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."
Awesome... (Score:5, Interesting)
--Andrew Carnegie
Re:Nice but ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not a MS appologist, just thought that was interesting.
Sensible CEO salary (Score:5, Interesting)
Puts the salaries of other less talented CEOs who demand far larger pay packets into perspective doesn't it?
Re:Nice but ... (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a long tradition of this (supporting charities through monopolistic profits), such as the Carnegie Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Ford Foundation, etc. Bill and Melinda are following in the footsteps of their capitalist predecessors.
The question of whether a charity should accept money from donors with questionable business ethics has been long debated and never resolved. George Bernard Shaw wrote several plays about this question, and he didn't have an answer. His best was probably Major Barbara, in which the Salvation Army must decide whether or not to accept support from a gin distiller and an arms manufacturer.
Re:No free rides (Score:4, Interesting)
No thats not true;
From: http://www.nndb.com/people/445/000022379/ [nndb.com]
He's said his children won't inherit any great wealth when he dies. "There's no reason why future generations of little Buffetts should command society just because they came from the right womb. Where's the justice in that?"
And Bill Gates has said similar things also.
Re:This is so wonderful! (Score:2, Interesting)
The programmers that take our jobs in India often have maids. I would love to have a maid. Don't give me this "in the West" crap.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Interesting)
Gates shoots the moon (Score:5, Interesting)
He and Buffett will be remembered as great Americans for their charity, while his past role as founder and leader of Microsoft will be debated for decades.
which charity? (Score:3, Interesting)
Kind of disappointing for some reason... (Score:1, Interesting)
Diversification works for funding agencies too (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the strengths of the US academic science funding model is that the government tends hedge its bets by setting up multiple agencies with overlapping agendas. For example, in engineering, there's DARPA, there's the NSF, several of the armed forces have their own quasi-independent funding arms, larger states like California have significant grant programs, etc.
Yes, there is the inefficiency of duplicated administration costs. But the upside is, a truly good idea has a better chance of finding funding, even if the program manager at one of the agencies is not sold on the idea. This lessons the risk of a game-changing idea going unfunded.
Buffet would have been better off setting up an independent foundation making independent funding decisions, rather than doubling BMGs bets, especially since BMG really has enough money to pursue multiple large goals.
Re:No free rides (Score:5, Interesting)
——
Leaders / The United States [economist.com]
Inequality and the American Dream
Jun 15th 2006
From The Economist print edition
The world’s most impressive economic machine needs a little adjusting
IMAGE [economist.com]
MORE than any other country, America defines itself by a collective dream: the dream of economic opportunity and upward mobility. Its proudest boast is that it offers a chance of the good life to everybody who is willing to work hard and play by the rules. This ideal has made the United States the world’s strongest magnet for immigrants; it has also reconciled ordinary Americans to the rough side of a dynamic economy, with all its inequalities and insecurities. Who cares if the boss earns 300 times more than the average working stiff, if the stiff knows he can become the boss?
Look around the world and the supremacy of “the American model” might seem assured. No other rich country has so successfully harnessed the modern juggernauts of technology and globalisation. The hallmarks of American capitalism—a willingness to take risks, a light regulatory touch and sharp competition—have spawned enormous wealth. “This economy is powerful, productive and prosperous,” George Bush boasted recently, and by many yardsticks he is right. Growth is fast, unemployment is low and profits are fat. It is hardly surprising that so many other governments are trying to “Americanise” their economies—whether through the European Union’s Lisbon Agenda or Japan’s Koizumi reforms.
Yet many people feel unhappy about the American model—not least in the United States. Only one in four Americans believes the economy is in good shape. While firms’ profits have soared, wages for the typical worker have barely budged. The middle class—admittedly a vague term in America—feels squeezed. A college degree is no longer a passport to ever-higher pay. Now politicians are playing on these fears. From the left, populists complain about Mr Bush’s plutocratic friends exporting jobs abroad; from the right, nativists howl about immigrants wrecking the system.
