$3.7 million.
Net worth: $100,000 million.
Just his house alone is worth $147 million. He pays a million a year in property taxes.
$25 million.
Net worth: $58,000 million.
He recently spent $60 million to buy two houses in Lake Tahoe. When he buys a house (he owns 10 of them), he also buys up adjacent properties just “for privacy”.
These parasites aren’t making any sacrifices, they aren’t making a serious investment in scientific research. They are buying PR for cheap, and the media is so innumerate that they fall for it. Fuck these motherfucking fuckers. Bring on the guillotines…or at least, the punitive tax rates and the forfeitures and the corruption trials.
Also, fire all journalists who can’t do basic math.
Um, I’m a little unsure about the “net worth” info. According to one source (only one), the Zuck’s net worth is more like 58 BILLION, not million. Similarly with the Gates, “millions” should be “billions”. Gives a whole different view on their largesse.
58,000 million is 58 billion. It’s just an unconventional way of writing the number to highlight just how big a number it is.
I also don’t think taxes are a punishment, and the purpose of higher taxes on the ultra wealthy are to punish people.
My mother is one of those people who looks at billionaires spending what amounts to pocket change relative to their total assets and thinks we should kiss their feet.
To try and relate this. For someone who is a millionaire: Bill’s donation is the equivalent to a $37 donation, and Mark’s is the equivalent of $431. That’s thirty seven, and four hundred thirty one, without any zeros.
Jackson @ #2 — Ah, I see. Too early for reading numbers.
I was expecing more valid criticism of the “stimulus”, a plan I would liken to putting oil in the drain pan to relieve a seizing engine.
@2 Jackson:
Taxes are not punishment. It’s the price of life and infrastructure. And it’s about goddamned time the uber-wealthy paid their fair share.
@7
Agreed. That’s why I said taxes are not punishment.
sparks @ #7 –
YES x 100 billion!
Even if we did a 50% on all wealth above 20 million they would still be rich beyond all but the wildest dreams of everyone else on the planet. There are a lot of people who need to do some serious reflection on the question of ‘how much wealth is enough wealth’ and ‘how do we make sure that everyone has an opportunity to do as well as I have done’. The alternative is pitchforks and tumbrels.
Every time you read one of these “Billionaire gives tiny fraction of wealth to charity” articles, I suggest mentally replacing the headline with “Your Asshole Neighbor Donates EIGHT WHOLE DOLLARS to Girl Scout Troop, Demands Fawning Recognition As Great Humanitarian.”
The other problem with billionaires is that, naturally, they will project whatever wretched politics they have into their “gift.” It’s not just the Koch brothers – though they are the ur-example of that – it could just be that some billionaire’s got an idea of how they think things should be done and that’s what they donate for. The quintessential example of that would be Elon Musk’s idiotic involvement in the underwater cave rescue (and his following idiotic remarks regarding the one person who had the guts to tell him to fuck off).
There are always strings attached with billionaires. That’s how they became billionaires.
The title should be: “Bill Gates donates 45 minutes of the interest on his bank account.”
Music industry exec David Geffen got a lot of flack yesterday after Tweeting about sitting on the deck of his yacht in the Grenadine Islands, riding out the epidemic. He bought it off Oracle’s Larry Ellison in 2010, and the construction cost was said to be 200 million dollars.
You could fit approximately 108 of my apartment into his house.
I wonder what he pays the help.
Hell, he regularly strong armed other tech companies. Or stole their ideas.
Remember Netscape?
Remember Netscape?
I think you mean Spyglass.
And Xerox. And Apple. And Lotus.
sparks @ 7: He is not even paying that much. The city of Medina, Washington (where Bill and Melinda Gates live) was in financial troubles last year. Not enough tax revenue apparently.
Ps – that’s the Gates Foundation; i.e: his tax shelter.
Hey kids, there’s this to consider….
Reminds me of the United Way campaign one year where I worked… They suggested that a “fair share” donation was about 1% of gross pay. Then I calculated what fraction of the corporate NET income the company donated that they crowed about how much it. There were, IIRC, about 3 zeros after the decimal point and before the percent sign.
