2d ago

Bill Gates vows to give away 99 per cent of his fortune by 2045

www.watoday.com.au

260 comments

~~Tax~~ Eat 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.
- 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.
  
  He's been buying up huge swathes of farm land in the middle of the country. Not everything he's doing has been philanthropy
  
  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
  
  Behind the bastards has a good two parter on him. I wouldn't say he's been responsible with it.
- ...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.
  
  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?
  
  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?
- This is him avoiding estate taxes, change my mind.
  
  How much would his estate taxes be vs giving up 99% of his fortune?
  
  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.
  He is the largest landowner in the US
  
  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"?
  
  Nonsense. That's not how non profits work, and not how patents work.
  
  They didn't explain how parents work, not sure how you can claim that
  
  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.
- 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.
- Yeah but that’s communism, so no way it would’ve ever happened. The average American voter thinks they can become billionaires some day.
  
  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?
  
  Honestly, it might just be creeping closer to "social". As in, concerning a society. Things like bike lanes and healthcare.
  
  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.
  
  "Communism" like we ever had real communism.
  
  Communism is a word with different legitimate meanings and it sound like this comment is conflating two of them.
  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]
  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.
  
  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.
  
  Thanks for dropping the facade. Now go back to your hole.
  
  Are you a random word generator by any chance?

260 comments