A global argument
The debate about the American model echoes far beyond the nation’s shores. Europeans have long held that America does not look after its poor—a prejudice reinforced by the ghastly scenes after Hurricane Katrina. The sharp decline in America’s image abroad has much to do with foreign policy, but Americanisation has also become synonymous with globalisation. Across the rich world, global competition is forcing economies to become more flexible, often increasing inequality; Japan is one example (see article [economist.com]). The logic of many non-Americans is that if globalisation makes their economy more like America’s, and the American model is defective, then free trade and open markets must be bad.
This debate mixes up three arguments—about inequality, meritocracy and immigration. The word that America should worry about most is the one you hear least—meritocracy.
Begin with inequality. The flip-side of America’s economic dynamism is that it has become more unequal—but in a more complex way than fir
Re:X-Prize? M-Prize? Granger Prize? Any Prize? (Score:2, Interesting)
Charity as a tool (Score:5, Interesting)
First off it's not real charity.
Much of it is simply targeted to block F/OSS [zdnet.com.au]. Even the actual charity parts deal with dumping millions on ineffective, corrective treatments involving expensive medications and getting some level of matching funding from the local governments. And those expensive medications come from big pharmas which, surprise, Gates is heavily invested in.
There is also a strong element of PR in the Foundation [salon.com]: since 1995 MS has had various plans on how to direct corporate giving in ways that guarantee the greatest returns to the company. We've also been seeing loads and loads of vanity puff-pieces appearing across a wide variety of news publications. The NYT even publishes ones written by (or ghost written for) Chairman Gates himself.
The point here is that in this case it appears that charity is simply being used as tool to affect the market in ways that lobbying and plain old sales can't. It allows individual institutions or regions to be targeted quickly with a level of speed that defending governments and businesses have trouble reacting to.
It's seems that with this infusion of funding from Buffet, MS, through the Gates Foundation, crosses the line from being a lobbying entity to being fully a political/ideological movement.
Welcome to the next level.
Re:seriously (Score:1, Interesting)
Yeah, maybe. I have a lot of respect for Buffet, he always seems to have played it straight (though I am no expert on him). My main concern about giving such a huge proportion to the Gates Foundation is that it seems to have a rather skewed donation bias - it's most famous for global health (awesome) but it also gives massive amounts to very specific areas of Washington and Oregon ... a postcode "lottery" hardly seems like a fair use of resources and if a government had that money it'd be lampooned for such a weird selection of good causes.
Gates also has interesting ideas about education. It gives grants to scholars from "low income and minority backgrounds" and he believes high schools are obsolete [gatesfoundation.org]. He feels that this is because low income/minority people don't get His scholarship fund gives me cause for concern for three reasons:
I applaud the work done on polio and global health as that is truly something that benefits all humanity and would be hard to achieve via other means. 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.
Re:Put it in AI research (Score:2, Interesting)
Put the money to work instead (Score:1, Interesting)
He should have better spent the money over the years, putting the money back into the cycle, instead of hoarding it.
The world would be a better place if the personal wealth of someone would be restricted to a reasonable value (no-one really needs more than, say, 10 million dollars).
Here's my next completely unrealistic wish:
The goal of companies should not be to create the highest profit, but the highest benefit for its employees.
(i.e. not making millions in profits AND laying off thousands people)
Just One Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
While Warren may trust Bill and Melinda to use the money wisely (he is older and probably anticipates dying before them), what happens when Bill and Melinda are gone too? What do we end up with? Well, we could end up with another Ford Foundation. In other words, it could end up straying from some of the common-sense approaches applied now, such as distributing mosquito nets to prevent malaria. It could degenerate into an organization with a questionable agenda, or an organization that simply parcels out donations to other orgs, the primary results of which are (though probably not intentionally) to finance the lifestyles of the "chattering class" in Washington DC and various other world capitols. So, Bill and Melinda, while you still have time, you need to figure out a way to keep that from happening. Poor people can't eat UN studies, and no "blue ribbon commission" ever swatted a single mosquito. When the visionaries pass on, it's inevitable that the committees take over. Maybe that's why Carnegie built libraries in his own lifetime. Today, many are still in use, and there's only so much lunacy that can take place in a building, whereas a monied organization can create no end of politically-oriented drivel.
