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."
seriously (Score:4, Insightful)
No free rides (Score:5, Insightful)
Bravo, sir.
Re:Nice but ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Regardless (Score:5, Insightful)
This is so wonderful! (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy to give money when you are rich (Score:5, Insightful)
41 And he sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the multitude putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums.
42 And a poor widow came, and put in two copper coins, which make a penny.
43 And he called his disciples to him, and said to them, "Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.
44 For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living."
So the "Humanity Prize" (Score:5, Insightful)
come on
Re:Warren... DUDE.. spare a dime? (Score:1, Insightful)
I have no clue where you got that notion though.
Re:No free rides (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, not quite. From the article:
Buffett is a genuine iconoclast in this regard (contrast the Sam Waltons family and almost all other precursor generators of real wealth, cf. the The Forbes Richest List [forbes.com]). It's true his kids will never go hungry but if you read the article his current bequeaths are to their (philanthropic) foundations, not to the kids themselves who will get a modest inheritance.
Kudos, but a question (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Put it in AI research (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you kidding me? That's absolutely rediculous. As much as I dislike Microsoft's monopoly, and Bill Gates' business practices, his philanthropic activities are much more than 'scraps thrown to charity to buy the hearts'. And Warrenn Buffett is certainly NOT donating 'scraps', he is donating 85% of his net worth, in the form of stock in the company that he spent the last 30 years building.
Moreover, I think the idea of spending that much money on AI research is absolutely ludicrous! You're telling me that AI is going to be more helpful to sick and starving children in Africa and other parts of the third world than medicine and food? The Gateses are actively engaged in curing disease and saving lives and you're suggesting that research into artificial intelligence would be a more intelligent philanthropic investment? If that's actually what you think then for god's sake read something other than Slashdot every once in a while because you have a magnificently skewed view of the world.
parent == sour grapes (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly if those who have attained great wealth have done so via exploiting others then those wealthy deserve derision. But merely to be successful and powerful is not an indictment. The old camel-through-the-eye-of-a-needle quote is often misinterpreted in the same way. The meaning of that passage is to point out that with wealth comes great power and with great power comes great temptation. So if you don't have the wealth/power, it may be easier for you to live a clean/good life (i.e. to pass into heaven).
Don't piss off the One Giant Charity. (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems like giving more money to one massive charity, although it might allow them to take on projects that are even larger in scale than before, is not as good for everyone as starting a second charity would have been.
Just think that you're some organization who would like to get some funding for something. Wouldn't it be better if there were two multi-billion-dollar charities you could apply to, instead of just one? That way, if Bill and Melinda had their fill of feeding starving [Asian/African/Mideastern] people this year, there would be another place to apply to. But by giving the money to one giant charity, in effect we create a monoculture: if you don't get any money from the One Giant Charity, or heaven forbid you're doing something that the One Giant Charity doesn't like or doesn't choose to support (cough*OLPC*cough), then you're shit outta luck. Or what if the leadership of the One Giant Charity goes downhill in time? Having two charities might serve as counterpoises to each other, keeping themselves honest. There are lots of reasons why a duopoly is better than a single overwhelming entity, even in the field of charities.
There's room in the world for more than just Bill and Melinda's pet charity...I would have liked to see something set up that could have given funding to the things that they choose not to support.
That took, like, what? Two minutes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gates isn't a nazi but he uses nazi tactics? Microsoft is evil? WTF??? My parents occasionally give me presents too. Nazi tactics? My boss runs a business that benefits 90% of people who uses her product, but has many unhappy customers due to a bad service ethic...is her company evil? Dude, get some perspective.
Good people do good things. And evil things. Bad people do bad things, and good things. It is not the result that assigns the morality, it is the approbation of the means, the intent, and total content of the person's character. I submit to you that you know basically none of these things about Bill Gates.
Oh, and p.s., Bill Gates, the person, is not isomorphic with Microsoft, the company; hasn't been since the halcyon days of, well, never. The company, if a company can be conceived as a group of people, was always more than him. I also take issue with the idea that a corporation, as an entity in itself, has a moral valence. People are good or evil; corporations are merely a mechanism for a group of people to do something efficiently in a capitalist system.
Old farts go all squishy (Score:2, Insightful)
An objective-driven foundation would seem natural for businessmen to push.
It isn't.
Why? Because they're afraid of what setting certain achievable and sustainable marks would do for their reputations.
Re:Warren... DUDE.. spare a dime? (Score:5, Insightful)
Convincing people to use an annoying product on the one hand, saving thousands of lives a year, proabably hundresed of thousands a year in a few decades on the other. None of the people who's lives are saved by the Foundations efforts give a crap about Windows.
No, it IS funny. And you can't be serious. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, let's see here... the Gates foundation does things like fix up millions of kids with innoculations they wouldn't otherwise get, bringsd truckloads of networking infrastructure to places like New Orleans when the local government doesn't have a chance of procuring it on their own that fast, provides millions for scholarships, and so on. Are you actually suggesting that if Netscape had managed to make a real go at being a stand-alone business, or if BeOS had thrived, that there wouldn't be no place for the billions in philanthropy that Gates is doing?
Are are you certain that part of Netscape's plans included clinics in Africa? Or that despite Novell being largely annoying in so many ways, they would have somehow also gotten into fund raising if they'd pursuaded more people to stick with their NOS? You're trying to set up a false dichotomy just because you like demonizing Bill.
Re:No free rides (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article, he says
"I still believe in the philosophy - FORTUNE quoted me saying this 20 years ago - that a very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing."
A great quote, I think.
[The FORTUNE article was "Should You Leave It All to the Children?" Sept. 29, 1986.]
Re:X-Prize? M-Prize? Granger Prize? Any Prize? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because life is not some reality tv show where a conclusion is needed within 12 1 hour episodes with a final live show for that extra ratings hit.
Doing "good work" is a long and slow process and hard enough without quarterly process reports.
Re:No free rides (Score:2, Insightful)
Only one of the 5 charities benefiting from this are to none family members:
The contributions will go to foundations headed by Buffett's three children, Susan, Howard, and Peter, and to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation.
Re:No free rides (Score:1, Insightful)
If he brought them up right, his kids would use his fortune as seed money for their own entrepreneurial endeavors and/or to continue the family business, not waste their time & resources on the rich & famous party circuit.
Apparently he doesn't trust his kids.
