Bill Gates is 69. By 2045 he’s going to be 89. What’s he going to do with all that money at 89 anyways, after he kept it all his life.
These people usually give it to their children to establish modern nobility.
TaxEat the rich!Here’s the thing. Even if he lives up to this promise, it’s still him deciding where that money should go, and it won’t be towards long term support of social safety nets for the commoners. He should just have been paying his fair share of taxes all along and into the future.
While I’m all for taxing the rich more than the current system of not at all, I think in the long term it would be better to instigate or modify systems so that we don’t get these exceedingly greedy people going unchecked in the first place. How about a cap on the ratio between the highest and the lowest paid employee in any organisation for a start? Boss wants a raise, everyone gets a raise.
I think in the long term it would be better to instigate or modify systems so that we don’t get these exceedingly greedy people going unchecked in the first place.
Absolutely.
The problem is that we live in liberal-democracies [as in, a certain type of democracy] where systematic mass media bias and financial corruption of the political system are ingrained from the start. It’s not merely coincidence that almost every country has ended up like this. It’s the inevitable trend of capitalism, a system that rewards corruption and that can’t be leashed without worker power.
The bottom line is that such reforms would be nice, and I support any viable effort at making them happen, but at the end of the day, we’re asking the owning class to give themselves less money. And unless you have mass worker-class power to threaten them, their answer is going to be “no” with a dash of “protesting is now more illegal”. Historically speaking, the owning class don’t give up any serious concessions without going to violent war.
This is him avoiding estate taxes, change my mind.
How much would his estate taxes be vs giving up 99% of his fortune?
I mean if I want my next of kin/whoever to get my money, it’s better to do it while alive when you can get creative with the accounting. Especially when you’ve got Gates money and setting up something like a nonprofit is relatively easy.
Once you’re dead and you’ve got this lump declared assets you’re trying to pass on that Uncle Sam will take up to like 40% of.
If only there was some way to see what the non-profit was doing, some kind of third party auditor or something.
Bill Gates uses his “charity” to exert influence worldwide and demand stuff in return.
If this man was truly giving away his money then world hunger would have been solved by now.
Even on lemmy his marketing pr is successful
What stuff has he demanded in return?
He heaivily invests in vaccines and pharma companies. And he keeps the vaccines patented.
See also this great video https://youtu.be/i8w3qPwpzZA
Sorry, what stuff has he demanded in return ?
He holds the patents on the vaccines which he acquired using a “nonprofit”.
Do you think Sam Altman is also graciously saving the world with his “nonprofit”?
Based on current spending, it will most likely be spent getting drinkable water to the majority of the world’s population.
I don’t like how he got his money, but he’s been reasonably responsible with it since his divorce.
That said, he has over $113b dollars. If he gives away 99% of it, he’ll still have over a billion dollars.
There are books on him exposing how half of his charities are frauds. Given his past records humanity should be wary of putting this man anywhere near anything drinkable or useful
He’s been buying up huge swathes of farm land in the middle of the country. Not everything he’s doing has been philanthropy
Behind the bastards has a good two parter on him. I wouldn’t say he’s been responsible with it.
Yeah but that’s communism, so no way it would’ve ever happened. The average American voter thinks they can become billionaires some day.
“Communism” like we ever had real communism.
Because it’s a dream that would suffer the same fate that capitalism does.
I’m so glad we have you here to finally tell us how everything works. Thank god.
Do you feel like this has been a meaningful addition to anything? Are you capable of discussing without attacking your opponents?
- Thats an excellent question. Do you apply it sometime? 2. Do you think youre somehow entitled to spew nonsense and not be called out for it?
I’m stating an opinion, you’re the one screeching nonsense.
Communism is a word with different legitimate meanings and it sound like this comment is conflating two of them.
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The communist movement, guided by the various theories within Marxist schools of thought. [as you can see, there’s a huge range of ideologies in this school of thought, and a few different ones have become ruling governments, and any claiming to be the one true ‘real communism’ are being arrogant and ignorant]
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Communist society, a society with a socialist mode of production replacing the capitalist mode of production, which those theories are trying to achieve. This has not been accomplished by a post-industrial society.
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Does the word communism even have meaning any more, or is it just something to yell when confused people get confused?
I’m using it sarcastically
I know, I caught the silent /s at the end of your post :) You are referring to people who don’t use it sarcastically - does the word communism have meaning left when they use it?
It means when the government helps people that aren’t me or people I like, or fails to hurt the people I don’t like.
Honestly, it might just be creeping closer to “social”. As in, concerning a society. Things like bike lanes and healthcare.