Re:Money talks, BS walks (Score:2, Interesting)
So when you say someone can't afford to give away 85% of their network when that amount is 37,000,000,000
It's awesome that he gave it away, and I applaud him for doing so
Trahloc
ps. Numbers based on minimum wage being 6.75 just to keep things simple. Hope I didn't miss a decimal someplace.
Fool! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No free rides (Score:2, Interesting)
That just leaves his vast quantity of Microsoft stock to hand over. Boo hoo for the kiddies.
In any case, I think his kids would be understandably miffed to find out that they'll be expected to make their way as insurance adjusters, hardware store clerks, fast food chefs, etc, after an upbringing of affluence. It's not as cut-and-dried as you make it sound. There IS something to be said for handing down SOME wealth -- just not the entirety of those obscene piles of lucre such as Gates has amassed.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, personally, I think the death tax is the most fair tax possible. You can't take it with you anyways, and your heirs didn't earn it.
Re:I agree, a great thing to do.... (Score:4, Interesting)
For a very simple reason: Buffett believes that Bill does a much better job of allocating capitol than your run-of-the-mill charity.
And he is not alone in this belief. The Gates Foundation has made big waves in the non-profit world by replacing a give-away-money-to-feel-better model with a run-a-charity-like-a-business model. That includes setting targets, measuring results, and providing incentives.
Going back even further (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:seriously (Score:3, Interesting)
And did you consult your customers, the one's who gave you your money, before you gave it to that charity? No? Hypocrite!
Re:seriously (Score:2, Interesting)
I would agree that the scholorship fund is biased towards "anyone that isn't caucasian" which is sad. You should have to qualify based on economic need and not racial bias. We should be pushing for more people from all walks of life to go to college, not just minorities.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:seriously (Score:5, Interesting)
The People (tm) would vote for fuel subsidies and tax cuts. Just like they do every time they can.
I already "donated" several times by buying copies of Windows.
Purchase != Donation.
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 ....
Then do that. But don't be hypocritical and criticise him for not letting you choose where your "wealth to charities" can go while simultaneously saying you should be able to dictate to him where his "wealth to charities" is apportioned.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Interesting)
Historically death taxes have been used politically to prevent the build-up of power in family lines which would challenge the current ruling party. It's only a nice side effect that they get to use they money for their own purposes.
Re:Awesome... (Score:5, Interesting)
Erm, for every evil rich person who volunarily gives away their life's earnings, there are dozens who don't, who pass it down to their hiers, allowing them (if they choose so) to live a meaningless, non-contributing life, e.g. Paris Hilton.
To me, there is a scale of evil and a scale of good. Bill's business practices, to me, don't rate very high on the evil scale, while his philantrophy rates very high on the good scale. If I had a magic wand, and could remove Microsoft's anti-competitive behaviors, but at the expense of, say, halving the donations made by the Gates Foundation, I would no wave that wand.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:2, Interesting)
Per-capita, normalized to income, the tax there is probably higher than it is in the west.
I'd rather see it invested. (Score:3, Interesting)
Too often times (but not always) a free handout does more harm than good. It's that old saying "give someone a fish, they eat today, teach someone to fish they eat for life..."
With that amount of money I think a LOT of groudbreaking research could take place in the medical fields, the tech sector, and even in the aerospace industry. Also reinvesting it in American business/education can give us a heads up over the up and coming Chinese.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Interesting)
Would you be so against the estate tax if, instead of a tax, the estate tax was implemented as a mandate to donate to charity?
Re:Money talks, BS walks (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think it takes six billion dollars to have a fulfilling life. We all agree about that. Where we seem to disagree is where to draw the line. Zacchaeus drew it at 50% and Jesus Christ said he was saved on the spot. Warren Buffett drew it at 85%; I can't judge his motives, but he certainly doesn't deserve the trash talk from the OP about how rich people can afford to give away their money.
