Billions Donated to Charity 1245
Anonymous Philanthropist writes " Warren Buffet , the world's second-richest man, announced over the weekend that he will soon donate 85% of his entire net worth, weighing in at around $37 Billion, to charities, with over 80% of it going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This makes it the single largest monetary donation in history."
Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Informative)
Although, it's hard to believe that the timing is entirely coincidental... especially since Bill said he'd be leaving Microsoft over the next two years, and Warren said [cnn.com]:
$0 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Nice but ... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:No free rides (Score:5, Informative)
I believe he also said that he'd be giving the remaining 15% to charity when he died. Buffett is a pretty good guy, actually.
Re:Sensible CEO salary (Score:5, Informative)
Re:In other words (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Put it in AI research (Score:3, Informative)
I live in South Carolina. "Poor" and "AI" are basically the same term. I know the following sounds like a joke or a half-truth, but it isn't. Our "Education Lottery" is primarily used to fund vocational school for prisoners, ex-prisoners, and high-school dropouts. I guess it is a waste of time and money to give them a good education before they turn 18. Instead, train them for a low-paying job after they turn 18.
I think the quote goes... (Score:1, Informative)
"Thus" was in the wrong place.
Mod parent down down down (Score:3, Informative)
Really you should realize that what "this kind of people" wants has got *nothing* to do with you, they won't even acknowledge your presence because you're a worthless piece of... scrap. Do you really think they *care* about keeping you in line or any of the bullshit you were spewing? Geez, the arrogance. Oh and take the time to do your research before your next idiotic post on
Re:Sensible CEO salary (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Kudos, but a question (Score:4, Informative)
The Gates Foundation is mostly funding public health initiatives of various sorts at the moment. So the FSF and EFF would probably not fare any better than they would if they tried to get money from the Red Cross or the American Cancer Society.
Re:No American Dream either (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Sensible CEO salary (Score:4, Informative)
The typical CEO that gives himself a dollar paycheck tends to often get other compensation either stock options or executive perks.
Warren Buffet has more money than he knows what to do with, hence while he takes $100,000 salary he does not attempt to dilute the investment of other stockholders by given himself stock options at their expense (unlike many, many other C*O's)!
Re:85%! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:-1 Troll on the MQR standard (Score:3, Informative)
Also, in several parts of India, local Coca-Cola bottlers have been known to use pesticides and other chemicals in their product Link. [wikipedia.org] Since the bottling plants distribute the coca sludge leftover from making drinks to farmers who need the organic mess to provide nutrients for overfarmed fields, the pesticides and toxins present in the drink itself are also present in the sludge in much greater qualtities. Several villiages near Coke facilities have complained of high cancer rates, abnormally high infant mortality rates, and other problems.
As for Katrina, that was indeed a bit trollish.
Re:Planned Parenthood (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No, it IS funny. And you can't be serious. (Score:5, Informative)
You're falling into the classic "the pie is only so big" trap. Do you really think that if Bill Gates and MS had never happened (likewise with, say, IBM or Sun or anyone/everyone else) that poor people would have somehow had a share of his billions in their pockets, instead? They don't call it "making" money for nothing: you do something people want and are willing to buy, and that creates demand and sets a price. Those people do the same with what they do for a living (or don't do it, if they don't produce anything, of course). The point is that vast fortunes have been made by lots of people because of MS's economic activity and innovation (yes, innovation - despite the groupthink, they do some of that, and their marketing vigor is no small bit all by itself, and is something that lots of other less-innovative companies copy, BTW). Some of that income has been earned by people like school bus drivers with some of their 401k in a mutual fund that has invested in MS's future.
This notion that the only reason Michael Jordon is rich is because someone else is now poor... or that Michael Moore's $200M from making his silly "documentary" is money that those movie-goers would have otherwise have used to buy applesauce for starving babies... it's nonsense. No matter how much people resent successful businesses (or just what their thriftier neighbor is able to buy for not having wasted so much on stupid crap), it's usually just that: frustration at not having cowboyed up and done the same sort of work themselves, and created value where it didn't exist before. The really busy people make the pie bigger. We can split hairs over whether or not Netscape might one day have made some piece of that pie bigger than MS made it - but would you say that Netscape's early pile of cash and investment somehow made poor people poorer? Or that Red Hat does?
RTFA - The Cash Stops (Score:4, Informative)
But if you did, you'd see that two of the conditions of the gift deal with this - specifically
and
Meaning that the gifts to the Foundation only keep going while one of the Gateses keeps running the thing, and that they have to spend all of each gift (plus 5% of whatever else they have) each year, to prevent them from keeping it.
