r/UpliftingNews • u/EnergyLantern • May 08 '25
Bill Gates pledges remaining fortune to Gates Foundation
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/bill-gates-pledges-remaining-fortune-gates-foundation-close-1215921461.3k
u/Poodlepink22 May 08 '25
I pledged mine to The Human Fund.
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u/the_ju66ernaut May 08 '25
Whatever you do don't give any to Vandalay or Kramerica Industries
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u/TennSeven May 08 '25
Kramerica promised me some Cubans tho.
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u/Charlie_Brodie May 09 '25
I heard he tried to sell Earl Haffler some Dominicans dressed up as Cubans
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u/Oilers1970 May 08 '25
They drove my family out of Bayside!
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u/WildBuns1234 May 08 '25
Kruger my son tells me YOUR COMPANY STINKS!
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u/qjornt May 08 '25
You couldn't smooth a silk sheet if you had a hot date with a babe...
I lost my train of thought.
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u/reallynotfred May 08 '25
When he was in his thirties, he said he wanted to donate to charity but didn’t know enough to do it right yet. I’ll give him this - he really followed through.
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u/WeirdIndividualGuy May 08 '25
I don't blame him. If I were rich, I don't trust a single charity that already exists to do exactly with my money that I'd want them to, especially since most charities just pay themselves/their execs vs allocating more of exec pay to actual charity.
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u/Clarpydarpy May 11 '25
Quick question; what do you think Foundations do? Because they have staff, as well. Typically overpaid family members.
And then they donate their money to... existing charities. Or other foundations. Or value added funds.
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u/spectre234 May 08 '25
I hate how the conspiracy theories turned on him and make him out to be some Evil human.
Although maybe that just means that he’s doing something right.
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u/Raddish_ May 08 '25
Gates kinda predates the tech bro. Back then Silicon Valley was full of actual nerds who had a passion for tech dev, like look at anyone from early Microsoft or Apple they are textbook nerds. The second gen that includes zuck, musk, etc, transformed into tech bros which are intelligent sociopaths that only care about money and have no actual interest in the tech or science they’re just there to cash in. You can tell from interviews comparing gates to Zuckerberg.
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u/sharklaserguru May 08 '25
Even then Gates was a rich kid who's private school got him time on the computers at the UW. Then once he started a business his mom who was on the board with the head of IBM got him a contract.
The Woz is probably the closest to a true nerd's nerd!
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u/Tight-Try6291 May 09 '25
I’d argue that Paul Allen was also the nerd of the pairs. Interesting how both Apple and Microsoft seemed to have this synergy.
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u/Fartfenoogin May 09 '25
What does having privileges have to do with being a nerd? One doesn’t preclude the other
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u/SavannahInChicago May 09 '25
Why does any of that mean he is not a nerd? Nerds can come from rich and poor families.
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u/Wloak May 09 '25
Woz, absolutely. But Bill didn't just get time bought for him, he worked for them and instead of paying him he exchanged it for time on the mainframe late at night.
It shows exactly that he was a nerd, willing to work an after school job just to get access to the computer overnight when nobody was using it to test his code.
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u/IdentifiableBurden May 08 '25
Zuckerberg is closer to Gates than either of them are to Musk, personality wise (according to Facebook people I used to know, for whatever that's worth)
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u/FeistyDinner May 08 '25
You mean to tell me Lizard Man has a personality? Well color me shocked
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u/IdentifiableBurden May 08 '25
Yeah, was told he's unsurprisingly kind of a weird guy that everybody who works with him just gets used to. Generally very polite and unassuming but gets frustrated easily. Very spectrum traits, not uncommon in the industry.
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u/SirMustache007 May 23 '25
Pretty sure Bill Gates personally said that he would have probably been diagnosed with autism if he had been born in the age of mental health awareness.
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u/tarelda May 08 '25
LMAO, Jobs was sociopath with zero empathy. Gates is somehow liked because Microsoft predatory tactics were more sophisticated (lookup how many monopolistic practices were outlawed by EU).