In the words of Bill Cosby: (Score:2, Insightful)
Money talks, BS walks (Score:3, Insightful)
That is not the case here. No one can afford to give away 37 billion dollars, not even the second richest man in the world. Only special people walk away from 80 percent of their life savings, whether they've saved a few bucks a month [invisionpower.com] like that janitor who gave $2 million to the University of Great Falls or the laundry lady who gave $150000 to the University of Southern Mississippi, or they've amassed amazing wealth through high finance.
Would that we all had the principle and bravery to finally deny the love of money and consumerism. "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also". Whatever else Warren Buffett is, he managed to make the end product of his life's work into charity.
Re:Warren... DUDE.. spare a dime? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No free rides (Score:3, Insightful)
I just can't imagine how you got insightful with this line - well, I can, but I don't want to. What I mean is, the most highest purpose of a man's life is his family, to care for them and to protect them, with body and soul, and that also includes financial matters. I don't want my kids to spend half of their lives gathering money to be able to spend the rest on matters which are more important than gathering money. What I wish for them is that they should be able to make decisions in life and professionally which are not compromises limited by piteous financial problems. I might not become a gazillionaire, still, I'll do what I can to make that happen. That doesn't mean I wouldn't donate, but that's a different question.
Re:No American Dream either (Score:2, Insightful)
Don’t tell me you’ve bought into the right-wingers’ rhetoric on this issue. Not with that signature line.
Re:$37 billion is a lot to give to charity, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hello, Mr. Troll.
Please try a little bit of reality in there, somewhere. B-H does not provide insurance to homeowners, or own companies that do. They re-insured insurance companies so that those had anything like the financial backing to even be in the insurance business at all. If you think you can raise the capital to start offering insurance to people who live below sea level in a hurricane zone, only charge them a few dollars a month because that's all they can afford, and then pay out enormous amounts to the residents of thousands of square miles while staying solvent enough to continue to cover the cars, businesses, and other customers you have all around the country... go for it.
Oh, and just in case you forgot: private insurace never covers floods. That's the government flood insurance program you're thinking about. Warren Buffet has absolutely nothing to do with that, never did, and never could. Just relax, have a nice cold Coke, and cool down before you post again.
Re:Kudos, but a question (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Gates shoots the moon (Score:2, Insightful)
It will only be debated in the very tiny circle that even thinks about such things. The huge majority of people who will sit down Monday morning and fire up their copy of Outlook to swap mail with their friends about this, and then pass around Excel sheets and PowerPoint slides about rates of giving, etc, just simply don't have the same bizarre, abiding hatred for Bill that a small, rabid corner of the IT world does. It's hard to remember, sloshing your way through Slashdot, that very little of the world ever goes that far out of its way to hate someone whose tools they use every day (to say nothing of the fact that, really - come on now - it really does just work for most people, at least well enough that the things about it that don't pale compared to the other issues in their lives).
Re:Nice but ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if we were talking about money that were aquired that way, then there is no undoing the aquisition of the money. Even if it was blood money, then $37 billion being put to good use can never be a bad thing.
Using an extreme example: If a drug baron donated a million dollars to charity it would still be a million dollars and would still make the world a better place.
OLPC Project Laptops (Score:2, Insightful)
They chose Redhat OS for their system after offers from MS and Apple to prevent monopoly and restrictions they will imply, and to protect children to be dependent to one company even for a charity like job like this.
I hope they spend some amounts for this project if they want to make some benefit for humanity.
Re:In other words (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a hilarious article. I'm liking it more the further I read. This is BRILLIANT! Check out the pie chart titled "Microsoft is a Cash Machine" there's a 36% chunk labeled "Tax Loophole/Corporate Welfare". No references are provided, no method of calculation given. This has to be a parody.
I love this article!
Cheers.
Re:Diversification works for funding agencies too (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, he's also donating to several other groups. Not nearly as much, of course, but he's worth so much money that the smaller amounts are far from insignificant.
Re:Gates shoots the moon (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:seriously (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't "trust" the Gates Foundation to spend their money as you would see fit? Well, whoop-dee-doo!
Wow, I knew that slashdotters were an arrogant lot (you know, the whole "I know everything there is to know about tech, I'm God's gift to the tech industry, I look down upon anyone that accepts money for programming, blah blah blah" mindset), but to question how others go about their own charitable work? That is the height of arrogance. Look, I know it's very painful for you Gates haters to hear about his charitable work, but grow up. I really doubt that Gates gives a damn whether you "trust" they way he donates money to various causes. If you haven't contributed to the foundation, then it's not your place to "trust" the way it's spent, as it's none of your business. You don't like the causes that Gates contributes to? Then don't contribute to his foundation, simple. Good grief.
Nice of him, but no hardship involved (Score:3, Insightful)
Contrast this with charitable contributions made by an average middle class worker. If a family man earning $50,000/year donates $100 to charity annually, he is making an actual sacrifice. That's a week's worth groceries. A tank and a half of gas. Half the monthly electric bill.
So, who is more generous? Mr. Buffet or Mr. Middle-class-working-stiff? Who is more deserving of hosannas?
Re:Awesome... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly this sums up why a lot of the rich Barons give away their wealth when they get old. They know that they have screwed over people to get where they are. They know they can't take it with them. They try to pay penance before they die. Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt all did the same thing. Now add Buffet and Gates to the list.
Too bad old man Walton wasn't so generous, he could have left a lot of (real) smiley faces behind.
Re:Gates shoots the moon (Score:4, Insightful)
And thank you for making my point. Do you really that millions of people who use their PCs every day to IM their friends or do what they do to make their own companies productive personally feel that it's been set back 10 years? It doesn't matter if you do (or even if you're at all right), because you're fantastically not representative of the average computer user - your perspective is simply too close to the topic for you to see it the way that most of the worlds millions of users see it. So when he (or Buffet) pony up umpty-billion dollars for charity, they don't quite spend as much time looking for so many ways to spit at it.
What does the Free Software world do for charity? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:seriously (Score:1, Insightful)
Bzzt, wrong. That's not what I said. Go back and read the post again. I apologise for the half finished sentence in the middle, lousy editing, what can I say.
To recap, I said I don't trust the Foundation to do what the masses would want, ie, if put to a vote what would The People opt to do with such collossal resources? Another poster has made the point that charities "compete" to do good, and that having a single mega-charity is a problem because it'll ultimately reflect the biases and priorities of the owners at the time.