Also, a line from the article that appears to have slipped past you both: "He now owns close to 31% of the company-worth nearly $44 billion in late June - and that proportion will ultimately be cut to around 5%. Sticking to his long-term intentions, Buffett says the residual 5%, worth about $6.8 billion today, will in time go for philanthropy also, perhaps in his lifetime and, if not, at his death." As you find out when you read the article, he and his wife planned to give away all their money decades ago, and this is just the first stage.
Does this change how you view his gift? It should look pretty frigging impressive now if you believe your own arguments. But I am tempted to say it doesn't change things, for me. Buffett could have taken those billions and done whatever selfish things he liked, created the next Walton family. But he didn't. He's a public figure and people will always suspect his motives, saying that he's trading cash for PR. Maybe he just wanted to be altruistic with his money, and that is as deep as it goes.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:2, Interesting)
While I'm aware that Wall Street calls dividends, earnings, sitting on your behind at the 19th hole of your country club is not "earning" money in any sense of the word. It is collecting money - from the workers who are out there sweating and doing the work, who are doing the wealth creation while the rentier sits on his behind and generation to generation collects the proceeds of work he did not do.
largest in history? (Score:2, Interesting)
Rich use NonProfit Foundations to mold USA (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Interesting)
The Death Tax is to make certain the middleclass doesn't get ideas.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Interesting)
I disagree, mainly for the reason I stated elsewhere, namely that artificial persons are a silly concept that, among other things obscures the true beneficiary of the business. Not to go all Marxist on you or anything (because I'm not a Marxist) but the dude or dudes who own the means of production of a commodity, either through stock or direct ownership, make money directly from the surplus value of their worker's wages. The ability to collect that surplus (and the sturctures that make such a collection possible) are the things that proceed directly from infrastructure improvements which exist only because of taxes paid by everyone including...wait for it!...the workers themselves! It is absolutely absurd to say that the worker gains an equal benefit per dollar in taxes paid to the individual who is fortunate enough to own shares or stake in the company that produces wealth directly for him or her. Marxism is dumb because the solutions it suggests are dumb; as for the problems it identifies, I would call them more or less spot-on. Besides, isn't it a relatively capitalist position that one should 'pay for what you get' and conversely that one 'gets what he pays for'? I think disproportionate tax burdens bring these principles into closer consonance with reality (something which theories, Capitalist and Marxist both, fail with pretty miserably).
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean like Andrew Carnegie?
Yep if the Gates foundation actually develops a vaccine that can prevent malaria then yes Microsoft will be nothing but a footnote in history. Any ruthless business practices will be pretty much forgot just because a millions of children will not have to suffer. Life just isn't fair.
Hell if they pull it off I might actually stop putting pins in my Bill Gates voodoo doll.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Planned Parenthood (Score:3, Interesting)
Are those still around?
I don't think I've ever seen an actual orphanage in my lifetime.
Closest thing I can think of to it would be a group home, but not all the kids that live in group homes are orphans (hardly any, in fact).
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:4, Interesting)
Please stop calling it the death tax... (Score:2, Interesting)
Frankly, there is no death tax, but there is a birth tax. Everyone born in this country is born with a large debt that eventually they will need to pay. The boomers don't really care about the national debt because their kids and grandkids will be the ones that pay for it.
My comment to the ultra-wealthy who wait until they are about to die before they put their excess to good use is... "You've had 10 billion dollars for 30 years and NOW you decide to put the excess to good use?!?!?! Where the hell were you last year?"
It's things like this that make me wish there were a god to teach them the error of their ways...
Re:his realitives. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Nice but ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, its clear he's always planned on ensuring they would be taken care of, but I don't think he ever planned on simply leaving them his billions.
A charitable foundation is probably the most effective way to spread his wealth around. The Gate's foundation is very well respected in spite of its link to Microsoft.