Should you idolise Billionaires. No.
Why are they Billionaires? Because they have something people want badly. However the hysteria is over the top.
I don’t like Microsoft but it’s popular.
Even though the 45% of Gates income he donates a year to charity is a tax break does it give equivalent benefit, some benefit or no benefit? Taking the coverage with a grain of salt his foundation adds benefit probably close to the tax break.
I don’t know how much He’s actually donating but the two stories in the picture indicate it’s more than 3.7 M
There will always be billionaires. The problem you lot have is for the last x decades the tax take has considerably decreased from the very wealthy as your Govt repeatedly reduced their tax rate. No doubt some / many , who knows given the secrecy, Billionaires pushed for this. Totally unsupported by evidence I’m going to say the ones pushing to pay no tax make very very few charitable donations.
/mea culpa I earn 140k Aussie a year in Sydney. More than a lot and less than some .
I’m not wealthy but no doubt I could do a lot more in my charitable donations. I try not to attract gratitude or censure other just because they have a label “Billionaire”. If they aren’t putting in then take them down with logic and evidence rather than these attacks just because they are labelled. Bigotry and envy are labels to
Re #22. My bad. The last sentence should have read
Bigotry and envy are labels to and they deserve attacks of all sorts. The label Billionaire is not inherently good or bad
What I don’t know is how much the researchers actually want. PZ could spend a couple of million researching spiders, maybe build a whole new wing. Could he spend a billion? Really? As long as the researchers are getting everything they can use, what’s the problem? Say you want to buy me lunch at McD’s. You aren’t going to give me a hundred dollars or a thousand. You’ll give twenty and that will be enough. Or consider the equipment manufacturers. They can only make machines so fast. What is the point of spending more? So are the researchers getting enough money, and are there ventilators sitting on the shelf because the money isn’t there?
I fully realize that you don’t think that is enough.
However I always like to look at an issue from multiple sides, so that I don’t miss potential problems with an argument, and try to see things from other perspectives. So I would have to consider several things before jumping to conclusions:
– What is the money being spent on? It is all very well to say that $3.7 million is too little, but if it was to say buy medical supplies for the city hospitals (I haven’t read the article yet, I am responding to this post), there is a limit on how many they need. It is pointless to buy 1000 ventilators for a hospital that can only accommodate 100.
– Is Bill only giving money to Seattle? Or is he giving similar amounts to multiple cities across the country? How much is his foundation giving to medical research in total? (Have you seen his TED talk from several years ago, warning about a similar viral outbreak?)
– I also have to wonder how much each of you have donated? One criticized it as equivalently $37 and $431. If most of you have donated nothing, then you kind of lose that argument if you are still employed.
Personally, if I donated millions to a charity, and was then criticized for not giving enough by those not in my position (ie. unaware of other charities I support and the total amount I donate each year), then rather than being guilt-tripped into donating more, I wouldn’t be donating to that charity next year.
I don’t think there is any moral way to accumulate a billion dollars worth of wealth, let alone multiple, or even hundreds of billions.
That alone is enough reason to criticize them period.
Nevermind that by numerous metrics, the U.S. rates about similar to a lot of developing nations.
It’s absolutely abhorrent that there are coutless shantytowns of homeless people while some of these fucks are hoarding more money than the GDP of numerous countries.
#26 Just for interest do you own a phone or use Facebook or ?….
Morality isn’t a fact, despite what the Christians Tell ya, it’s a series of actions.
Without good evidence I believe Zuckerberg earned his money immorally as he deliberately weaponised advertising, formented dissension and failed to act to address it until forced and even then did as little a possible.
Other Billionaires to a lesser or greater degree act differently. Excluding family money Billionaires my sense is few of these people started out with the intent of acting immorally. Google for example with it’s early company motto. Then the company decided evil was good and money was God.
I’m left of centre politically and an atheist, The Australian left of centre is further left than what I see of Democrats, but not radically so. However human history shows some have a lot and most don’t always. How we handle that is different.
