If your dad is Bill Gates, you’re probably not getting a Starbucks gift card for graduating college.
In 2018, Jennifer Gates walked off the Stanford stage and onto a 124-acre, $15.82 million horse farm in North Salem, New York. According to Architectural Digest, the lavish estate was a graduation gift from her billionaire parents—and came complete with rolling pastures, three parcels of land, and proximity to New York City for her future studies.
But in case that sounds too much like the plot of “Succession: Equestrian Edition,” Melinda Gates would like to remind everyone: their kids were absolutely raised “middle class.”
These rich people are so disconnected from the actual reality that the rest of us live in that it’s not funny. And to make matters worse, a lot of these rich people see themselves as visionaries and leaders. Imagine that, blind visionaries. And to make matters even worse than that, a lot of people worship these ‘visionaries’ that can’t even picture what life is like without billions of dollars, as if they have all the answers.
Melinda fucking Gates doesn’t know what “middle class” means, big shocker there…
middle class to her is being a poor millionaire’s budget.
This kind of wealth is obscene and disgusting. Anyone who has kids knows they’d rather have the box than the toy or spend time with you than a horse farm.
These billionares are just chasing somethjng they can never have. Peace of mind. Unless you give up buying shit and expanding your empire it just leads to bad places which is most likely why Melinda left him. He probably got twisted and bored and took a trip to Epstein island.
I would not be surprised if these super rich are doing shit like pdiddy that would shock the hell out of you.
These motherfuckers clearly need to be paying more taxes.
…and not living behind gated walls. My partner works construction in some truly outrageous "communities " and the people in our city don’t even know the lavishness of the lives of those who live there.
Something Bill Gates actually agrees with. He’s one of the super rich who has been outspoken about the rich needing to pay more taxes.
Something Bill Gates actually agrees with
It’s always interesting to me how people bring this up regarding Gates and Buffett, as if that makes their largesse and greed at the expense of others perfectly acceptable. It’s easy to say you support something when you know you’re never going to be held accountable for following through.
Few things in life are pure binary, and that’s especially true of humans themselves. My take on Gates is that he was a smart but cutthroat businessman who did a number of things that were at least somewhat unethical, and became one of the richest people in the world. Then he got older and started thinking about his life and his legacy. He has been giving away huge sums of money to really worthwhile causes, like trying to eradicate malaria. He seems pretty sincere in his lobbying for increased taxes for the rich.
Does his philanthropy now erase his unscrupulous behavior when he was young? Not to me, but I do believe he’s genuine in wanting to make the world s better place and putting his riches to good use.
Pff, he is still a piece of shit even with his “philantropies”. For example, he has given some money to fight some diseases (though even then there is an argument to be made that his focus on fashionable diseases has taken resources away from more pressing diseases affecting the global south, but that’s another discussion). But then as soon as it was convenient for him he rallied against lifting the patents of Covid-19 vaccines during a pandemic (https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/). So what fucking good are his philantropies if he still acts like a piece of shit at the most crucial moments. Everything he does is just to increase his power and influence, and to whitewash his image. He is still the same piece of shit he has always been. You have to be purposefully naive to think anyone who remains a billionaire is trying to do any good.
Everyone say it with me, “THERE. ARE. NO. GOOD. MILLIONAIRES. OR. BILLIONAIRES.”
She means she told them to hold their wallet around the blacks in the city, and that only feminine gays are acceptable.
only feminine gays are acceptable.
I’m out of the loop for this. Is this something middle class families believe?
probably confusing it with UPPER middle class people, which are nowhere near middle class.
Even then, is there anyone, apart from TV execs who only cast stereotypes, who think masculine gays aren’t acceptable?
Rich people always, without exception, fail to recognize their own disconnections from reality.
But Daaaaaaaad, all the other kids are getting a horse farm!
Maybe that’s why these 1%ers wealth hoard so hard, maybe they genuinely think they ARE middle class.
Well put yourself in their shoes. They ARE the middle class when they are surrounded by only the top 1%.
We are not existant/irrelevant others. That will stay the same as long as their heads remain attached.