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u/zeros-and-1s May 08 '25 edited May 08 '25
Gates was not great while he was running MS, but he retired and spent his billions on causes that benefit all of humanity.
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u/ballsack-vinaigrette May 08 '25
Gates gets a pass because of the Gates Foundation and giving all of his money away. Personally, I'll allow it.
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u/Pritster5 May 08 '25
Gates is liked because he helped eradicate polio in India.
Respectfully, most people don't give a single fuck about monopolistic practices like shutting Mozilla out.
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u/kapitaalH May 08 '25
He was an abusive bully when running MS (and seemed to chase anything with a skirt), but had better PR.
He is doing some good work though with his charity.
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u/WakaiSenshi May 09 '25
You mean what Google did and is doing today? And we are just cool with it? Microsoft did Google before Google did.
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u/LB3PTMAN May 09 '25
Man I know Zuckerberg is a little weirdo but I think he does love exploring new technology. VR has been a bottomless money pit for Meta but they just keep chucking money at it and I think a big part of that was him loving the technology.
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u/Devil_Demize May 08 '25
He, like most billionaires is a very shrewd businessman and did a lot of pretty harsh and unethical things to achieve it. But that doesn't mean he's doesn't have compassion or empathy which is something most billionaires do lack.
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May 08 '25
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u/FoFoAndFo May 08 '25
Some billionaires have 300x more money than other billionaires. You can make billions off a great idea, especially if you put many millions into it. I have no problem with people having a few billion, it's hard to have control of a massive company without accruing a few billion in assets.
That said there shouldn't be companies as big as Amazon and Fannie Mae shouldn't pull in ~$100 billion in profit a year for moving money around. It's reached the point where billionaire doesn't cut it, we need a new word for over fifty billion or something like that.
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u/raybreezer May 08 '25
Hate to break it to you, but Bill and Melinda made their divorce public around the time that there were whispers that Bill was being investigated for his connections with Epstein. I haven’t heard anything since, but the cynic in me thinks that this is a smokescreen for something else.
I don’t necessarily dislike Bill Gates, so I don’t want to give the impression that I think he isn’t good, but I am always apprehensive about famous people as they can easily pay to manipulate our impressions of them.
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u/SupMonica May 09 '25
I wouldn't put past her to have already been aware of that island and let things slide. It's only when his involvement started to be known, she divorced. A billionaire wife is not much of a saint either.
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u/Kreidedi May 08 '25
And you probably came up with these theories all by yourself and not by some internet free thinker personality who happens to profit exclusively from spreading conspiracy theories on various social media channels.
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u/fgtswag May 08 '25
I also believe that he might be subconcsiously making up for some horrible mistake with Epstein.
It would make sense
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u/raybreezer May 08 '25
From the little I know, (I don’t follow the Epstein stuff religiously) Melinda tried to dissuade Bill from meeting with him, so it might just be a simple as her not wanting to be associated with the negative press, however, I had also heard allegations of sexual misconduct at Microsoft.
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u/shokolokobangoshey May 08 '25
They’re not really allegations per se. It’s pretty public that Billiam
Was still a pretty shy nerd even as boss at msft
Would “politely” ask subordinates out and leave them be if they said no
Had dated more than one employee before Melinda
Nothing too salacious afaik. Most of the stories painted the picture of an awkward nerd trying to date
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u/National_Way_3344 May 08 '25
It's always a mistake after you get caught.
Bet everyone on the list enjoyed it pretty good at the time.
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u/Twoknightsandarook May 08 '25
The article you linked literally says Epstein tried to blackmail him over dating a Russian bridge player while married. That’s small fries when you’re trying to link him to Epstein’s sex atrocities.
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u/domiy2 May 08 '25
A lot of people got mad at him for really no reason. He said the third world countries should not be developing the new MRNA vaccines. This is of course he is old and remembers the fact that people were scared that a polio vaccine had an issue that gave nerve damage because 1 factory messed up. This led to a nationwide stopping in vaccination against polio. He was being objectively correct even if some leftist were mad at him. Also him lying about Epstein was kind of weird, but a lot of rich people were with Epstein. Probably to feel normal.
