this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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[–] [email protected] 11 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

It will close after it spends around 99% of Gates' personal fortune, he said. The founders originally expected the foundation to wrap up in the decades after their deaths. Gates, whose fortune is currently valued at around $108 billion, expects the foundation to spend around $200 billion by 2045, with the final figure dependent on markets and inflation.

Look , I know we should analyze the Gates Foundation's spending closely and make sure the money is going to effective places. I know it would be better if we taxed these assholes and resdistributed wealth in a more efficient way. But I want to believe that this is genuine, and Gates is having a late-life crisis change of heart and realizes that billionaires should not exist. giving away 99% of your personal fortune is pretty sincere, if he follows through.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 21 hours ago

He has been going at it for over three decades already (Gates foundation was started in 1994) and he founded and signed the Giving Pledge in 2010, so it isn't really that late-life.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Oh, darn. The kids only get $2 billion. From what I've seen, he's been making good on his pledges so far, solving international health crises and such. I get strong "I done fucked up and need to fix it" vibes from his actions since stepping down as CEO, and we have demonstrable examples.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

He once said that his kids will only get $10M each. I don't know if that still stands.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

solving international health crises

if anything, he made them worse by lobbying world governments for more draconian vaccine patents.

the reason why the first polio vaccine took off was because its creators refused to patent it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 hours ago

I'll take that with a grain of Salk.