I like your style.
They’re either extremely uneducated in current standards of living, or being purposefully deceitful. I’d like to think it’s the former. They should have a class for rich people so they can understand what life is like without family money or high salaries.
I remember seeing a clip a long time ago of someone asking Gates how much a box of rice-a-roni is and he was like… 5$?
I’d have the same difficulty tbh. I don’t live in the US so no rice-a-roni here anyway, but there are a lot of premade foods available here too, and… I just don’t really buy them very often, even if I’m alone, I just cook or throw like a frozen pizza in the oven, but I don’t experiment a lot with those boxed meals. I also only ever buy stuff like laundry detergents at discount so I never even think about the normal price. I go to the store, see a detergent at the regular price, go “fuck no” and buy something else that’s on discount and half the price per liter or per pod. There’s nearly always something available for a good price, sometimes it’s a local brand that’s already cheaper than the foreign brands.
I can, however, tell you the prices of different pasta brands (the cheaper ones, not the expensive ones) to within 20 cents. Usually half a kilo of dry pasta is like 1.19, or under 1 euro on discount. Frozen french fries - used to be around 1.20 for 750 grams, jumped to something like 1.79 and hell I think in some stores it’s 2.19 now unless there’s a discount. Pack of mince meat - depends on size and whether it’s pork, moo or a mixture of both, somewhere between 2.50 and 5 euros per package.
In the U.K. there’s a somewhat popular TV series called “Rich House, Poor House”. We still worship the rich.
being purposefully deceitful
Warren Buffet keeps around the house he bought in Omaha, Nebraska in 1958 and brags about how little it is worth. The man travels on private jets and sleeps in hotel high rises, surrounded by an army of aides and adjuncts and a smattering of medical staff. But he’s still got the title to that old homestead from sixty years ago, so he’s perpetually middle class according to business talking heads.
No class can teach you what it feels like to be a few bucks away from homelessness.
When the class is over the billionaires go back to their worry free lives. The poor worry about ending up on the street.
See now if failure to pass the empathy class results in your forced destitution there might be some incentive to pay attention
Made me think of the Meme: “Who wants to be a millionaire? - but with Billionaires, so it’s more of a threat.”
If we made empathy classes a must with our current governing systems, I cannot imagine them not beeing corrupted and used against the poor within seconds of becoming obligatory.
To be fair, out of all the billionaires they at least have made attempts to not make their kids shiteheads which is in stark contrast to most billionaires. At one point in time at least, they were only leaving $10m to each child, with plans to donate everything else.
Is that enough to live better than 99.99% of us? Absolutely. But it’s also not: I can do whatever I want and buy whatever I want and never have to think about money again.
But it’s also not: I can do whatever I want and buy whatever I want and never have to think about money again.
this is not how generational wealth work.
lets say you are 17. having a party in the house with 100k cash in your bank account. you hear dad talk about a big merger “this company will be this company and the stock will go up” you put 50k on that and now you have 300k or something.
I sat with a few upper class once, if I have cache on hand I will be millionaire by now, it doesn’t take much to get rich when you hang out with rich people…
It’s more like “Hey, I have an idea for a new type of toilet. Can you get me a meeting with your golf buddy who is the CEO of the largest toilet company in the world?”. This is literally how Microsoft started.
That’s all she’s saying. They raised the kids with limits. That’s what she should have said. They obviously weren’t raised “middle class” or anything like it.
I mean, its really open to interpretation.
If Melinda got them up in the morning, made them breakfast and drove them to school herself and picked them up (Even if its in a Bentley), make their snacks when they get home and helped them with their homework(even if you’re getting the snacks out of a walk-in fridge and the housekeeper bought them) thats some regular people shit.
If you have the nanny get them up, the driver take them to school and pick them up then their tutor helps them with their homework while your chef asks them what they would like for dinner… thats not.
I don’t agree that it’s open to interpretation or that your first example constitutes “regular people shit” in any meaningful way. I agree that there’s a difference between having servants and not, obviously, but I don’t think it’s that helpful of a distinction here.