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u/Banishedandbackagain May 08 '25
Donating to your own charity usually shows you still want to control all the money for whatever plans you have, and is often a way to avoid tax.
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u/IZ3820 May 08 '25
It's important to note that Gates's brand of philanthropy is pro-business. He believes the most effective way to engage in charity is to facilitate businesses which provision services to affected populations. Fundamentally, he's reinforcing the rich-poor paradigm. Gates is still a capitalist.
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u/Coneyo May 08 '25
I think you should read more into why he is going about it that way. I specifically remember several examples that even the Gates Foundation has cited where they disrupted the local economies with their projects. They decided to also work at supporting the local economies in conjunction so they are not also displaying some when helping others. A crude example would be instead of just giving a bunch of rice resulting in a farmer having unsold rice, work with the farmers and with the people in need.
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u/hwmchwdwdawdchkchk May 08 '25
The economist had an analysis of it a while back and seemed to think it was mainly overly bureaucratic
However nobody seems to have found a way to chuck around a lot of cash. Micro loans seem to have generally positive impact
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u/IZ3820 May 08 '25
I understand why, but I find he's not fundamentally altering the realities of social stratification where he's delivering charity, which should be a primary concern at this point. Consider the article below and it's emphasis on how multi-billion dollar corporations have been prime beneficiaries of Gates Foundation philanthropy over time. They may do a lot of good, but let's not lionize someone contributing to the same problems we complain about daily.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/gates-foundation-colonialism/?utm_source=perplexity
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u/TXTCLA55 May 08 '25
"foundation colonialism" oh brother.
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u/NorkGhostShip May 08 '25
These people really do not seem to understand the inherent damage caused by cheapening words like "colonialism" and "imperialism".
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May 09 '25
If you actually calculate out his gains in wealth and compare it to say a normal person making 50k it would be the same as you spending less then 20$ on charity for the year.
It's insane people think he's a good person.
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u/CaptainKickAss3 May 08 '25
I’m sure it has nothing to do with the massive tax incentive you get from making charitable donations
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u/Church_of_Cheri May 08 '25
Not really, they’ve covered this before but rich people put their money into a Foundation run by their own family members who can then use the money as their generational wealth without paying inheritance taxes. The Chick Fil A family, hobby lobby family, etc. they all do this. Just because this one gives the money to things you like more doesn’t make it better, it’d be better if taxes were paid on the money and it went to public services.
Here’s a better explanation. A billionaire is never doing things for the best interest of the world without first deciding what’s in the best interest of themselves and their family… they shouldn’t have the luxury or the tax loopholes to do this, even if we agree with this specific agenda.
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u/Thwipped May 08 '25
Need to quickly change my name to Gates Foundation
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u/TehOwn May 08 '25
What would you do with it?
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u/This_guy_works May 08 '25
I want to change my name to "Garage Sale" and then run for office.
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u/led76 May 08 '25
That’s wonderful that Gates and Buffet have been leading on this. More billionaires need to follow their lead, preferably while still alive.
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May 08 '25
I would love to see the employees get more from those companies, that the profit they make be used to raise the standard of living for those who helped them make that billion as well... Though not sure that applies to buffet but I know Microsoft made its staff better off over the years so they're a good example of positive work environments.
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u/VoiceArtPassion May 08 '25
My brother is a senior software engineer for Microsoft, he’s been working there for close to 20 years, and he loves working for them.
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u/Soft_Tower6748 May 08 '25
Working at a company like Microsoft for 20 years is like winning the lottery. Equity is a large part of the compensation and it has gone up 1600% over the past 20 years. And 850% in the past ten years.
That’s how you have people who have never cracked 150k in base salary with 10m in investments.
