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martijnve on 19 August 2007
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Mummelmann said:
eab said:
Mummelmann said:
Many people state that especially Bill Gates must be a terrific human being because he donates to charity... Well if you've got one hundred billion dollars (and he had at some point), it's hardly qualifying for saint status if you give half of it away. He still had to butter his bread and sugar his porridge...
Big corporations sometimes donate, as do celebrities, so we'll think higher of them.
That's the only reason they do it, it's not because they're so kind of heart.

I truly hope MS goes bankrupt in the future, I don't like them one bit, and I'm far from the only one!

This is quite possibly the most arrogant post I have ever read. A man donates billions of his own money and saves the lives of millions of people dying of Malaria. He has publically stated that when he dies he only wants his children to inherit a few million of his 60 or so billion dollars.

Now take the Wal-Mart family, every brother, sister, child, grandchild, and newphew was given several billion dollars. Sam Walton made his entire family multi billionaires and they plan to keep all of the money in the family, ensuring that for the next 200 years any member of that family will be able to buy multimillion dollar yachts and never have to work a day in their life. Yet everyone picks on Bill Gates, a man who has a will that says 99.9% of money will go to saving lives.

Money he made I might add. He was born with nothing and plans to leave with a few million. But inbetween he made (from scratch) about a hundred billion dollars and gave most of it away. How many other humans go through their lives acculating money with the final goal to give it away?

If Gates was never born charities would be short billions of dollars and millions would have died. He has saved more lives that Hitler killed. Yet no one seems to care, they are all just mad that he was successful and has more money than them.

50 grand a year is more money than what 95% of the world makes each year. You can't honestly say that if you had a $300,000 a year job you would give away $250,000 every year since "you can still butter your bread and sugar your porridge with 50,000 a year."

Grow up people, seriously. Yes he's very rich but look at the hundreds of other billionairs in the world. Most of whom don't donate a penny.


Well, first off; why would he keep half his fortune if he was as noble as you say? He still had over 50 billion dollars left. If his plan was to give away all his money in the will, why not donate them NOW? If I made 300.000$ a year, I would surely give to charity like all my fellow countrymen (norwegians are the most charitable people in the world), but not 250.000$. That's a strange comparison; if you have 100 billion dollars and give half of it away, then you're still filthy rich, but if I give away 250.000 of 300.000 I'm not even well off here in Norway (average Norwegian makes about 65.000$ a year in todays currency).

I 'm not attacking Bill Gates personally because his rich, I'm protesting this pedestal people elevate him onto because he gave away half his fortune and was still the richest man in the world... That's all.


I think giving it all away now would be bad for several reasons:

  1. If he gave all the money to charity now, they would all be filthy rich and that does not help efficient spending, ive read several articles recently about charities wasting money (not on purpose but jus becouse of poor management)
  2. If his money is invested properly (and i see no reason to assume it's not)he gets massive interest so when he dies the charities wil actually get more money this way.
  3. Why should all the money go to the people that are in need today? There's a good chance that there will not be another Bill Gates in the near future. So by not giving the money now he's also helping the people that are going to be in need in 50 years.
  4. If he gives all his money away today, and next week half of africa is whiped out by some massive disaster, he will not be able to send say 25 billion dollars to repair the damage. But now he still has that option.

Im not saying hes a saint, but he is still the most charitable person in the world, if when he dies he has spent say 1% of his life's earnings (which is a LOT) on insane luxury, can you seriously blame him for that?

So i would say he has earned himself a rather nice pedistal.