Second of all, flying on a private jet and living in a mega mansion is in no way middle class. I just can’t get on board with the idea of mom picking you up in a Bentley and getting snacks out of a walk-in fridge as being middle class.
I think my point stands. I think it was good to raise them with limits and some humility, that will help them in life, but I think “middle class” and “regular people shit” is simply inapplicable here.
leaving $10m to each child, with plans to donate everything else
The plans were to donate everything else to a tax-advantaged “charity” in which the Gates family retains complete financial control.
This is not philanthropy. It is tax avoidance, greenwashing, and a public relations campaign.
when gates was on reddit, he choose AMA sub, so he wouldnt get criticized, they wouldnt allow you to question him on his charities being used tax evasion or money laundering.
Yeah, it might be public relations, but the malaria nets and polio vaccines and HIV treatments and guinea work eradication did actually save millions of lives.
It’s one thing to argue that doing good doesn’t make up for doing bad, but it’s another thing to refuse to acknowledge the good at all.
the countries have complained about his vaccines as being only sourced from us backed countries, so most of them couldnt afford it. he still pretty much a ruthless business man, like the above comments he is greenwashing his image.
How many billionaires are sourcing from locals? Guessing the answer is closer to none.
I want to be this middle class…
I know people want to hate on Bill for being rich, and I can understand that, but I still prefer him to a certain South African billionaire.
Maybe some people will say that’s like comparing a giant douche to a turd sandwich though.
You don’t have to choose a favourite when none should exist
It’s a nice race to the bottom 🤷♂️
At least Bill gives away a lot of his money, and his stance on politics seems relatively sensible and measured. Whereas the South African billionaire gets a kick out of being stupid and damaging to the US (and beyond the US if you look at his comments on foreign politics).
At least Bill gives away a lot of his money
Does he? If you still control how it is spent, are you really giving it away?
If you still control how it is spent, are you really giving it away?
Actually yeah. You can’t just give a billion to an organization. Most of the organizations that receive money have the capacity to handle millions at most. Anything above that would just sit on their bank accounts because they’d have to scale up massively.
The amount of money the Gates Foundation is handling requires so much managing that they have 2000 employees.
I suggest to read up on what they are actually doing:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gates_Foundation
- https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/committed-grants
It’s quite altruistic in nature.
Giving it away allows other people to decide what to do with it.
Gates is in full control of what he “gives” away.
I literally explained why it is set up like that. Except for the part where they use money of the foundation to make more money for the foundation.
Gates is in full control of what he “gives” away.
And rightfully so. The foundation is always looking for organizations to give grants to. You can’t just give it all away randomly. To give away so much money you need to put it somewhere where it can be distributed fairly. Which is exactly what the foundation is doing.
The only real argument you can have against Gates is whether or not he should be giving even more. But that is not the best argument because he still is giving away much more than people more wealthy as him.
Not surprising given that Cascade Investments controls both the foundation and Bill’s personal portfolio.
He spends quite big sums on healthcare I think? I’m not saying he’s a perfect guy. Maybe the world would be better if taxes were such that nobody could be a billionaire. I just think I prefer Bill Gates to other billionaires, especially the prominent South African one.
He blocked Oxford university from open sourcing it’s covid vaccine so that his other vaccine investments paid off.
Why are you choosing favorites?
I know what they mean. Id definitely love to see him in some kind of death match.
$16 Million Horse Farm and middle class income. Can he drop the farm to some random person from middle class so we can compare the outcomes ?
Much like the soon to be german chancellor, who told an interviewer, that he is upper middle class. All that while being a former Blackrock manager and owning (and using regularily) a personal private jet. Thats some kind of chancellor material…
You’ll love this:
Oh, I indeed love this XD Thanks for that
Tbf, it is “merely” a private prop plane, not a jet (which would be significantly more expensive still). But yeah, not exactly middle class material…
I worry more about the actual rent-seeking oligarchy in my part of the world running for political positions in next month’s elections, purely for feudalistic reasons.
Everyone in the US is middle class. You can be upper middle class or lower middle class, but you can never not be middle class.