You could argue that it doesn't matter, because it's a free world etc and so it's no business of anybodies what the Gates' choose to do with that money. But you'd be wrong, because that money didn't just magically appear out of nowhere - as Buffet eloquently put it, it came from an advanced industrialised society and that money represents wealth that everybody created together. As it happens, we use inequality to motivate people, but the downside to this inequality is that when the owners of wealth end up deciding to "reallocate" it they have no guidance or requirements to do it in the way the people who originally made the wealth would want. That's why having competition in charities is important and why I find their extremely tight focus on health and US education concerning. What about disaster relief? Oh, right, the Gates' can only do so much at once so tough luck.
One of the things I hate most about any Gates Foundation related thread on Slashdot is the ridiculous bias in debate towards the party line - "it's good so shut up".
If you think there's nothing to discuss or question here then I feel sorry for you. The exact flavor of capitalism we use today is not some fundamental unarguable happening, it is one of a spectrum of economic possibilities some of which lead to different outcomes to others.
When I state concern that such an unimaginablely large amount of wealth and power have been placed in the hands of just two people, who are not responsible or accountable to anybody else at all, I'd expect you to take that concern seriously even if you don't agree with it. It's two sides of the same coin - you can simultaneously see the Gates Foundation as wonderful/amazing/awe-inspiring and also evidence of a disgustingly undemocratic and divisive system that see the top 2% of the population control most of the worlds wealth. That's how I see it - as both things at once.
This is the sort of reasoning that Warren Buffet himself has used in the past. See his comments about limiting the number of share trades somebody may make in a lifetime for instance.
I already "donated" several times by buying copies of Windows. As a computer programmer I've usually had no choice about that; kinda hard to ply the trade without ever owning a copy these days. As it happens I also give every month to Concern Worldwide via direct debit and to put it bluntly, I would rather I was able to allocate my wealth to charities of my choosing rather than letting Gates do it for me ....
Re:Fool! (Score:5, Insightful)
You failed ECON101. (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you think he had a Scrooge McDuck-style vault filled with gold doubloons? He's an investor for Pete's sake, which by definition means that his money has been out circulating through the world to finance other peoples' dreams. When you say that such a man is worth $n dollars, you really mean that his outstanding loans are approximately worth $n dollars.
Have you ever read about how well such societies tend to do historically?
Re:Planned Parenthood (Score:0, Insightful)
Abortion is here to stay, it will always be around, it's best to have it in a decent medical enviroment to provide the safest way to do it, then let mothers bleed to death from the 50 buck guy down the street.
Signed,
Reality For Life
Re:That took, like, what? Two minutes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I take issue with the idea that a corporation should have the same legal rights as a person.
When you can persuade the law to stop treating corporations like people, I'll accept that they don't need to act like people (i.e. be subject to having their behavior assessed on moral grounds).
Re:Planned Parenthood (Score:1, Insightful)
However, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation did give $110 million to save newborn lives. I think that is a more noble cause than trying to save the life of a so-called "unborn child". The "unborn child" is probably not wanted by the parent(s). The parents may not have the financial means, or even the emotional capacity to raise a child.
The National Right to Life Committee has 21% overhead. They raised $1.8 million, and they spent $2.3 million (overspent by almost $0.5 million). They pissed away 1.8 million on educational resources. So 1.8 million later what exactly has changed? They may have coerced a few hundred single mothers into having unwanted children. They haven't put a dent in the number of abortions annually.
You know there is this other tax-payer funded system called Children Protective Services for all the unwanted and mistreated children. The Pro-Lifers could be a bit more effective by actively supporting the Foster Parenting system. At least the state government is putting money into at least two solutions, not to have, or to find a good home for those who aren't wanted. The Pro-Lifers are pissing their money away on propaganda fliers. Ironically the fliers are sent out to other Pro-Life donors. I am sure that is a really effective strategy.
I want Bill to apply his "evil" skills here as wel (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fool! (Score:2, Insightful)
Money never stops working (Score:3, Insightful)
What's wrong with just saying thanks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's ingratitude for you.
Rich people hoard all their people and they're labelled greedy.
A man works all his life, and finally, nearing retirement gives away almost all his fortunes and he is also looked down upon.
You just can't win in this world...
Re:No, it IS funny. And you can't be serious. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why our economic system must constantly expand to be stable.
Note that if the money supply is increased without a corresponding increase in the size of the economy itself, you get inflation. So we try and avoid that.
One way to take somebody elses money is to employ them, such that their work earns you more than what you pay them. This may seem such a fundamental thing that it's impossible to imagine a different model, but they do exist. For instance Kim Stanley Robinson has through his novels effectively proposed a system in which the "workers" (for Microsoft, think the programmers/artists/testers/program managers) rent upper management. Right now we mix together managing things and owning them; so ... even though Gates did not make Windows, he managed the company that did, therefore he benefitted the most from it. I'm not saying such a system would be better, I don't know if it would or not. But the way we do things now is not the only way.
Meanwhile, the amount of wealth in the system at any one point is still finite despite the fact that it's also growing. The way wealth tends to flow uphill towards those who are already very rich is well documented .... take the example of currency speculators who many argue perform a task far less useful than their actual reward for it. Effectively a currency speculator can leverage a small amount of wealth into a very large amount by playing the system and extracting wealth out of the target currencies, so harming the people within it. But because there are so many people and that harm is spread out, it's hard to see, so nobody really notices.
Buffet has argued that people who allocate capital tend to benefit far more than is really fair; and as he has spent his life allocating capital more efficienctly when he speaks about it I listen. /p?
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Insightful)
You could say the same thing about any tax. And yes, there is a lot of pork out there, but there are also things that are genuinely necessary and useful to fund via taxes (I'm sure you can think of a few). If you want to live in a society without taxes, try Afghanistan or Sudan... of course you will still end up paying taxes, only to the local warlord instead of any kind of representative government.
Politicians should learn to operate within a real budget like the rest of us.
Indeed they should. But that doesn't have any bearing on whether there should be an estate tax, or even taxes in general.
Re:seriously (Score:2, Insightful)
That's reductio ad absurdum ... nobody can consult everybody they got wealth from before allocating it to charitable causes so we rely on other systems. In some places an elected government has a charitable giving program. For instance the UK Foreign Office funds various good causes around the world. In others we rely on the invisible hand in the market of charities to try and fairly allocate charitable giving.
We do this rather than having a randomly selected Charity Chief because, well, it's better.