Warren Buffet has nothing but my respect for this move. Not only is it noble, but he's sticking with his long stated principles.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is one of the things that amazes me. Despite this widely held belief, it is just not true. According to the Pork Report, in the 2006 fiscal year the US government earmarks $29 billion for pork projects. That 5.6% of the $521 billion deficit for FY04, and only 1.3% of the federal budget of ~ 2.2 trillion. Even if we call that all waste, it is an astonishingly low fraction of the total government expendatures, and not a sizable impact on the budget deficit. It also average out to about $100 per person, with most serious violation totalling $30/person. I bet a lot of people lose that much money under the couch every year, and I certainly spend $100 on dumb shit that nets me a lot less that my tax dollars. Now, I earned it, so it is my $100 to waste, but still it is a relatively small amount.
The first amazing thing about this is that to qualify for the list, a budget item must only fulful one of the following seven criteria:
The second point to keep in mind is that in many cases the funded initiatives are not bad ideas -- the same project funded through the NSF rather than direct appropriations would not count as pork. Now, certainly funding through the NSF would be better as it allows better prioritization of funding. However, it is also unfair to report this as 100% wasteful spending.
Take an examples held up by the pork report aa particularly egregious violations:
$1 million for the Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative in Michigan.
Waterfree urinals sound frivolous, and you get to make all sorts of jokes about flushing money down the toilet, but they have the potential to save billions of gallons / year of water -- much in public buildings. Currently many juristictions do not allow them in their health codes, but if they are shown to be as sanitary as traditional urinals the potential benefits are huge. I don't know if this particular initiative is any good (and this is the problem with pork spending), but it isn't like the idea isn't sound.
Now, consider your personal representative. Running for most offices in the US costs between $1 and $2 per constituent, per term (I have found this to be roughly true all the way from city council to the president), so he must raise somewhere around $.75-$1.5 million / two years for an average representative. If he can make raising that a little easier by adding a few million dollars of earmarks for projects that are likely a good idea anyway, and might get funded by the competative grant process anyway, is it so surprising that he would like to get credit for it with his constituents? And yet we manage to keep this down to a little over 1% of the budget.
After reading all of the articles about this, I have come to the conclusion that we likely have one of the most effficient and least corrupt governments in the world, in history.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Interesting)
There is surplus value, and there is a fair return.
Things seem to be tipped ( in my opinion, anyway )
toward the "fair return".
Consider this, on the "magic factory fairy":
Workers built the factory.
Workers can work in the absence of capital.
Capital is nothing in the absence of workers.
Capitalism is a fairly good way to allocate value,
most of the time. It falls apart from time to
time, and does not seem to regard the long term
very intelligently. Its the best we have so far.
Re:Charity vs. Taxation (Score:3, Interesting)
Just so you know, this quote is total bullshit. The rise of Democracy as a global movement started in the late 18th century, as a reaction by the growing middle class "Bourgeois" to the massive taxation and economic mismanagement of European monarchs. This was long before there was any popular concept of the welfare state.
The first welfare state programs were created by Otto von Bismarck (a hard core right-wing militarist)... and the welfare state really began on a large scale by mid-20th century facists. But even before the 19th and 20th centuries, state provided "charity" was always a function of political control and totalitarianism (think "Bread and Circuses" of the Roman empire, or "Voting Gifts" of Tammany Hall era NYC).
Above is fact, now to my personal take on it:
The welfare state is about totalitarian state control. When your home, your job, your health care, your children's education, and virtually all public services and civil discourse are controlled by the state, Democracy cannot exist - The political power elite control all the carrots and all the sticks, and therefore have the power to intimidate anyone and completly manipulate the political process. A prison provides food, health care, housing to people... but there is nothing democratic about it. Slave owners provided food, health care, and housing to their slaves... but there is nothing democratic about it. And counting a few peices of paper every couple years does not turn a prison or a plantation into a Democracy.
There is nothing remotly altruistic or humanitarian or charitable about the welfare state - To have a monopoly on a person's needs is to enslave them. The state is by definition an absolute monopoly, and one which can legally use violence to maintain it's monopoly... therefore, state control of basic human needs is the ULTIMATE WEAPON of human enslavement. State provided "charity" is an act of brutality and intimidation, and the very antithesis of freedom and democracy.