Re:seriously (Score:5, Informative)
Grants are generally structured so that half of the money they make gets reinvested in the grant, and half goes out to the cause. So a $1 bil grant with professional managers might make 8% this yeat, 4% gets reinvested, and the other 4% goes out to scholarships. Obviously, $40 million should get more than 20 students a full ride, but the initial years have marketing costs and structural costs that have to come out of that 4%. The point, however, is that this grant goes on indefinately growing, and when its giving out >100 full rides a year in a couple of years, it will definitely be a major source of money to the scholarship system.
But while it's easy to be dazzled by the sheer numbers here I'm not at all sure that I trust the B&MG Foundation to spend their money in a way that would be selected by the masses
Sheer numbers aren't the important part of non-profits, its the management. Lots of people get into the non-profit sector thinking its not business, and without adequate budgetary and fiscal discipline. BMGF is notable because it has excellent management, and it isnt one of those charities where most of the money disappears, or is spent inefficiently. I hope you can at least respect that.
Re:Old farts go all squishy (Score:3, Informative)
Buffet has always maintained he was going to give his entire fortune to philanthropic organizations upon his death. However, he has now moved it forward to before his death so that he can keep a closer eye on what's being done with the money.
Either way doesn't affect his "legacy," as it was all being given away via either course.
Your comment about objective based charities is also a bit silly, as it's quite easy for an objective charity to invent useless milestones to show progress while other charities are less constrained and thus more effective.
Re:seriously (Score:4, Informative)
The Gates Foundation gave $ 37M in 04 and $75M in 05 out of a budget in excess of $1B to programs in the pacific northwest. This bothers you why? Because you want to make a big deal about a small thing?
Next up, you've got a beef because Gates funded a scholarship program for groups who have long been underrepresented in american higher education.
First off, its just one the grants that the Gates foundation has made to support education, and there will be others. The fact that it's targeted at students in the US really tells you nothing about the reach of the foundations educational grants program.
Next off, most of Gates worth is due to microsoft, and a huge amount of microsoft's sales have been in the US. I think even today 1/3rd of microsoft's revenue is domestic. Even if you insist that the gates foundation pays out in proportion to where the wealth came from, that still leaves a lot to be spent in the US.
Of course, at this point, probably 80% is being spent on global health (which mostly means the impovershed parts of the world), which means that even if all their remaining budget was spent on US educational programs, it would only be a relatively small portion of their total annual spending.
Yeah, whatever, buddy. That's blatantly racist how?
Try a little harder. A press release from May of this year states they've given over 10K scholarships since 1999.
Re:Modern rich guys worry sooner (Score:2, Informative)
Maybe you should read the intervew [cnn.com], where he talks about this:
Re:Kudos, but a question (Score:5, Informative)
The criticism comes from the fact that most 2nd and 3rd world countries disregard western medical patents and pay no royalties to "Big Pharma" in the West. By ignoring such patents, the same money buys signficantly more locally produced drugs than it does imported drugs from the West.
So by purchasing drugs from the West, the Gates foundation is supporting a questionable intellectual property rights system that itself directly benefits Microsoft at the expense of the people whom the charity is suppossed to be serving.
The obvious response that "Big Pharma" would never invest in the development of such drugs without incentives of royalties is hard to evaluate. Some would argue that there are enough patients in the West to pay for the development, and that without the charity money, the 3rd world would make no purchases anyway. But when the charity gets to be the size of Gates Foundation, it is possible (I really don't know either way) that "Big Pharma" would factor in the charitable purchases as part of the expected return on investment in new drugs.
Whatever the case, it is at least an interesting criticism of the Gates Foundation's policies with respect to intellectual property law and Microsoft's indirect benefit.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Informative)
It is now possible to use all the major organs (heart, kidneys, lungs, liver and pancreas) in transplantation and so one donor is able to help many other people. If the death happened in hospital, staff may ask for permission to use organs for transplantation. Many people find such an approach difficult in the early stages of bereavement but organs have to be removed very soon after death.
Other organs such as corneas and heart valves can be removed anything up to 72 hours after death.
http://www.ifishoulddie.co.uk/organ_donation.htm [ifishoulddie.co.uk]
http://www.google.com/search?q=organ+donor+hours+
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, not really. Carnegie's complete and utter destruction of the unions cripped industrial growth for decades due to his tactics. The lack of a minimum wage (pay wages in the CENTS per day and the Ford Model T was priced at a 'cheap' $350), the methodology of simply decreasing workers' pay instead of increasing productivity or quality (sales are down? Fire some workers while maintaining the status quo!) and his own self-proclaimed "it was necessary at the time for the growth of the nation" while creating a permanent lower working class group of people in the U.S. (Oh yeah, building libraries is real helpful at a time when child labor is commonplace.)
Carnegie was a fool, even in retrospect. By the time his charities were felt by the masses, his company had already left its mark. Corporate intimidation and bullying was used for decades (and arguably to this day). Violence between factory owners and factory workers sparked on and off WELL into the 20th century. Unions have NEVER shaken off the image of essentially being puppet creations made by the corporations for calming the masses (unions in the U.S. are a joke compared to European counterparts and in many cases are being dismantled in some industries).