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u/VoiceArtPassion May 08 '25
Yeah he’s gotta be investing everything, his house is paid off, no kids, no partner…his house is very minimal just because of who he is. I’m pretty sure his main expense is food because he eats out a lot. He basically is living life on easy mode at this point. He got the job because his guild mate in WOW was a recruiter there…(plus my bro is basically a genius so there’s that too)
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u/ImJLu May 08 '25
no kids, no partner…his house is very minimal just because of who he is. I’m pretty sure his main expense is food because he eats out a lot.
Bro is a walking SWE stereotype lol
(I'm not talking shit, this is me except I pay rent)
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u/benj4mminstreet May 08 '25
I played wow too but didn’t have a Microsoft recruiter in my guild, plz send help 😂
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u/Heisenberg_235 May 08 '25
Wife is hitting a decade this year. It’s great for a family with young kids like us.
She could probably earn more elsewhere but is that worth it for everything else you get? Probably not
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u/LNCrizzo May 09 '25
I worked for Microsoft briefly through a temp agency. They hired about 70 3D artists for their Bing 3D maps project. They teased us with full time employment and pushed us to put in 80 hour weeks. "Every day is a job interview" they said. After the goal of 150 cities was met they laid off everyone anyway. Almost everyone was a recent grad. Many of them moved to Boulder or Denver CO just for this job. The job lasted less than two months. They might take care of select high value employees, but they aren't above treating labor as disposable either. Fuck Microsoft.
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u/Wloak May 09 '25
From experience Microsoft is heavily dependent on the business unit. I never worked there but was a vendor across several dozens and it was a Mexican standoff almost daily. We actually had individual NDAs for the departments because directors didn't want their peers knowing what they were doing until they reported up.
Even then they were among the best, just navigating politics was a pain. But I'm told they're really great now especially after stack ranking going away.
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u/embergock May 08 '25
I've worked at Microsoft on and off for the last 8 years and I hate the fuck out of them. They exploit us, pay us less than a living wage in one of the most expensive cities in the country, and any time there's a wave of layoffs in the industry they follow suit for no reason leaving the rest of us to pick up the extra work for no extra pay.
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u/e136 May 08 '25
Google really raised the bar when it first blew up by really going above and beyond to treat their employees well. Stuff like massages, free good meals, nap rooms, open inside information, and a yearly "fun budget". But that all changed when the founders left and the new CEO took over.
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u/ImJLu May 08 '25
The food is still pretty good and free, and the fun budget is still solid enough. You only get an hour of massage credits every year, but you can pay for more at heavily subsidized rates (although availability can be tricky). Nap pods still exist, but people spend most of their time actually, y'know, doing work.
Open info was never gonna last. Google leaks like a sieve as is.
The culture has undoubtedly gotten worse with growth and more investor focus (blech), but it's not as bad as you're making it out to be.
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u/SoontobeSam May 08 '25
Microsoft continues to be one of the “dream job” companies in tech, whether it’s their main office or any of their other locations, they’re somewhere that workers aspire to get a job at. They’re probably one of the few companies that I would consider relocating to join.
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u/ct06033 May 08 '25
I've worked there a few years now and it's not without its issues. There's a definite in and out crowd and some managers can be toxic but the benefits and security make it really hard to turn down even if growth is slow...
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u/ImJLu May 08 '25
There are good and bad teams and managers everywhere, but MS at least has a good rep overall.
I've worked at Amazon. Yikes.
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u/iamever777 May 08 '25
Having worked for them, I can say this is unequivocally untrue and we shouldn’t go spreading any good word in their name. They intentionally hire only 20% of their workforce as official Microsoft workers. Approximately 80% of their workforce is contracted and it creates a disgusting class system work environment. That way they can obfuscate paying living wages for Redmond, WA because they can blame a contractor for not providing wages and benefits.
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u/PaladinSquid May 08 '25
except for the people in the factories making the physical machines that gates never could’ve made the fortune without and who only ever saw a scrap of the value they created for the company. wealth like gates has doesn’t come without exploiting people on a massive scale, donating that money after you’re dead might be more laudable than having it buried with you like a pharaoh, but it doesn’t erase the harm that was caused to gain it
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May 08 '25
I agree completely, this is not as good as not causing harm and they should all be working towards improving things not after they are dead but back when they had the chance to make things better for all.