…or paying his employees more.
Funny how we don’t have a popular term for the portion of an employee’s deserved wage that turns into “record shareholder profit.”
Imagine if all corporations were required to put a line item on check stubs showing how much you made them.
Who do you think Bill Gates’ employees are right now? Do you think he’s still the CEO of Microsoft? Are you referring to the Gates Foundation? If so, have you got data on what they’re paid?
That term is wage theft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft
Too knee jerk. Needs “tax” incorporated as it’s so unpopular.
Employee value index?
… Can I have some?
I think if you go to Africa and start an NGO working with Malaria, then yes.
…and still be a billionaire.
Why should oligarchs get to decide where the proceeds of their exploitation get spent?
Is this supposed to impress anyone?
I find it lovely that he’s racked by guilt over his legacy and tries to do something about it.
Racked by guilt? His company is helping commit genocide by providing AI tools to automatically designate civilians as targets for military strikes.
I’d rather he keeps his money and uses his influence to stop that. He chooses not to do so every day.
I don’t think he has that influence any more.
And yeah, genocide would be one of the reasons to feel guilty, but it’s far from the only one.
why do you think one of the richest man doesn’t have “that” influence at a company he founded anymore?
The sad thing is that even if he gives away 99% of his wealth he will still be obscenely rich. Multitudes richer than the average man.
That’s not necessarily sad. It can show all these billionaires that they will still be ridiculously wealthy without hoarding
Ridiculous wealth is still a hoard.
That’s very true. No body needs a $500m yacht, like Bill Gates has. I think Zuckerfuck has one too. Elon doesn’t look like a boat guy to me. Although… he might have a submarine. Let’s hope it’s carbon fiber.
Also these people: Zhong Shanshan, Zhang Yiming, Ma Huateng, Colin Huang, Robin Zeng, William Lei Ding, He Xiangjian, Lei Jun, Jack Ma, Wang Chuanfu, Huang Shilin, Li Shufu, Wang Wei, Lu Xiangyang, Qin Yinglin, Qi Shi, Dang Yanbao, Zhang Zhidong, Zheng Shuliang, Wang Xing… to name a few.
Yes.
Since you mentioned a lot of Chinese names, I have to give their government props for jailing and executing[1] a few of them. [Further reading]
But I thought billionaires couldn’t exist under communism? I’m sure there’s a diagram around here somewhere. Oh here it is.
The communist mode of production isn’t a magic switch that a communist movement can suddenly flip on. That would be silly, capitalism didn’t just suddenly appear and create billionaires like that either.
If you’re actually asking that question sincerely, this article I already posted gives a concrete answer to your question.
I’m pretty sure a billionaire hoards by definition
So then, Bill isn’t a billionaire, by definition?
But honestly it does kinda fit, someone like Elon Musk is a billionaire with the sole goal of gaining more useless wealth at any costs, while Gates kinda realised over three decades ago that he has so much already he doesn’t have a need to actually get more.
He’s already given around $100 billion in donations, and probably actually would have ran out of money by now if not for the fact that even though he has sold off his Microsoft stock from the initial 45% down to just around 1%, that 1% has been growing like crazy -15 years ago, it would have been worth around $2.5 billion, today it’s over $40 billion.That original 45% would be worth 1.5 trillion today, btw.
But they’ll drop hundreds of places on the leaderboard!
Didn’t he say this a decade ago and is now more rich than he was back then?
The most whitewashed billionaire in existence. Insane people still buy into this slush fund campaign.
Bill Gates is more evil than Elon Musk.
For real, but since Old Evil Billionaire is piling on New Evil Billionaire, he becomes Sweet Old Philantropist. Gates made his fortune by stabbing everyone on the back and charging them for the knife.
What has Gates done recently?
Trying to get a monopoly on vaccines through a “nonprofit” and do neocolonialism.
https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/
Global health czar Bill Gates had other thoughts. Maintaining his steadfast commitment to intellectual property rights, Gates pushed for a plan that would permit companies to hold exclusive rights to lifesaving medicines, no matter how much they benefited from public funding.
Given the enormous influence Gates has in the global public health world, his vision ultimately won out in the Covax program—which enshrines monopoly patent rights and relies on the charitable whims of rich countries and pharmaceutical giants to provide vaccines to most of the world. A chorus of support from pharmaceutical companies and the Trump administration didn’t hurt.
Should we be surprised that a monopolist-turned-philanthropist maintains his commitment to monopoly patent rights as a philanthropist too?
Bill Gates is about as “nonprofit” as OpenAI.
