
The Problem with Bill Gates - pavel_lishin
https://www.stilldrinking.org/the-problem-with-bill-gates
======
dTal
>About a billion people are living on a dollar a day or less. The number of
people living at this level is going down. That’s good... Bill Gates has an
estimated worth over one hundred billion dollars. He could eliminate a
category of poverty without changing the number of digits in any box on his
tax forms.

I don't think giving 1 day's wages to the world can be construed as
"eliminating a category of poverty".

~~~
ChristianBundy
Nitpick: It depends on what "over one hundred billions" means. You could only
give $1 to 1 billion people of you have $101 billion, but if you have $999
billion then you could give $998 to 1 billion people without violating the
digit constraint.

My guess is that it's closer to your estimate, about 1 day of wages, but it
_could_ be 2.7 years of wages at most.

------
0_gravitas
I really like Peter's stuff and would recommend him any day, but I really
can't think of a worse target/focus for what he's going for here; Gates is as
close to an exception to the rule as I can imagine.

------
danecek099
Yeah well, this was super pro-communist.

But I agree with those ideas and I like the post.

"There cannot be both billionaires and the means of billionaires fixing the
world out of the goodness of their hearts, because the only way to maintain
billionaires is to maintain a system of dragging money toward billionaires."

This

~~~
schwartzworld
> this was super pro-communist

oh please. is it really that controversial to think that hoarding all that
wealth and donating just enough to make yourself look good is immoral? when
someone hoards shampoo bottles we put them on reality TV, but when it's money,
baby boomers make excuses.

~~~
aeternum
>is it really that controversial to think that hoarding all that wealth

This premise is false, American billionaires do not hoard wealth, rather they
invest it in companies.

Bill Gates sells Microsoft shares every year to fund his charitable
foundation. He is effectively allocating capital away from Microsoft and
towards world health. It is a misconception that these billionaires are like
scrooge mcduck hoarding money in their vaults.

~~~
schwartzworld
Ah yes, that's why his net worth goes down every year.