Sour not least ye be soured (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, I'm not a Christian, so I haven't spent a lot of time studying and interpreting the New Testament. But it seems to me that you're laying a lot of complicated interpretation on this passage. And why? Are you afraid that Jesus will come across as a Marxist? Or worse, a liberal?
A poor person who shares what little they have is making more of a sacrifice than a rich person who gives away billions — and still has billions left. That's a simple fact. It doesn't mean the rich person is evil. Nor does it mean that person who points it out is "sour grapes".
Since I'm not a Christian, I'm not entitled to say who is and who isn't a Christian. But I suspect the Carpenter of Nazereth would not look kindly on your attempts to denigrate those whose sense of their own Christianity conflicts with your neocon ethics.
What sad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:OLPC Project Laptops (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, because spending money on AIDS research would be just pointless.
Re:Kudos, but a question (Score:3, Insightful)
There won't be any attempts to put affordable technological foundations in poorer countries...which is primarily the domain of things made by the FSF and EFF.
Doesn't it seem rather shortsighted for what is now one of the wealthiest charities to only do that?
Seems to me that having a background in software is going to hinder any software-related growth. If they end up doing any software stuff, they'll probably buy a lot of those expensive copies of Windows and put them on machines, which would be a huge waste of money caused by a conflict of interest that you seem to be ignoring for some reason.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe when the time comes, they'll go with whatever serves the most people. Personally, I think they'll just do immediate aid stuff until they run out of money or switch over entirely to scholarships/grants and let other organizations (like the Peace Corps, for example), do the actual establishment of infrastructure.
Re:Fool! (Score:5, Insightful)
A wild guess: you are healthy and non of your children have died of starvation?
Re:OLPC Project Laptops (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:seriously (Score:5, Insightful)
Hardly.
They'd put their hands out and vote "Me me me me"
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, the entitlement class (i.e. trust-fund babies) doesn't challenge the ruling party, they are the ruling party. How can you not see that? Don't you know who our President is?
Re:OLPC Project Laptops (Score:2, Insightful)
Thats actually debatable,
Improved education for these children may take 5 years,
but, being more smart people, they may learn to cure aids quicker
than if we used it now
Re:OLPC Project Laptops (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your last comment notwithstanding (because I mostly agree with it, except in situations of dire depression), the rest is an unfortunate simplification for something a little more complicated.
To me, the death tax, or in fact any tax that is levied more heavily towards those who are wealthier, is fair simply because wealthy people derive more benefit from each tax dollar spent proportionally than anyone else. Before you freak out and stop reading, consider:
A middle-class person who pays taxes to go to public school earns an education; a rich person who pays taxes to support a school gains...an educated and skilled workforce.
A middle-class person who pays car and gas taxes earns a road they may drive on; a rich person who pays those taxes gains...a transportation system that allows them to transport their company's goods to far-flung locations and markets.
And so forth. Any person who uses wealth to produce wealth (i.e. true Capitalists) are using the benefits of an infrastructure that most taxpayers can barely fathom. So, yeah, they get to pay a little more.
The obligation of those who create wealth... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, see, that's the nice thing about being the owner of the wealth - you don't even have an obligation to reallocate it the way anyone wants but yourself.
I don't understand this hand-wringing that says somehow the will of all who helped create the wealth have some say in its dispersement. Everyone who helped make the wealth traded away their say in what happens to the fruits of their labors for a paycheck - just like you and I do voluntarily every day.
If someone has the talent to orhestrate an empire by getting people to voluntarily contribute to that empire, by God, the fruit is theirs, and theirs to do with what they will.
Thus if Warren Buffet wanted to take 100% of his fortune and donate it to one-legged polka-dotted red-headed African sheep herders, or any other incredibly narrow-focused venue, that is entirely his right. It doesn't matter a whit what the millions of employees and customers who made the fortune think about it - they already got fairly compensated for their efforts.
Steve
Charity vs. Taxation (Score:2, Insightful)
"The rise of democracy was driven by the citizens' desire to escape from the paternalistic and arbitrary charity of those with money. They accomplished this by replacing charity with a fair, balanced, arm's-length system of public obligation. The principle tool of that obligation was taxation." ... [charity] ..., they can afford the taxes which would ensure that we do not slip into a society of noblesse oblige in which those with get to chose who and how to help those without." [www.gg.ca]
"... if they can afford
- John Ralston Saul
Still, my hat is off for Warren Buffet. He himself has campaigned for a tax code that shifts the majority of the tax burden to the corporations and the rich, and away from the middle class. But if the second richest man in the world can't afford the lobbyists to push that idea through, what hope is there?
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Insightful)
As for politicians and their pet projects. Whatever. I'm sure you've benefited in lots of ways from government programs. So its really just a question of the best way to pay for them. A tax on substantial estates seems like one good way to raise some of that money. Better than taxing working & living people at an even higher rate.
Re:Fool! (Score:5, Insightful)
To impress future generations, make sure to engrave your achievements. Something along the lines of:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
While you're doing that, I'm glad someone is humble enough to spend resources on mundane problems like world pandemics, disaster prevention and recovery, ineffective education systems, and other issues that cripple long term development (economic and otherwise).
You know, the kind whose solutions will be required to make the achievements you propose into sustainable contributions to the advancement of humankind, instead of an excercise in the comparative studies of metaphorical male genitalia.
But maybe that's just my own foolish priorities; I'd prefer to have those space colonies self-sustaining and bubbling with life, trade and commerce rather than live and die in the span of a sudden monetary intervention.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Insightful)
The really *great* thing about estate taxes, especially as they used to be formulated in the US, is that they encourage bequests to eligible organisations. As a result, many public institutions and charities in the US have required far less money from the government than they otherwise would.
As for this:
Politicians should learn to operate within a real budget like the rest of us.
In a capitalist republic, politicians only have one source of income: taxes. If they don't keep to a reasonable budget, it isn't their fault, it's the fault of the people who voted for them.
We all have our ideologies... (Score:3, Insightful)
...and yours and mine don't correspond. I would criticize your conception of morality as lacking an important element (a proximate and conscious capacity for choice) which goes beyond a programmatic conception of "rules for success". I have a real problem believing that morality (proper choices, even suceessful choices, by your formulation) can be programmatized, because the situations that require moral choices are highly variable. Since a corporation is a union of several disparate moral agents, none of whom are required to shoulder actual moral responsibility for the action of the corporation as a whole (the twin magics of limited liability and compartmentalization of bureaucracy), there is no singular agent capable of applying the moral programme, if such a thing even exists. Thus, no moral center (that's what I meant by the concept).