While private charity might be paternalistic, it is nowhere near being a monopoly in the way the state is a monopoly. While I would like to see charity be far more decentralized and closer to the common working people than donations by a few billionares like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet... the money being donated by Gates or Buffet will do some good, where as every penny of money spent through the "welfare state" will only do great evil!
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Interesting)
As a homeowner who makes more than $50k/year at his "day job", I pay about 15%... in fact, my total income is over 80k when you count everything, but I still have an effective tax rate of 15%!... less than friends of mine who make less than half of what I do.
Why?
Simple... I get around 60k from work, and about 20k from renting rooms in my condo (5 bedroom condo, actually 2 fam house conversion)... this gives me huge tax breaks. I can't claim to understand it all myself (I pay a tax preparer), but basically I make a big profit, but get to take a huge loss on paper because of a partial rental depreciation. (there are downsides to this if I decide to sell... but lets not go there...)
Long story short, I was out of work last year for 7 months, I got paid over $500/week in unemployment, and basically took 12k in income throughj unemployment, that had NO taxes taken out. Thats 12k of untaxed income, on top of 10k in rental income (I had a partner last year who owned half the condo and took half the rent so half the rental income).... what did I pay to the federal government once this 22k of yet untaxed income came into play?
About 1 grand.
Why? because I get huge deductions for owning property that is. Its a huge incentive. If you make that much, you seriously should conside rbuying. And forget this marriage and kids bullshit. I have fammily in the country, there are plenty of breeders out there (yes I call them breeders, no I am not gay... just not intending to have children in the next few years, if ever)....
Live with a few friends, and rent out rooms to pay the mortgage in the city... I went from having a good job where I basically blew my money and broke even every year to having a positive net worth of about double my anual salary (thank you gnucash for the figures), in about 3 years.... go figure.
In any case, the system is setup to encourage you to buy property... so do it! Take a hint!
-Steve
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:1, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie [wikipedia.org]
Carnegie is guilty of those practices, of course, but compared to many other tycoons of his age he was tame by comparison. People will do whatever they can get away with to gain power. If not Carnegie, then someone else. However, Carnegie is one of the few that actually turned around and gave back what he stole, and I have respect for that.
And "creating a permanent lower working class group of people in the U.S."? Please, that's just stupid. There have always been, and will always be, a lower working class in every society. Carnegie was ruthless, but that's just giving him way too much credit.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:4, Interesting)
Another example would be Walmart [yahoo.com]
Re:Please stop calling it the death tax... (Score:2, Interesting)
That's very odd - because I'm solidly middle class, and so is (was) my father-in-law. Yet we just barely missed having to pay estate taxes on our inheritance. It's quite easy, if you make around $150k/yr from your early thirties, and live prudently, to amass an inheritance that will get taxed. (And a salary in that range is hardly unheard of for the college educated professional.) If you have a couple each making that amount - it becomes even easier. That's why there is increasing pressure to repeal the estate tax - it doesn't serve it's original purpose (to penalize the wealthy and prevent hereditary fortunes, because the wealthy can afford lawyers, lobbyists, and loopholes) and penalizes the average joe who lives prudently rather than spending like a drunken sailor.
Re:In other news... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Interesting)
Not only do unions cripple companies against competition, they do a poor job protecting workers.
Ridiculous. Employees and employers do have some common interests, but they also do have conflicting interests. Unions are here to organize the employees in a structured way, to be able to talk and negociate with the management/shareholders of the company. And yes, being able to negociate better, is against the shareholders benefits (note: NOT against free market, since the higher wages/benefits the employees get reintroduced on the free market directly or indirectly), which is why some phony "libertarians" shout so much against unions. But they are just that, a natural and normal way to organize resolution of the conflicting interests between the employees and of the employers. Why the hell should employees bend over? Anyone who argue against them on principle, is either an idiot or had been brainwashed.
What you have is either bad unions or bad management or both. I can understand management would even encourage bad unions, in an attempt to discredit them.