Will whining about this fix it? No
Will bringing back tax rates to a more socially responsible standing and stopping mega corporations avoiding tax most every where stop people becoming Billionaires? No. But it makes sure the individual and the company pays a fair share of tax.
Will electing a far left demagogue who will act without understanding fix it? No the far left is as bad as the far right. Differently but as bad. Some of the policies Sanders, Warren , AOC etc espouse would do good but some would trigger civil war. eg Health for all is eminently supportable but it isn’t something that will happen overnight without nationalisation of the health industry. Do you think the republican states would not fight that tooth and nail and if nationalisation is the proposed solution fight it physically? The far right don’t listen to anyone else. The opposition to the Affordable Health care act, far less radical than health for all.
Democracy is inherently flawed. A good thing done this term, he Affordable Health care act for eg, can be rolled back after the next election.
Up to the 50’s / 60’s England had ~80 – 90% tax rate on the mega rich. In the 60’s / 70’s the right wing started to take over the media and as they got control they started flapping their gob and controlling the politicians. Selling stupid is easy. Right wing media sell stupid really well.
Demagoguery is bad practice no matter who it comes from . Equating Gates to the Koch’s and probably Facebook etc is false equivalence.
Logic in this place takes a rain cheque, sue me I spell the English way, when the trigger words come out.
Gates gave 3.7 million to seattle. But per Forbes (3/15) his foundation “would commit $100 million to aid global detection, isolation and treatment of the virus.”
I think Gates is one of the more generous billionaires, though that’s just an impression I get from hearing what his foundation does. Maybe he’s just good a publicizing it.
Proportionally speaking, if I donate a dollar, I’d have donated a higher percentage of my wealth than Bill Gates has. Cool. Good to know.
Billionaires are adapted to ride out any crisis and come out the other side even richer.
The media aren’t especially innumerate. They are employed by the oligarchs.
wolja @27
fuck off with that “both sides” bullshit. If people are going to act violently and try to start a war due to legislation favored by Sanders or Ocasio-Cortez, that’s not a problem with Sanders or Ocasio-Cortez, that’s because too many people in this country have been trained to act against their own self-interest and react violently to disagreement. Calling out bullshit doesn’t become bad because some unhinged assholes want to get violent when called out, and neither does the blame for violence fall on those calling out the bullshit. That’s some fucked-up, pre-emptive, heckler’s veto.
And owning a phone or using facebook doesn’t make one somehow responsible for the existence of billionaires. They have their fingers in all the pies, it’s almost impossible to exist in our society without some of our money getting funneled into their accounts. That’s why they are billionaires, and if anything, further evidence of their inherent immorality.
#32 I could do that. You obviously subscribe to the I think it’s great therefore it’s great worldview. Oddly the Koch borthers have that same viewpoint. You aren’t responsible for how they act only yourself
Buying what Billionaires sell is what makes them Billionaires. Yes when they hit a certain net worth it’s near impossible to stop it growing. How they handle that is what’s important.
Now I’m older than many and remember in Australia a national health system being put in place. Unfortunately the Govt didn’t control the senate so had to compromise (making it worse) , likewise the GST, NBN, carbon tax etc. etc. etc. Nothing in this world operates in a vacuum. The aus Govt in 2008 did an infrastructure spending boost to the economy, and were excoriated by the opposition. Now in 2020 the opposition in 2020 are suddenly finding out that hey spending to save the country is a good thing. But of course the 2008 spend is still irresponsible.
I won’t shut up because someone tells me to. I try and use logic and research to espouse my worldview. Perhaps you could give it a try?
@ 9 profpedant
The alternative is pitchforks and tumbrels.
I used to be pretty handy with a pitchfork. Rendezvous?
profpedant @10:
I have a theory (not a scientific one, a wild guess) that would seem to explain both why no amount of wealth could ever be enough for some people and why they seem to treat wealth as a zero-sum game. They’re not interested in absolute wealth, but in relative wealth. They want to be richer than you and me. It’s their only source of self-esteem since they lack marketable skills.
