullshit foundation, I mean it’s a way for Gates to say that he’s “donated” 50 billion dollars when he actually hasn’t and still controls most of that money. It’s largely PR. If he was serious about giving away his fortune he could. Chuck Feeney did. Gates doesn’t.
Emily is put to the test when she must convince a marketing client (played by Monica Bellucci) to trust her American perspective on French culture. After Emily uses the word “content” one too many times, a single bare bulb in the office begins to flicker and eerie saxophone music plays. Monica Bellucci turns to Emily and cryptically whispers, “We are living in a dream within a dream.” Emily likes the tagline, but thinks it could still use a fresh, American take.
This is a nuclear take. The Gates Foundation spends like $5 billion per year on major health and development initiatives. That’s less than the $50 billion value of the Foundation’s assets, but I’m not sure it’s reasonable to expect much more annual spending. As a comparison, the entire NIH budget is $42 billion, only 10% of which relates to projects conducted in NIH laboratories.
Another relevant factor is that once the original rich guy is dead the mission inevitably shifts from “doing good shit” to “siphoning off the maximum amount of money to administration.” Whoever the next HMFIC is wants nothing to do with actually doing good stuff with the money, that’s in direct conflict with basic incentives.
Chuck Feeney’s wikipedia page says he created a foundation and transferred his wealth to that foundation. The foundation gave away money over the course of 35 years, not immediately. That seems not unlike what Gates has done!
(Also, I think it’s funny that the biggest beneficiary of Feeney’s giving is Cornell. LOL at donating to Ivy League endowments.)
And don’t forget that the Foundation has huge assets partially because Buffett has contributed so much of his Berkshire stock (~$1.5-$2 billion per year for the last 15 years), with the condition that the annual Buffett contributions had to be additive to existing spending (i.e., spent immediately and not hoarded).
Edit: Buffett’s ongoing donations to the Gates Foundation are also conditional on Bill or Melinda being actively involved, precisely to avoid @Riverman’s point about non-profits losing focus when the founder leaves.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s motivated reasoning because I’m such a Buffett fanboy, but I can’t really understand hating on the Gates Foundation.
Yeah. Like there is no Chuck Feeney Foundation. All his money is gone. I’m sure some of his donations were dumb. Hell, I know they were. He donated a billion to Cornell. That sucks. But at least there’s no Chuck Feeney Foundation buying spots on NPR for all eternity yammering about how they’re trying to create a more just, verdant and peaceful world. Fuck that.
I will say, given current tax law, what Buffet is doing is very defensible. I’m almost certain he mandates all the money is given away within x years of death, also he is shaming tons of other rich guys to do the same.
That said, imagine a world without a charitable deduction, without endless bullshit trusts, and with a 75%+ estate tax. That’s way way way better. You either give it away for real right now or pay gift/estate tax.
It’s more that I’m hating on people lauding Gates or Buffett. They’re sacrificing exactly nothing. They’re doing the bare minimum of what anyone with any decency would do, give away their vast fortune when they die. Save the plaudits for people who give their wealth and power away when they’re alive. Warren Buffett has 80 billion dollars and is 90 years old. Try squeezing those 80 billion through the eye of the needle, Warren.
It’s arrogance and narcissism. He thinks the wealth will grow more with 90+ year old Buffett (and 100 year old Munger) in charge of Berkshire than with anyone else running the show. Keep in mind he has under performed the market stock picking, his philosophy is well known, and most firms have mandatory retirement at 65.
He’s the best business person of his generation but lol not retiring.
They money they keep isn’t all the same. Putin builds palaces. Bezos builds toys and mansions. Gates builds a $127m compound on a personal island. Buffet lives here in Omaha:
Yeah, he controls where a lot of money gets invested, but he doesn’t even control what the money does. He shouldn’t have so much power, but he’s not bossing around 500k people like Bezos, and he’s not hogging enormous natural resources.
I’ve mentioned this before, but I put solar on Munger’s house and met him. Pretty down to earth and modest for a billionaire, but his house is nicer than Buffett’s.
Buffett has (lots of) other houses and has flown private everywhere for 50 years. Oh, he’s also the son of a congressman. Don’t fall for his carefully crafted PR bullshit.
I think it’s a totally reasonable complaint if some rich person is consuming their wealth and is like, “I’ll donate what’s left over when I die.” But that’s not what’s happening with Buffett. He’s consuming an extraordinarily small amount of his wealth. You could say that he’s hoarding it, but Buffett’s argument has always been that if he can compound his wealth rapidly, he does the most charitable good by donating the compounded amount later rather than the much smaller amount earlier. I think that’s a good argument for what he’s doing.
I’m not running the numbers on Berkshire Hathaway stock right now, but a ballpark estimate is that he was worth $3.5 billion - $4 billion in 1990 (when he was obviously at a normal retirement age). In 2005, prior to his Gates Foundation donations, Buffett held 502k shares of Berkshire, which would now be worth $170 billion. Is it obvious that the world would have been better off if Buffett had donated $4 billion in 1990 rather than $170 billion right now? That’s not obvious at all to me.