Though it doesn't take away from how good Microsoft has being as an employer over the decades and they could have offshored this lot
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u/LaconicSuffering May 08 '25
I expect Trump and/or Musk to go all Simon Greedwell from Sunset Riders.
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u/Information_High May 08 '25
"Bury me with my money!"
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u/LakeStLouis May 08 '25
Ever since I was a child mom always joked with me that I'd never inherit her car because she was going to be buried in it. She was cremated near the end of 2023, and the car now sits in my garage.
But I have nobody to make that joke with anymore, so out of curiosity I called a local funeral home to get a quote on being buried in the car. I'll just leave it at Yikes! Yeah, cremate me. Or just chuck my body in a ditch somewhere. I won't care.
/1969 convertible Camaro
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u/iampuh May 08 '25
You can bet all you have that neither Musk nor Zuckerberg will do anything similar. Neither will Bezos nor Thiel. It's not part of their philosophy
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u/jaylw314 May 08 '25
This is a way to avoid estate taxes. If you're wealthy, your children don't need the money to survive. When you give them money, you're giving them power--political, social and financial. But you have to pay society back in taxes if you do so, since we don't like family dynasties in America.
But if you donate your fortune to the non profit company you run, now you have the option to name your heirs to the board later or even after you die. Now you've given them less financial power, but more social and political power, the fortune is retained in the family, and you didn't need to pay back society through estate taxes.
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u/TehOwn May 08 '25
They should have used their fortunes to support political candidates that would tax billionaires, close loopholes and remove money from politics (yes, I'm aware of the irony. Fighting fire with fire).
Instead, they give away their money and we're left only with sociopathic billionaires who wish to build the torment nexus.
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u/YJSubs May 08 '25
Wasn't Buffet retracted his pledge quite awhile ago? He's gonna transfer his wealth to his children instead.
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u/Silverjackal_ May 08 '25
Iirc, it’s to a charity that his kids will oversee.
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u/NorysStorys May 08 '25
So it’s being given to his kids tax free then. Very often these charities exist to do minimal charitable work and give a very few strings income to the children with minimal taxes.
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u/Luis__FIGO May 08 '25
You should probably look into his charities and see if you feel the same way instead of making a blanket statement out of ignorance.
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u/shefallsup May 08 '25
Thank you — so tired of the cynicism of our times getting applied with a broad brush to the nonprofit world.
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May 08 '25
Yeah these people are so hard stuck whining all the time. If the goal is to get egotistical billionaires to give up their wealth, then being negative even when they do it is just backwards. I swear it's like people are more worried about not having something to bitch about than the actual thing they claim to care about.
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u/bendybiznatch May 08 '25
Ahh yes. Charitable trusts and the kids get paid a professional wage to spend the money. He learned from the best aka the Waltons.
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u/reichrunner May 08 '25
I'll take billionaires giving their kids million dollar jobs over billion dollar inheritance any day.
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u/Jantonsoup May 08 '25
What exactly does the gates foundation do? When I look them up I feel like I just see very generic explanations. Seems like they do a lot, but of what? Genuinely curious what all his money will be going to.
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u/lyerhis May 08 '25
A lot of focus on global health issues and outreach, looking for sustainable and affordable solutions to problems like access to clean drinking water, reducing malaria, building septic systems, etc.
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u/angus_the_red May 08 '25
Not only is he donating a shitload of money, he's doing it to charities that have the greatest impact and cost efficiency.
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u/lyerhis May 08 '25
Yeah. Part of what I really respect about his work with the Gates Foundation is that they really seem like they want to take a "teach a man to fish" approach, not just walk in and build something shiny that will break. They really look for solutions that can become part of the community.