Should they donate nothing and keep their dollars? How much do y’all contribute to any worthy causes?
how do monopoly companies and colluding companies become rich and powerful? by over charging for their products, monopolizing their products and underpaying every where possible.
Windows became primary because of luck and contracts it became rich and with that power by charging too much they would have still made money and enough at something equivalent to $5 -20.00 a license
The tax rates for the “upper brackets” are wholly inadequate and entirely unfair given the benefit that they derive out of the system that they exist in and supports them (the 1%)
along with the cost of living the cost of all goods and services all pay is under pay. the talk about $15 per hour is a fine start all wages should be increased as well and seriously increased at that all the way across the board.
If corporations want to decrease their taxes then structure it in such a way so that by increasing production cost with labor the taxes go down. (just an idea).
It is nice that Gates and the Gates foundation is giving and is involved in this and have been involved for some time. I hope that it continues and increases over time.
It does not wholly make up for the conservatives anti-science anti-government policies that have been dominant for the last 35 tears but it helps.
uncle frogy
billseymour @35,
Chasing ‘relative wealth’ is an unnecessary fool’s errand. ‘Unnecessary’ because one does not need a lot of money to feel superior, or be superior, to someone else. They are mistaking wealth for an (inaccurate and unreliable) signal of ‘being better’. There are plenty of people with more money than Person X who are not nearly as good, or valuable, a person as Person X is. Anyone who pays the least amount of attention to humanity has to have noticed that there is little to no intrinsic connection between having wealth and being a good/valuable/important/worthy person. I don’t disagree that a substantial number of rich people are chasing ‘relative wealth’, but their doing so is monumentally stupid. Which may explain a lot about why the world is so messed up – a substantial percentage of the people running it are stupid.
jrkrideau @34
Unfortunately my health doesn’t allow me to consider taking direct action. However, stuff is ‘getting real’. 2020 is already guaranteed to be remembered as a year that sucked, but it will also be remembered as a year in which a lot of things began to change. Unfortunately the question of whether more good things or bad things will come out of the chaos is…not yet known.
Bill Gates has never actually invented a thing in his life. Every Microsoft product, from the very beginning to the latest game, is a knockoff of something somebody else made, and usually made better. (I’m not exaggerating. This goes back to the 1970s — Microsoft Xenix was a Unix flavor, borrowing from existing code. Excel was Visicalc — or, if you prefer a GUI, Lotus 1, 2, 3. Windows was a ripoff of the Mac — and Microsoft’s engineers were so bad at programming that they had to interview Mac OS programmers to find out how to make a GUI work at all; if Jobs had been sharp enough to make the legal agreements against espionage last 10 years instead of 1, Windows would not exist. Even more recent things like the XBox — a PlayStation wannabe — are just knockoffs.) The world would be just fine without Bill Gates, arguably better off.
It’s also worth pointing out: billionaire donations are never just to pay the operating expenses of something worthy. It’s always something flashy and one-time that they can use as a billboard. It turns out that none of the billionaires who promised money to rebuild Notre Dame, for instance, actually coughed up any money — because they were not going to be permitted to have any say in how the money would be spent, or insist on a new design for the building, or whatever.
wolja@33 I’m not telling you to shut up, nor am I telling you to shut up because I disagree with you.
I’m telling you to fuck off with bothsiderisms. because it’s bullshit. It’s the excuses that have led to equating uneducated opinions with established scientific fact. It’s led to concentration camps at the border, nazis openly marching in the streets, and now it’s led to us being completely unprepared for a pandemic we had at least several weeks, if not months of warning. And our current administration is not only failing to take action to protect the populace, they are encouraging the spread and growth of the pandemic for personal profit and petty grudges.
I’m not saying anything happens in a vacuum, or that there are going to be compromises, or that a flawed solution is better than no solution, and I’m not sure why you are trying to imply that I am.
I’m saying that the existence of billionaires is morally unacceptable. And the fact that we have billionaires in a system with rampant homelessness, and countless people who are bankrupt from treatable, and even preventable medical related issues, just makes their existence even more contemptible.
why are you so invested in defending billionaires? And how does them owning a 100 billion dollars improve their life over owning 1 billion dollars? or even 100 million? These numbers are so huge, they are almost beyond human comprehension.
profpedant @38:
I agree, both with the statement I quoted and your reasons for why it’s stupid.