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:2, Insightful)
The alternative is hereditary aristocracy and the founding fathers of this country feared that more than anything else. Pity people forget that and instead resort to this selfish economic egotism to their own peril.
"An hereditary aristocracy... will change the form of our governments from the best to the worst in the world. To know the mass of evil which flows from this fatal source, a person must be in France; he must see the finest soil, the finest climate, the most compact State, the most benevolent character of people, and every earthly advantage combined, insufficient to prevent this scourge from rendering existence a curse to twenty-four out of twenty-five parts of the inhabitants of this country." --Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1786.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been giving about half my earnings to the government for many years. In other countries 50% tax gets you a complete education, medical care, a higher standard of living (on average), and other things. In the US the same amount of tax gives us a poor education and no medical care (for most of us). Hell they won't even fix pot-holes any more. I'd rather go back to no taxes, tariffs on trade to support the government, and I'll work with my neighbors to fix our own pot-holes.
Charity != sacrifice (Score:4, Insightful)
If I were to give away 85% of MY worth, I'd be homeless and relying on the charity of others. Mr. Buffet does not have that problem. He can donate billions and not suffer. because there comes a point at which having more money just means a higher number. If I had ten million dollars, I could do a lot. If I had twenty million, I could do a little more. If I had a billion, I could do pretty much anything I'd want to do. If I had ten billion, or a hundred, would anything change? What does $30 billion get me that $20 billion doesn't?
His donation is fantastic, and I'm staggered, but he does not suffer as a result of giving this gift. All this means is a lower number in a computer somewhere, and that's it. His charity is outstanding, but his sacrifice is non-existent.
What the bible passage quoted is trying to say is that it is sacrifice we should truly applaud, because giving of yourself is far more difficult and far more noble than giving what you have left over, and in the end, that is all Mr. Buffet is doing - giving away what he has left over.
Re:seriously (Score:2, Insightful)
Exactly, so if I'm a photographer and Mr. gates the OS programmer happens to want his picture taken for a magazine cover, and I already happen to have a nice copy of his OS from one of his programmer buddies, then poor bill is sure out of luck, unless I happen to have a friend who wants it and I want something of his. Money is an artificial construct, but its used to assign value. Your pictures/time/expertise are worth $dollars to him, so instead of him giving you a product or something of his he gives you something that $god has deemed to be a note of universal value. Because its a note of value you can give it to anyone for anything, without having to have something that person wants. In that sense it is property. (if not property then potential property)
As for your need to control peoples money who have earned it, I suggest you start looking for ways to exploit the system and make your own instead of fighting it (without real analysis of the benefits of it). Anyway I'm just happy I'm in america so theres less people like you thinking you know how to spend my money better then I do. (not to say there arn't any, theres what about 50% and they mostly live in cities
As for your doing what the masses want, I would most certainly hope they do what they want, as the masses are often wrong/uninformed.
(as a side note I would encourage you to look up such fallicious arguments types such as: Ad hominem, ad populum, and card stacking.)
Re:Gates shoots the moon (Score:2, Insightful)
What, exactly, are you saying? What do you mean when you say something "matters", or doesn't matter. Do you think that the number of people who think about a thing determines how much it "matters"?
To me, it matters whether Gates set back the computing industry a decade (not entirely sure, but I think he did), because it makes a difference in how I view the man, how I view his company, and perhaps whom I vote for. I don't care if other people disagree with me, and it doesn't bother me that most people are too ignorant to have an informed opinion about the issue. The majority of people are too ignorant to have an informed opinion about almost anything. It's convenient to know this, because it means you can safely ignore most people.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OLPC Project Laptops (Score:3, Insightful)
Learning how to develop sustaining agriculture, water treatment plants, proper housing, ending civil unrest, modernizing infrastructure, suppressing the spread of disease.... yeah, laptop should come first.
Lets give kids laptops, so then the kids that didn't get one can feel shafted and kill the first kid for their laptop.
Only a hardcore geek could in any way think a laptop program is important. What's next. Dungeons and Dragons Aid.
Re:What sad... (Score:3, Insightful)
When everyone rides the same high-horse, nobody's any higher than anyone else -- they're all just really annoying...
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:4, Insightful)
I, for one, welcome our silver-spooned overlords!
Re:Kudos, but a question (Score:3, Insightful)
The cure for the disease may be far away. Attempts can be made to try to fix the economy right now.
And what if there is a cure? How much will it fix? What about overcrowding, and vast numbers of orphans, for that matter? There are so many unplanned children born into families with no way to support them... Just having a vaccine is no substitute for having an economy that can stand on its own. It's like a putting a bandaid on an arterial wound.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Insightful)
From the interview:
Despite my yammerings against the rich folk types, I've always been impressed with Buffett, both for his humility and his social conscience.
Those who are trying to achieve a meritocracy should be foresquare against huge transfers of capital to the next generation. It should be enough that they have access to the best education, the best health care, etc. Those who talk smack about welfare, saying how we're depriving people of the feeling of independence that comes from earning your own way in society, never seem to have an unkind word to say about somebody getting billions for the "hard work" of having the right parents.
If I ever reach the heights of either Bill Gates.. (Score:3, Insightful)
What a selfless act... I want to work for this man. Fuck. I was in tears when I read it. Did he have any reason to do this (forget looking good - I think he's way past 'looking good')? No. He chose to do it. DAMN!!!!
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Insightful)
Geez, look beyond your pay-stub, junior.
If your income is in the $50K range you're already paying around 20% of it to Uncle Sugar in income tax alone. Now add 6.2% for Social Security. Then add 5.8% for the Social Security that is your "employer's matching contribution", as your employer already files it under the common heading of "cost of employing you". Add 2.9% for Medicare. State and local taxes nationally average a hair above 10%. We're nearly up to 45% already and I haven't even gotten into the various communications taxes, vehicle registration fees, and assorted other "non tax" levies. 50% is not at all that unreasonable an estimate.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Insightful)
He might not, but I will, although I don't know about "class-based," if you mean like a caste system. The idea of society without classes is called communism. It's not bad in theory, but in practice it removes most positive incentive for people to work hard and causes society to flounder and ultimately collapse on itself. Even communism had classes; they just operated behind closed doors. Classes are unavoidable. What we want to do is make the least common denominator acceptable to the point where it's not inhumane, but there's still opportunity and incentive to achieve more, and keep the highest classes from abusing their power.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't have enough deductions and want to spend some money, you could always donate it. The government just ends up giving deductions to those who invest in homes and children at this point, and the likelyhood of that changing anytime soon is low, even with some 'Lets get rid of the AMT!' push.