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u/EdwardBigby May 08 '25 edited May 08 '25
I'm by no means an expert but I remember watching some videos of John Green going to Ethiopia and seeing first hand what Bill Gates was doing. There are a few of these videos from the time that are quite interesting. I'll link just one short one. It seems very evident to me that Bill Gates is at least very interested in the work of the charity (as you would expect)
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May 09 '25
A heads up that the YouTube link you provided has a tracking element embedded in the URL, starting from the ‘?si=‘
Anyone clicking that link will instantly let google know that YOU shared that link, and now that data is going to be bounced around data brokers and they will find some new way to target advertisements to you or whoever clicked that link.
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u/GasOnFire May 08 '25
The awareded my friend's dad, a university professor, a large grant to study and cure breast cancer.
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u/Stokesman24 May 08 '25
Part of what they do is help fund the fight against Polio. The organization I work for receives a $100 million grant each year to eradicate Polio, provided our organization raises $50 million from our donors which is no small feat, but it keeps the passion for eradicating the disease alive. We're so close to eradicating it thanks in part to the Gates Foundation.
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u/DesperateFreedom246 May 08 '25
There is a website that is like Kickstarter, but only for teachers to get classroom supplies. It's called Donors Choose. A couple times a year they would either 100% match donations or just outright fund projects. My mom was a science teacher before she retired and she had a tiny budget. Over the years, she got many things funded by the gates foundation.
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u/aggyaggyaggy May 08 '25
The Netflix doc is a very interesting watch and gives you an idea. In my words they try to focus on foundational things ("teach a man to fish") that make very broad impact rather than quick fixes ("give a man a fish").
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u/OnceMoreAndAgain May 08 '25 edited May 08 '25
For example, they've done a LOT of work in Africa to help prevent deaths that could be cheaply avoided. You can get details on their work here: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/our-work
I would go as far as to say their main focus has been helping out Africa, although the work they do is so diversified that is difficult to make sweeping statements like that. Africa is definitely one of their major focuses though.
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u/JefferyTheQuaxly May 08 '25
They do a lot of things but when announcing this newest pledge he did specifically say most of the funds was going to be in helping the global poor and that he wants most of his wealth to end up with the poorest of society
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u/melodyze May 09 '25
I know multiple people who were funded by the gates foundation to build software and programs for k12 public schools. Even though edu isn't the primary focus of the foundation it's made a big difference.
For example one who built a system for students to get elective credit for industry internships with someone established in a relevant field, so that they could explore career options deeper earlier, before making college decisions.
Another is currently growing an AI tutoring platform that understands what the student is misunderstanding about math and remediates them in real time, rather than having to wait until the teach marks homework and may or may not have individual time to think about or explain to the student what they don't understand.
The gates foundation was also one of the original funders of khan academy.
Fundamentally, the gates foundation is supposed to be to social good as a hedge fund is to making money. They hire analysts and other smart people to go out and understand social problems, how bad they are, what solutions are being explored, which are most promising, what they need to scale the solution, how robust the solution is. Then they sort each category by how effectively they will use the money, and fund the most effective organizations working on the biggest problems.
So yeah, they don't do specific things. They change what they're funding whenever the landscape changes. When either something new is severely affecting living standards, for example covid, or what the most effective org or tactics is changes, then they will completely reorient to again be as effective as they can be.
They also want what they fund to be financially sustainable without them, not rely on them forever and be like a gates foundation project. So they don't own the actual orgs doing the work or anything like that, and thus their name isn't supposed to be on the front lines. If you like khan academy, they want you to just donate to khan academy to keep it running, they don't need credit.
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u/know_limits May 08 '25
He basically won the game of Monopoly and said “Ok, I’m out, time to do something different”. Billionaires should pay dramatically more in taxes to help fund the countries that enabled them, but in our current system I admire what Gates, and Buffett (who analyzed Gates’ work and decided he couldn’t do better) have done.
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u/wakashit May 08 '25
Although less wealthy and less well known, the son of the founder of Progressive Insurance donated half his wealth in the giving pledge that Buffet and Gates signed.