As for GM case, how is that helping your point? Most the global competitors are from Japan, or part of Europe (France, Germany, ...), where they enjoy unions or benefits which are quite superior to those in the US in GM (still largely job for life in Japan, all powerful unions in Germany, 35 hours/week in France, as simple examples). Maybe instead of scapegoating unions, American car companies should do an analysis of where did they go wrong in management, investment, research and development and engineering.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Interesting)
If you were realistic about helping people in the world, you'd know that the way to do this was to accumulate a great wealth, and then turn your focus, because it's at that point you've really got the power to do something. I'm not saying this is anything more than a tax dodge, maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but the effect is the same.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:5, Interesting)
AIDS, 3 million deaths annually and rising.
Diabetes, alzheimers and flu more important you say? BTW, there already is a cure for 90% (type II) of all diabetes: Eat healthier, exercise more!
The sad thing is the pharmaceutical companies has the same priorities. No money in saving african peoples lives but lots of money in selling life long medication for life-style illnesses in the rich western world.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, when I say stole, this is not quite true. After Prometheus 'stole' the fire, the gods still had it. Really, it was more of a case of copyright infringement. Since no one had invented copyright back then, however, the gods were unable to prosecute. Instead they resorted to vigilante action and chained him to a rock where an eagle (or a vulture in some accounts) would eat his liver every day; the first known instance of DRM. It took 30 years for the noted hacker Hercules to crack the DRM by slaying the eagle (or possibly vulture).
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Interesting)
And about USAID... Most of the money doesn't actually go to the third world, but to various contractors and consulting agencies around DC. I remember working on a USAID project and one time we identified a need for better accounting at various non-profits. Our idea was to hire a local accountant part time to work with the various organisations. What we got was a three day seminar from an American consultant for the same price it would have costed to pay an accounant for 2 years.
The sole purpose of USAID is for the US to control foreign governments. And it does succeed at that. Any third world country steps out of line, even a little, the US threatens to cut all USAID funding. I've seen it happen.
Anyways, what is the solution? Well, I don't know really. Before anything real can happen, we need people to pull their heads out the sand and realise that some horrible things are happening so that they can have their luxuries and live in the little bubble we call the developed world. Not even 9/11 woke people up to the realities of the world, so I'm not sure what it will take. But as long as consumers keep consuming and corporations keep maximising profits while remaining willfully ignorant to how they're getting stuff so cheap, things like slavery will never end.
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Before anyone asks... (Score:3, Interesting)
Look, I don't have *anything* against charity. Charity is always a good thing. I'm glad that Bill Gates is spending his money (and soon, time) on helping others. Kudos to him! But as with all things, the whole story should be told, and you are willfully ignorant of it:
Bill Gates is by no means a regular man. He was born a millionare, and his *business* acumen and incredible *good luck* lead his company to success.
Microsoft has never created much of anything besides profit for itself. Is this bad? No. But ignoring the numerous other players who have contributed to the advancement of computing and chalking it all up to one company who *buys* all of their "original" ideas is absurd.
And sure, if I was as rich as him, I wouldn't feel that "missing" money in the slightest either.
Not use underhanded, predatory, anti-competitive, and illegal business tactics to garner that profit.
No, many of us are angry that Microsoft has *interfered* in the business of others to such a degree as to *hamper* the progress of the computer industry, limit customer choices and then they have the gall to tell us that they know better than us (which they obviously don't) and they are doing it for our own good (which they obviously aren't).
Who's more insane, the one who ignores part of reality or those that own up to all of it?
No, when you buy a Microsoft product, you are supporting a convicted monopolist, who makes shoddy, freedom limiting software by overworking and ignoring the advice of some of the most brilliant people on the planet who would otherwise be contributing something of worth back to society.
Ah, I see how it is now. It's so much easier for you to handle it and think about it when one person wields all the power and is doing good with it, instead of considering how all those obscene amounts of money would have been spent on a smaller scale, more spread, localized and optimized on charities closer to home because people didn't have to pay $300 for an office suite. I'll bet you're one of those people who only sees things in "black and white" or "good vs evil" too.