You don't like it? Get someone elected that you prefer! Downside: most people have kids and a house, so the chances of this changing are about nil.
Re:The flip side of that (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:4, Insightful)
I learned in history class all about Carnegie hiring Pinkerton thugs^W strikebreakers^W security agents when his employees did disloyal and terroristic things like, say, demand safe working conditions. I think history will remember that Gates set computing back at least 20 years. Hell, up until quite recently, we were still running the same old DOS-over-Windows on a slightly juiced up 386 and it was called "innovative."
Re:seriously (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you're more than welcome to try to change the system. I'm not sure how much support you'll get for passing a law that says billionaires can't donate their money to charities without congressional approval. Of course that would take money and resources, and somehow, I think it's not the greatest peril this country, or world even, faces - controlling how rich people donate their money.
It sounds like you want to tax rich rich people more. I'm fine with that, but realize that people get to keep their untaxed portion, and spend it as they see fit - regardless of income or net worth level.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yea but that is the point. Even if the read that no one will care. Very few people ever think of then when they go to CMU, or even even when they here his name. Mention it to a few people and they will all say yea but look at the good that he did. And frankly the truth is the good Carnegie has done really have out lived the harm he did.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:4, Insightful)
Whoo, I'm glad the message got out there! I was afraid that after all those many months of talking up how bad the death tax is for regular middle class folks, who often have to work two jobs just to put little Timmy through community college, the point may have been lost on you all. Thank Gawd that "the right kind of people" are out there protecting regular middle class folks with more than 2 million dollars (that's per person if you're a god-fearing heterosexual married person) are able to give every penny of that money to their poor, struggling kids who need to get their Hummer gassed up on the way to their weekend estate in the Hamptons. The government should only be able to tax actual income, from the people who get their hands dirty with labor... like my gardener, Miguel. Taxes should come out of the pockets of the working class, the middle class, and those filthy poor people who live tax free in the gutters of society.
Re:seriously (Score:3, Insightful)
American conservatives like, for example, Socrates [wikipedia.org]?
Re:OLPC Project Laptops (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, $38 billion should be able to comfortably fund both.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Awesome... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a very hard to call to make however. You are weighing visible measurable gains (the product of all Gates' charity which we can see in action) against a whole lot of intangible "might have been". We simply don't know what would have happened had Microsoft not dominated the industry with its dubious business practices. Certainly they have left quite a trail of now crushed but once promising technology behind them. What might have happened had that tech flourished is, at this point, pure wild speculation. I mean there are all the little things - various small startups that were crushed by vapourware and marketing - that may have snowballed into completely revolutionising the entire industry had they actually come to fruition. Alterntively there are things like Netscape that may have simply ended up stagnating themselves anyway. With so much possible, and so many different little stories that you only rarely hear about, it's just not possible to have any real idea of what the world might have been like without MS anti-competitive practices. And given something we can't even imagine compared to something we can tangibly see - most people take the tangible choice every time.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:1, Insightful)
The obscenely rich don't deserve credit for philanthropy. Don't forget that it's the rest of society they took such huge masses of wealth from in the first place.
The obscenely rich sometimes get old and feel a little guilty for living so well when so many live so poorly. So they buy an indulgence to be forgiven for their sins by returning much of their wealth to society - when they're done with it, of course.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite what you might think, you wouldn't be any richer either. Not unless you were supremely lucky to latch onto some exploitable resource. Regular business would grind to a halt as the infastructure collapsed. Even the super expensive education system provides more money to businesses over the long term than any savings in taxes could ever provide. The highway system is the same way, and it's also monumentally expensive. A large mass of poor people with no hope of social mobility (can't afford education, can't afford to even drive on the roads) is not good for society.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you not see a moral difference between a) getting a present from a friend, and b) pulling out a gun and demanding that a stranger give you money?
The latter is welfare.
Re:Awesome... (Score:5, Insightful)
What might have happened? Who knows, maybe somebody might of been able to invent the cure to Cancer 10 years ago instead of next year? How many lives might that have saved?
Of course you could invent anything when it comes to WHAT IF's. But my point is, we'll never know how much Evil or Good his biz practices were because you don't know what would of happened had he not been there.
That's the beauty of monopolistic behaviour. Those projects that never got off of the ground because of the monopoly can defend themselves..because they never got off the ground.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:2, Insightful)
You're assuming MS will not be around in the next 50 years
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:1, Insightful)
You're an utter fool if you think unions were ever anything else.
Except for the teamsters. They're not run by the corporations. They're run by the mob.
Re:No free rides (Score:5, Insightful)
What I mean is, the most highest purpose of a man's life is his family, to care for them and to protect them, with body and soul, and that also includes financial matters.
Frankly, that's naked tribalism and is not a position that would be endorsed by any major world religion nor by secular humanism or rationalism. The only basis on which it makes sense is a primal, genetic one like the one that motivates a mother bear. I love my daughter and would give her anything that is mine to give. But if I elevate her needs above societies then I am being essentially selfish just as if I elevated my own needs above society's. I mean we are genetically programmed to care first about ourselves and our kin. The capacity to pursue a higher purpose is what differentiates us from the animals.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:4, Insightful)
receiving any benefit from government, so government has even less rationale for taking their money.
Or perhaps there is actually more rationale -- the deceased person is dead, so they clearly don't need the money. Therefore it is better to take money from them than from someone else who is still alive, who would be harmed by its loss. Of course the person's heirs may still be living, but if we are going to take them into consideration, we are back to square one: they are still part of society, and thus subject to taxation like everybody else.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:1, Insightful)
I'll take my chances with the lesser evil, thanks. At least they can occasionally finish a job on time and under budget.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Insightful)
However, a capital investment in, say, a robot can perform work in the absence of human laborers.
So I'd say you have it almost precisely backward there.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as the unions being benign this [mises.org], this [thetruthaboutcars.com], this [yahoo.com] and this [yahoo.com] seem to say otherwise. Just using GM as an example.