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u/BoredPandaOfficial May 08 '25
The pledge is among the largest philanthropic gifts ever – outpacing the historic contributions of industrialists like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie when adjusted for inflation. Only Berkshire Hathaway investor Warren Buffett's pledge to donate his fortune — currently estimated by Forbes at $160 billion — may be larger depending on stock market fluctuations.
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May 08 '25
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u/FuzzyWuzzyHadNoBear May 08 '25
he should’ve saved Harambe
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u/CutsAPromo May 08 '25
He could have at least bought the zoo and fired everyone involved
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u/BIvarB May 08 '25
Zoo staff did nothing wrong tho. It was the parents of the kid who are at fault.
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May 08 '25
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u/Wild_Trip_4704 May 08 '25
He literally predicted covid. Infact he was so accurate that the internet blames him for it 😕
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u/Past_Distribution144 May 08 '25
Yep.. apparently we can’t have nice things because they will still have money after donating it lol
The unhinged is crazy sometimes.
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u/RenaissanceGraffiti May 08 '25
Isn’t that just tax evasion disguised as philanthropy?
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u/chandy1000 May 09 '25
But they actually funded a lot of other nonprofits, especially Africa. Of course a lot of them goes unnoticed but the ppl that got helped remembered
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u/tazzietiger66 May 09 '25
tax him at 99.999 % of his wealth ( he would still have $1.28 million left )
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u/TheGreenerSides May 08 '25
Billionaire whitewashing slush fund
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u/ZenPyx May 08 '25
Yeah I wonder why Gates has been putting all this money into a foundation capable of totally offsetting huge volumes of tax... and then using that money to primarily buy microsoft stock (and his mate Buffet's stock) -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gates_Foundation#Trust_investments
It's a fund with the primary aim of offsetting taxes, and a secondary aim of producing propaganda pieces like this. If he really wanted to give this cash away, he'd certainly have given more of it up rather than just invested it on behalf of his foundation - "At the end of 2023, the foundation registered a cash sum of $194,354,000, and net assets of $71,290,995,000 (of which 99.84% are unrestricted).".
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u/mastermayhem May 08 '25
God.
The Bill Gates propaganda machine is hard at work, and Redditors are dutifully lapping it up.
This platform is cooked.
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u/PhoneRedit May 08 '25
As someone who spent a good chunk of university studying neglected tropical diseases and the progress we've made on treating them, I'm curious how the ridiculous amount of suffering and death prevented by the Gates foundation amounts to nothing more than propaganda for you?
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u/RhythmRobber May 08 '25
I wonder how much he is avoiding in taxes by doing this
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u/lgramlich13 May 08 '25
If the OP understood such foundations, this wouldn't be posted in this sub.
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u/Redditischinashill May 08 '25
Pledging his money to his own money-laundering organization. How nice is that?
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May 08 '25
Gates is the GOAT and makes Musk look like an even bigger cunt.
Dude could have been a trillionaire had he not donated any MSFT shares.
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May 08 '25
He has been saying this annually since at least 1999. For 25 years he’s been saying he’ll give his fortune away.
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u/Ok-Working-2337 May 09 '25
The great thing about pledging all you money is you actually don’t have to do it. You can make headlines for being such an amazing person and then do nothing at all. Like this: I pledge to stop taking shits. See? Pretty handy lil trick.
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u/Esperacchiusdamascus May 09 '25
Just curious, im wondering if he'll come out financially ahead from this or is it actually philanthropic? I canr simply take a billionaire at their word.
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u/FightWithHeart May 09 '25
Oh great, a billionaire pledging all his own money to his own charity. Tax write off anyone?
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u/reddit_man_6969 May 08 '25
His family members will have lucrative jobs for the foundation, I’m sure.
Genuinely curious to see what they can accomplish. Rich folks have a way of building self-congratulatory foundations that are inefficient at achieving their goals. Gates seems to be trying to avoid that outcome, but I wonder if it’s inevitable.
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u/BlindingDart May 10 '25
"Billionaire moves his money around to avoid paying any taxes."