Aight, yeah, thank you! Gates isn’t that much in the headlines for the things he does, I remember him owning/buying a ton of land too now?
Yes he is the largest US farmland owner as well. Gates is evil on many levels.
The WTO adopted partial patent waivers in 2022, many nations allowed complete vaccine patent exemption, and very soon after the Bill Gates statement your article cites the Gates Foundation made a full reversal and endorsed it.
How so? Specifically?
Cause Musk is actively trying to destroy democracy and kill poor people.
Different user: I don’t think it’s worth arguing about which is “more evil”, especially at this billionaire level of antisocial behavior. What’s the point? They’re both intolerable, causing death for profit.
Also different user. His life’s work had been to create the most evil corporation the world has ever seen. The largest monopoly. It’s still allowed to run and controls entire governments all around the world. Most companies, schools and government functions of many countries are completely tied to Microsoft cloud and their software and have no choice. This has essentially halted all technical progress and research on many fields because the results can’t be productised. The loss and corruption is endless.
It’s been going on and ramping up for over forty years. It’s still going on.
Forty years is a good “why” for why musk is nothing compared to this evil.
Is there any reputable journalist that has echoed this take? It sounds very stretched. Monopolization on Word is one thing, but I’ve heard of some governments finally getting fed up and moving to open source.
I won’t deny Microsoft has done bad shit. I’m currently boycotting them for their assistance to Israel. But “most evil corporation” is a gigantically high bar in the world we live in.
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Cool, give me some you weird old cuck.
To his charity? Oh Bill, you shouldn’t have. Go fucking die billionaire scum…
To his kids and their charities? Reminder that Bill gates is every bit as exploitative and evil, he didn’t become a billionaire by paying fair wages. This is all PR to try and save his reputation as everyone turns on billionaires. Like buffet, he just shuffles his money to his kids and calls it charity
Ikr fuck this guy.
Can we quit running billionaire’s PR campaigns for them? These people are not our friends, and giving back a portion of what they stole (always in the most public way) doesn’t change that
Why not hate on the billionaires who aren’t giving away billions of dollars?
Because he isn’t doing anything either. He promised to get rid of it in 20 years.
First, he’s a psychopath, I don’t trust a word he says. Additionally, in 20 years he’ll be almost 90. Aka huge chance he’ll be actually dead of old age.
And last, you don’t get to fuck the world for decades and then suddenly become a good person because you promise to stop being a shitstain in another 2 decades.
He’s been consistently donating his wealth for years.
He’s not saying he will do nothing foe 10 years
Then why does he have so much wealth? Donate more. Do more. Some isn’t enough.
He literally said he is donating basically all of it, you chud.
Then do it. I’ll believe it when I see it, chud.
He’s been doing it? And is still doing it? He’s donated about $100 billion so far?
Dumbass.
We do.
Being on lemmy.dbzer0.com I’m surprised your feed isn’t covered in people demanding the removal of all billionaires. The existence of billionaires is the problem, not what they spend that money on or what percentage they donated.
“Billionaires shouldn’t exist” I definitely agree with. I think the production of billionaires is a problem. Focusing on the current existence of all the ones we have now won’t accomplish much sustainably and doesn’t prevent the problem in the future.
I’d really prefer the energy and focus went to better tax laws to prevent higher wealth gain; even if it’s just a start. Gates and other rich people have previously supported such changes.
Tankies can’t have us cracking their fragile absolute values.
Still leaves him with just over $1 billion, enough for his great great grandchildren to live comfortably forever. Don’t be fooled, this is about tax breaks, not charity. Once you have over a billion in wealth, you’ve won the game of life. There’s nothing you can’t buy, there’s nothing you can do.
Truly a financial genius to give up 99% of his wealth for tax breaks…
I figure he donates to his own charity and still has a lot of control over the money either way.
I wonder what thatd look like on his taxes.
Once you have over a billion in wealth, you’ve won the game of life.
More like the game of 100 lives. I’m using $10m as a gross estimation for what a person living comfortably needs to spend throughout their whole life. Sure it varies by country and other factors, but this amount should more than cover a lifestyle in which you literally don’t need to worry about a thing. No need for sketchy investments either: just stuff it in a deposit and you could live off the interest alone, but that’s assuming you have all the money at once.
Is it really about tax breaks, when the US doesn’t have a wealth tax? Would it prevent his children from dealing with inheritance tax?
Don’t be fooled, this is about tax breaks, not charity.
And don’t forget, this is about laundering reputation. Hence the whole “in 20 years” crap.