Not only do unions cripple companies against competition, they do a poor job protecting workers. The best protection workers can have is high standards. If all you want to do in life is work in a coal mine or work a hydraulic press then you may get paid highly or poorly depending on how many other people also want those jobs. Even in the greatest of depressions there is always a way for an enterprising individual to avoid working a shit job. And the more people who do that, the higher the guy who does it gets paid.
Furthermore, there is an underlying undercurrent of Victorian philosophy behind a pro-union position. It presumes that some are born to be kings and some are peasants. Well, that's bullshit. In a free society any one of us can get a good job or even become a millionaire. There is nothing preventing a person from striking out on their own, with their own business. There never has been. Even with zero capital starting out (in a service based business.) The thing that has always kept people subservient is the rink associated with doing so. As long as people are fearful then they will remain the peasants they consider themselves.
Modern India, China and Brazil are perfect examples. Look at the number of people who are rising out of poverty by refusing to work the jobs their father's did. Their pay scale remains lower than some places but that is strictly contingent upon the risk they take in a chosen occupation or business. The business owners are the ones making the money because they are the ones taking all the risk. Just as Andrew Carnagie once did.
Read his Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] entry. He had nothing handed to him. He started out making $1.20 a week and ended up the richest man in the world. So he was most certainly not a fool. The fools were the ones who decided to work for him for so little. If half of them had decided it wasn't worth it there would've been no need for unions and their jobs wouldv'e paid much better.
Call me a pessimist... (Score:2, Insightful)
(1) Tinpot dictator will quietly (and enthusiastically) accept X m/billion dollar donation.
(2) Said dictator will announce in state run news media that he strong armed a major American company or the American government into giving money to his country, and of course, that the public will receive the fruits of that action.
(3) Said dictator will actually spend maybe $100 on constructing shack with a toilet in the center of the capital city, build another mansion for himself with the remaining funds, maybe buy a few hundred thousand rounds of ammo and some more surplus AK-47s for his army.
As long as his army has ammo, he doesn't have to give a damn about AIDS, food, infrastructure, et al. For the remainder of his constituents who haven't figured out they've been had, the state run media will announce that the US corporation/government weaseled out on the deal, and that he was a victim of circumstance.
Re:Charity as a tool (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know why you feel the need to dig up an article from 1997 which is about MICROSOFT'S CORPORATE PHILANTHROPY and unrelated to the Gates Foundation. The article predates the EXISTENCE of the Foundation that we are talking about here. The other article is from 2004 but again it confuses Microsoft's corporate philanthropy (which, surprise surprise, is probably designed to benfit the corporation) from the Gates' PERSONAL philanthropy which is probably designed to ensure their place in history.
Frankly I think that it is sad that your jealousy and anger are so blinding that you cannot step back for even a second and see the good that billions of dollars directed at Malaria and AIDS research could do in this world. If (heaven forbid!) Bill Gates read Slashdot he might well think that it would be better for him to keep his money in his pocket because he gets more fiercely cricized for trying to do good with it than he does with just sitting on it. That's a sad commentary on the anti-Gates trolls on Slashdot (not a majority here by any means!).
Bill has given $29 Billion to the Gates foundation. Have you considered how incredibly hard it would be to make that back through lobbying? That would be the most expensive, inefficient and wasteful lobbying campaign in the history of the world! It would be MUCH cheaper to just directly buy politicians as other industries do. Curing malaria is a very round-about way of making money. There comes a point where the simpler explanation is more believable than the conspiracy theory. Why wouldn't Bill Gates and Warren Buffet simply wish to secure a place for themselves in history?
By the way, where in your conspiracy theory does Warren Buffet's donation fit? Surely it is a way for him to feather his own nest as well. He gives away billions but the underlying goal is to sell more Coca Cola so he can benefit on the order of trillions later, right? Brilliant!
It frankly depresses me that someone can be so closed-minded. It's a form of prejudice. You have "pre-judged" every action Bill Gates will ever take. Has he done wrong in the past? Yes. Does that mean he is incapable of doing right in the future? No.
Re:Warren... DUDE.. spare a dime? (Score:3, Insightful)
Please enumerate the companies that Microsoft "bought, and promptly killed". That's not Microsoft's MO, that's Oracle's.
"Or how about being one of the people working at Apple, Corel, Fox Pro, IBM, Lotus etc. who lost their jobs after the MS monopoly illegally (check your facts) pushed their products (in most cases SUPERIOR products) out of the market."
Please enumerate the products that the "Microsoft monopoly illegally pushed out of the market". Note that the government is still allowing IE to be shipped with Windows, so it's clearly not illegal. So you'll have to come up with something besides Netscape. Besides IE and WMP, the apps bundled with Microsoft's "monopoly" product are low-end applets, not competitors of full-featured apps. What, are you worried about the "Calculator" market?
Even among the companies you list, what products of theirs were "illegally pushed out of the market"?
No product of Apple's was pushed out. (And don't suggest Mac OS, because Judge Jackson ruled that Mac OS is in a different market altogether.)
IBM? What product of theirs was illegally pushed out by a monopoly? OS/2? Windows wasn't a monpoly back then.
Lotus? Microsoft's Lotus-competitors aren't bundled with Microsoft's monopoly product, so you can't count them.
Corel? Microsoft did nothing regardign Corel's main product, their Draw apps. WordPerfect was run into the ground by Novel before Corel bought them, and Word isn't bundled with Microsoft's monopoly product anyway, so WordPerferct wasn't pushed out by monopoly tactics either.
Fox Pro? Microsoft bought Fox Pro and still sells it.
And where did you get the idea that the competitors had "in most cases SUPERIOR products"? I remember Microsoft winning the review comparisons regarding Excel vs Lotus, Word vs WordPerfect, Office vs Lotus Smart Suite, etc, from about 1992 onward.
"Please...if destroying peoples lives isn't evil, what is?"
Somehow, I really doubt that God will come down on Gates for bundling a browser in an OS. Get some perspective. If you want to see examples of real corporate "evil", check out I.G. Farben, Enron, polluters, corporations that use Asian sweatshops, corporations that get fat off of free labor, etc.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, if you ignore the non-existant road infrastructure, lack of schools, hospitals, police etc.
Re:Fool! (Score:4, Insightful)
Because, you know, there's one thing everyone seems to be forgetting about Africa: Every child you save means one more life spent in poverty, misery and starvation, and five or so more childs to save 15 years down the road.