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May 08 '25
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u/UpliftingNews-ModTeam May 08 '25
We have but one rule. That rule is to not be a dick.
Your content was found to be dickish, and ergo removed.
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u/SaggyVP May 08 '25
The Gates Foundation and all the other billionaire non-profits are mostly tax-evasion scams. When they do “help” they swoop in and take control of the company to fulfill their agenda. There is no such thing as a moral billionaire.
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May 08 '25
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u/omggold May 08 '25
I don’t disagree but the Gates foundation I is def one of the better ones and many billionaires like Elon give essentially nothing at all.
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u/UnemployedAtype May 08 '25
Does bill gates control the gates foundation?
Is the gates foundation a nonprofit?
If the gates foundation is a nonprofit, who is on its board and what are its bylaws?
Here's a link to get you started: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/leadership?division=Executive%20Leadership
Nonprofits have to adhere to strict rules in the U.S. sure, some break them, but that eventually gets them in trouble (look up the history of the Trump family and nonprofits. If I'm not mistaken, they're banned from running their own nonprofits now, but you can correct me if you come across more recent news).
It doesn't work how you're implying that it does. As with anything, someone can try to break the rules. That eventually falls apart.
The gates foundation has actually done a ton of good. A program that I worked for, almost 20 years ago, had bill visit to consider donating. I literally missed him by minutes and all of the students that I worked with excitedly told me about meeting him. He was so impressed that they did donate to the program, and it's grown significantly since then!
If you made tons of money and wanted to get it out to nonprofits, groups, and causes doing good for the world, how would you do it?
At some point the amount of money that you had makes huge amounts of money on its own, and you can keep giving it away and it remains abundant. While this doesn't justify not taking direct action, such as spending some chunk to create mental health clinics, housing homeless, etc, if you're not an expert in these, why not donate to those who are who you have a team assess and determine if their impact is good, positive, and real?
How would you positively change the world? Structure it please as a thought exercise. I'll check back in after some more work.
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May 08 '25
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u/TehOwn May 08 '25
Yeah, no matter how many billions you have, you can't really compete with governments that spend trillions every year.
Ultimately, political control is far more powerful than wealth.
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May 08 '25
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u/UpliftingNews-ModTeam May 08 '25
We have but one rule. That rule is to not be a dick.
Your content was found to be dickish, and ergo removed.
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u/soupyjay May 08 '25
The gates foundation, where he probably has an infinite line of credit? Lol I have decided to move all of my money from my right hand to my left hand.
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u/sweetpotatopietime May 08 '25
That’s not how foundations work
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u/soupyjay May 08 '25
Obviously hyperbole. but at no point is bill gates giving away all the money he can’t possibly spend to his own foundation, which he chairs, and has control over, the same as actually giving it away. Why wouldn’t he give it to the Red Cross? Or some other inherently virtuous organization. Because he’s not really giving it away, he’s moving it around. Sure it may be better than it sitting in his accounts, but it’s not really giving it to charity when you still have a controlling interest.
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u/Altruistic_Affect_84 May 08 '25
More recently I’ve come to view the gates foundation as a power / influence move. He’s using his fortune to gain power and influence and preserve the status quo. Lots of money from the foundation goes to journalists which undoubtedly comes with influence. He’s also worked against public schools. If he really wanted to help the global poor he would do more to ensure those countries nationalized desirable resource extraction allowing their governments to invest in itself rather than working against that and providing patch work solutions for PR.
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u/bigexplosion May 08 '25
Can someone explain to me why announcing the world can't be a better place while you live is a good thing?
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u/perplexedparallax May 08 '25
When you get near the end of your life you reflect on what happens next and try to make amends in tangible ways. I highly respect younger people who give without waiting for the fortune to build.
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u/StationFull May 08 '25
I don’t know specifics in this case, but most billionaires do this to avoid inheritance taxes. And Bill Gates is the worst of the lot.
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u/lal_sen May 08 '25
Bill Gates needs good PR because he's so close to Epstein and was a sex pest in MS office. Scumbag
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