My point was to guess a reason why they are in fact pursuing relative wealth: it’s because they have nothing else.
billseymour @42
“it’s because they have nothing else” – another apparently indisputable fact that makes no sense. They live in comfort, they have immense access to knowledge and the ability to affect change in the world. But instead of ‘having fun’ and ‘making the world a better place’ they apparently put their focus on where they are in a hierarchy that mostly exists inside of their heads. In a real sense I, even with the problems, frustrations, and losses that I have, live a more fulfilled life than someone whose life goal is to increase their relative wealth because it means ‘more points’ in the shared hallucination that passes for their class solidarity.
(Not to overlook that many wealthy do have fun, and do make some effort to improve things – but so much of both of those things seems to be more about how it displays their status than it is about fun or improving things.)
yannoupoika, #36
They should give much, much more.
And they shouldn’t even have this much money to begin with.
#41 lochaber
Yeah sorry you were.
In no way or shape can what I said be equated with the vacuous pandering to “Fair play” by the media. I was saying the bald all Billionaires are bad is unsupported by the evidence.
Neither Communism or Capitalism works.
Many here say just do it bugger the consequences. Never going to work
You were actually saying these things….
Unsupported by the evidence.
Not paying employees fairly is what makes them billionaires.
Unsupported by the evidence.
Making them pay higher taxes is not near impossible.
Unsupported by the evidence.
How we decide to run our own society is what’s important.
Makes you appreciate J K Rowling.
yes capitalism is inherently unstable and tends toward inequality
If by communism you mean soviet style or Stalinist style that is just state capitalism with hardly a differance from what goes on in modern western countries. the difference being who makes the decisions. it tends toward a little more stability while still advancing inequality.
do think there are only 2 ways at question these days?
uncle frogy
Billionaires exist. Fact.
They don’t have to donate or give to charities. Some do. Fact.
I mean, fair enough, no need to thank them for it — but to deprecate them for it?
That’s just mean.
(That last bit is opinion)
A guy I know is dealing with his dad’s estate and just suddenly figured out that even with big inheritance taxes, if you’ve got money, it’s stupidly easy to make more.
But if you don’t, the system makes it hard.
I think he might be about to turn socialist. That, or a psychopathic capitalist (but I repeat myself).
@49
I think the point is that there is no good reason that billionaires should exist. Further many of the reason for the charities to exist to help with the problems of poverty and poor health care availability can be traced directly to those same billionaires.
it is as simple as that. If they paid wages that had a reasonable relationship to their profits, If they paid a reasonable tax that was equal to the benefits they receive from the government that they live under and profit from. The government and thus society as a whole could pay for the goods and services needed and the population would have to beg or have charities to depend on for basic survival.
uncle frogy
f***k
let try that last bit again It feels ridiculous to have to explain this. this is not new I sure did not think it up these ideas have been around for 150 years at least
those profits that are racked off and out of the general circulation of the economy are the reason for the charities to exist. The charities try to make up the difference and do some good but mostly it is just barely enough for those they help. If those profits were reduced by much higher wages and higher taxes there would not be the need for charities to try and fill the gap of poverty. the government could easily afford to pay for the research needed
uncle frogy
unclefrogy:
Really?
Were I to do a pullquote, it’d be this one:
The point seems to be that they’re cynically spending that money, not giving it away.
(gratuities for gratitude? :)
—
@52, Sure, but that’s the way the system is set up.
It permits unlimited wealth accrual and full discretion over its management.
I agree that it should be changed to make it fairer, but the system itself is a higher-level abstraction than those it permits, that is, the billionaires.
@45
The only reason that billionaires exist is because they appropriate the excess value of the labor of the people beneath them. Do you legitimately believe that Bill Gates is a billionaire because he’s several million times more competent and valuable than the workers that actually make the products that he passively profits from?