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Informative)
No estate taxes are paid until the estate is over $1.5 million from a single adult, and $3 million from a married couple. Anyone who has a large enough estate to get taxed is not, by any means, considered part of the "middle class", let alone poor. $1.8 million puts the estate into the top %0.05 of the nation. And then there's the fact that family farms and businesses get even more exemptions.
Only the rich are even subject to the estate tax.
Claiming that the estate tax affects poor and middle class folks is completely and totally a baldfaced lie.
Re:OLPC Project Laptops (Score:4, Informative)
I'd also argue with saying that AIDS affects only a "statistically insignificant portion of humanity". Roughly one million sub-Saharan Africans died of AIDS last year (cite [wikipedia.org] -- this site [ucsf.edu] claims two million but we'll stick with one), out of a total population of around 650 million. That's 0.154% of the population. Compare that to the United States death rate due to cancer: 0.188% (565,000 deaths [cancer.org] out of a population of 300 million). I'm sure you wouldn't say cancer affects a statistically insignificant portion of humanity.
Even when looking at the world population as a whole, it's not all that insignificant. The industrialized nations bring down the death rate. But since the laptop-for-everyone project specifically targets third-world nations, and most AIDS deaths occur in third-world nations, it's not entirely fair to take into account industrialized nations. This makes the disease that much more significant.
Re:OLPC Project Laptops (Score:4, Informative)
Money spent on AIDS research is money well spent. AIDS drugs (from AIDS research) have done much to help people living with HIV continue to live normal or less-painful lives for many years. Drugs also have dramatically cut the transmission rate at birth (mother-child).
Africa in particular has been damaged in terms of economics, stability, and security by the AIDS epidemic. Here is a site with AIDS rates in the adult population in Africa [prcdc.org]. Notice that for 15-49 year olds the sub-Sahara infection rate is estimated at 8.4%! Some countries have infection rates of over 20% such as Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Life expectancy at birth in some countries has dropped below 40 years!
A major reason other countries do not now have such high infection rates is large, expensive national programs have been established to prevent the spread of AIDS. Here is some information about the Caribbean [avert.org] where some nations have managed to dramatically reduce HIV transmission rates by the use of new drugs. Cuba, which has a large public health apparatus, is notable in its success against HIV/AIDS.
Re:In light of recent events (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Please stop calling it the death tax... (Score:3, Informative)
Over the years, Warren Buffet has been asked repeatedly in interviews why he doesn't give more to charity. His answer has always been a variation on the following, from TFA:
Or, to put it another way, Buffett's job for the past several decades has been to manage other people's money in ways that were far more profitable than they could manage it themselves. In his mind, every dollar that he had was actually a dollar he was managing on behalf of the charity that would get his fortune when he died.
He acknowledges that there was self-interest in this analysis; as he puts it, he was having a great time managing Berkshire Hathaway, and didn't want to go through the "grind" of setting up a foundation that could effectively distribute his megawealth. The fact that Bill Gates had already gone through that "grind" on his behalf was part of Buffett's incentive to give away his money now.
Another part, according to TFA, was the death of his wife Susan. Buffet says that he always figured he'd die before her, and he could trust her to give away all their wealth in an effective way. The fact that she predeceased him forced him to rethink his plan.
Re:Before anyone asks...Leftovers (Score:1, Informative)
Think dude. Take an econ class.
Re:Please stop calling it the death tax... (Score:3, Informative)
In certain industries, perhaps. But look at the salary stats for say, teachers [aft.org], or veterinarians [avma.org] (two established middle-class professions which require college educations). Way less than 150k.
Seriously, if you think 150k is an average middle class salary, you're leading an insular existence. In fact, if you look a the historical stats [census.gov] on income from the US Census Bureau, you'll see that you're coming in at the lower limit of the the top 5 percent. Now, unless you're going to argue that only people in your income bracket are truely solidly middle class, and so redefine the problem away, you have to admit that you are, at the very least, upper middle class.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:2, Informative)
Additional quotes ....
On how much to leave :
''enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing.'' For a college graduate, Buffett reckons ''a few hundred thousand dollars'' sounds about right.
He grants that occasionally an heir may be the most suitable candidate to manage a company but believes the odds are against it.
Warren Buffett : ''Love is the greatest advantage a parent can give.
Susan Buffett ... admits her father's position is tough to live with. ''My dad is one of the most honest, principled, good guys I know,'' she says. ''And I basically agree with him. But it's sort of strange when you know most parents want to buy things for their kids and all you need is a small sum of money -- to fix up the kitchen, not to go to the beach for six months. He won't give it to us on principle. All my life my father has been teaching us. Well, I feel I've learned the lesson. At a certain point you can stop.''
The stories about Ted Turner and his dad, and the tip to live outside Lousiana were also enjoyable.