I say fix up the place first before you bring in more people to inhabit it. But maybe that's because I'm a European and uncomfortably close to what might blow up very soon. We already have mass migrations from northern Africa to southern Spain. Some perspective beyond "saving everyone we can today, fuck tommorow" is certainly asked for.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:2, Insightful)
I am an anthropologist and I have spent my entire career working in developing countries, and health issues are definitely secondary to other more fundamental issues, such as education and infrastructure. Just look at developed western countries: healthcare is widely available, and malaria, typhoid, polio, and AIDS - while present and terrible - are nevertheless manageable problems. But when you don't have clean water to drink or food to eat, when you can't read or write because there are no schools, no roads, and no electricity, then poor health complete unavoidable.
So it seems to me that spending billions to improve the health (and healthcare) or those without enough food or water is, to use an apt analogy, treating the symptoms and not the cause of the problem.
Bill may have good reasons for this, I don't know. It is possible that basic services such as infrastructure, education, and healthcare are things he wishes to leave governments responsible for, and his foundation may instead be focused primarily on scientific research. Fair enough. But if was ME, I would use those billions to do what USAID and other development organizations have failed to do: stop funneling money into corrupt governments and start spending it on initiatives with tangible outputs for local communities. I'd start by making sure that every citizen on Earth had access to clean water. That is a readily achievable goal, especially when you consider that USAID has spent over a trillion dollars in the last 50 years on foreign aid.
Re:Awesome... (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, Buffett owns Sees Candy [sees.com]. That alone makes him a force for good in the world.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Insightful)
For future reference, four links about four different unions would make a much more compelling case.
Re:Please remember (Score:4, Insightful)
Buffet has made it clear many times that he is planning on giving most of his fortune away, and only leave "small" amounts to his children. The only new thing is that he's decided to give a significant part of it while he's still alive.
Frankly, since the guy is 75 I don't see anything weird about that. He's held the shares so long anyway, it's not like those shares are contributing much to his lifestyle. And this way he does get to enjoy the positive attention.
As for tax exemptions - sure, he may get some write off's, but nothing to make up for giving away 90% of his fortune.
Re:I'd rather see it invested. (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously it's his money, and he can do with it whatever he pleases, but I can see a huge number of things "wrong" with "donating" it to organizations that not only don't need it, but are already quite wealthy. Would you see anything "wrong" if he donated the money to Microsoft? It's an order of magnitude different, but it's the same idea as donating money to almost any US companies.
That would be a very "bad thing" because the standard of living in the US is very high, and donations are not needed to advance the agenda of unnecessary consumerism.
The money is needed infinitely more in those nations with a very, very low standard of living. Those kinds of people who couldn't dream of affording our high-tech gadgets, surgery that improves eyesight, and unnecessary "quality of life" drugs.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Insightful)
I might also mention various problems with teachers unions [daytondailynews.com]. But that's an entirely different story.
I think most competitive industries that have unions display these tendencies. A government enforced monopoly always seems to be a bad deal for everyone, not just unions. Besides, the main point of my post was not that unions are bad, merely that Carnegie was not an imbecile.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Insightful)
And the... uh... estate... gets taxed when, exactly...?
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Insightful)
(a) he didn't create it, and (b) someone else would have done it anyway.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:2, Insightful)
Like the ad says. "Next time do a little research". First, take your illustrative income $50000 and subtract $8200 -- exemption and standard deduction. That makes the AGI $41800. For a single person, the tax on $41800 is $7121 = 14.25%. For a married couple it's more like 9.25% And BTW neither is high enough to cover the foolish expenditures of George the Clueless and the collection of incompetent sociopaths he has brought to Washington.
Why not quit doing what Americans do best -- feeling sorry for yourself -- and start learning a bit about the world around you? I project that were you to do so you would quickly find plenty of real problems to become enraged about.
Re:Awesome... (Score:3, Insightful)
What about the home computers of the early 1980s? Machines such as the Sinclair Spectrum and the Commodore 64, followed later by the Atari ST and the Amiga, introduced generations to a relatively powerful computing platform at about one tenth the price of the PC and Mac offerings.
If anything, the dominance of Microsoft had the effect of wiping out this competition, thus making home computing less accessible and more expensive.
Re:Please stop calling it the death tax... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps it's because of how Aids is transmitted? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Insightful)
Trains and horses got most people where they were going.
Schools and hospitals used to be governed by the local towns.
Maybe it was the collection of income tax that led to the nationalization and urbanization of America. In fact, the major Powers That Be saw income tax as a way to push the taxation system away from the tariff / trade taxes we were using (which only taxed the wealthy corporate owners) into a system that taxed the lowliest worker, too (reducing the burden of the wealthy.) Of course this kind of backfired on them when we had those outrageous tax brackets of the 40s-70s, but then again, we kind of became a military-industrial complex, and guess what? Government sucks up a lot of money.
Anyway, I think your premise is backwards. We didn't need government to deal with those things until they decided they would deal with them for us - but needed our money to do it first.
Bill? Is that you? Or are you Stevie B? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Insanity
2. Alzheimer's
3. A paid MS shill
Hello, McFly? Ghandi, Clara Barton, Willam Booth, Mother Teresa, Louis Pasteur, Thomas Jefferson,
I've said this to the BG cultists over and over, but it bears repeating: BG's "philanthropy" is meaningless... to BG. Show me some single mom struggling to make it who give $10 to the United Way and I'm impressed. If there's a middle income family donating 10% of what they make to charity, I think that's noteworthy. When a man gives away a portion of his wealth, but it's so little that he never notices (except for the fawning news articles), that's meaningless. Think widow's mite here.
The mistaken hero worship in the parent is so smarmy it's sickening.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ah! That would explain why the average U.S. worker is so much less productive than, say, his counterpart in France. Oh, wait, I've got that backwards...
Unions can be a good thing when used properly (the same can be said of company management). However, as U.S. airlines and automakers are finding out, the unions have been used to make the entire industry uncompetitive with foreign competition. If the union demands a wage and working conditions that runs the company out of business, is it really "protecting" worker's rights at all? Kind of hard to be protected when you're unemployed. If you doubt this, just look up the history of companies like GM, Ford, Delta, and so forth. They're all in very bad shape, yet there labor force was (and some still is) the highest paid in the world. Gee, doyathink there could be a connection? Nah, couldn't be. That would merely puncture the myth that unions are the all-around good guys fighting against the evil, greedy, corporate capitalists.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:2, Insightful)