In the world we currently inhibit there is legitimately no moral mechanism for a person to become a billionaire; even inheritance. If your father stole a ton of money and then leaves it to you when he dies, it’s still stolen money. This is true regardless of how nice the billionaire is as a person or how they spend that money. A thief that is polite and donates .5% of their net worth to charity is still a thief.
Given that there has never been a communist society as actually defined in the foundational works – a stateless, classless society with communal ownership of the means of production – I’m not sure where you’re getting your priors. Even the USSR and PRC were, by literal definition, state capitalist societies. If you think otherwise, I would love to hear how they fit the definition above. That said, given your inane bothsiderism, I do not think you actually have the prerequisite grasp of either the history or the sociological theory to make that case.
@ wolja, # 27
“It’s always been that way” is right up there with “Because God said so” in terms of awful reasons to keep doing awful things. Most of humanity served under the rule of an absolutist monarch at one point- that’s no longer the case. Things change.
You show me a person on the far left with any power at all in the USA, and you might be able to make that case.
First of all, there’s not a far-lefty in that bunch. I like all three and appreciate what they do, but they’re all very moderate lefties.
Second, if the sensible and necessary policy recommendations they’re making are enough to trigger a civil war, then civil war is completely unavoidable. We can have it because a bunch ignorant fucksticks think universal healthcare=WOLVERINES!, or we can have it a few years later when the ultra-wealthy parasite class finally takes too much and tempers boil over.
We’re very, very close right now- the apotheosis of wealth and privileged upbringing that occupies the Oval Office is doing such a poor job of managing the current crisis that people are getting seriously fed up. If this bungling continues for months, as it seems certain to, widespread violence is guaranteed. Trump’s fecklessness has always had a bodycount attached, but it’s never been as overt as it is now. It’s unfortunately easy for the USAian public to ignore brown children murdered in some isolated concentration camp, but when it’s grandma and grandpa and sickly little Jimmy from next door getting carted off to a mass grave in the back of a refrigerator truck, well, that’s another matter.
If you find yourself modifying your policies because you don’t want to upset actual Nazis, then you’ve already lost.
So what you’re saying is that we should ignore everything you’re saying? Because this “both sides are just as bad” nonsense is an appeal to self-satisfied ignorance.
yeah, no. my exact words (copy pasted from above) were:
I’m telling you to fuck off with a specific variety of argument.
anyways, I feel like this comic is especially relevant here:
https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
I have spent a much larger proportion of my “fortune” on fabric and elastics making face masks than Gates and Zuckerberg have. Not to mention my time…
It would have been so much better, and just as painless for them, if instead of saying “I’ll give you $X for research”, they said “tell me how much you need for research and I’ll give you that”.
@yannoupoika #36:
I aim at about a tenth of my disposable income, currently £56 a month as standing orders supporting six charities for the long term. You?
@36: Back when Bezos was making headlines about spending money to help with climate change, I realized I had already donated more of my salary than that, from a single time I gave change to someone on the street who needed it. But I didn’t get any articles, nor think I deserve them, and I haven’t been secretly working against the efforts at the same time.
The truth is that by the time you have thousands of million dollars it means you could at any time help countless desperate people, with no more personal effort than telling an aide to make it happen, and still live without want for the rest of your life. So every single one is someone who for the most part can’t be bothered not to leave their fellow humans to die even given the most convenient chances to save them. We shouldn’t necessarily fault them for what they do donate, but we shouldn’t act like it erases that basic fact.
How to become a billionaire
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/performance-review
#59 – Good for you Rich! I am also about !0% of my income. Mine are primarily directed to my Church, Children I sponsor in Ethiopia, Haiti relief organizations, a number of medical issues and others that many on this thread probably wouldn’t support. How about the rest of y’all.
@ yannoupoika, #62
If we’re going to be crass, can’t we just compare codpieces like in yon yore ye olden days? Mine has a nasturtium growing in it.
@aronymous (#28):
Oh, $100 million? Out of $100,000 million? He’s giving a whole tenth of one percent, leaving himself a paltry $99,900 million dollars to live on?
Spare me.