If you look here:

https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/

Bill Gates is only the 5th richest.

…but the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has an endowment total of $75.2 billion.

So, his wealth ($149 billion) + foundation ($75 billion) = $224 billion.

So, my question is…can he spend that foundation money any way he wants instead of spending his personal money? If he wants a jet can he just use the foundation money? If so, then he is still the richest person in the world even though he does not get labeled as such in the news anymore.

  • dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de
    7·
    7 months ago

    My issue is that we allow people to amass these massive fortunes to then choose what problems they fix.

    Not to dissuade from anything good BG has done, that doesn’t excuse all the terrible things he did to amass this fortune.

    • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
      4·
      7 months ago

      Sure. Microsoft was a scumbag company in the 90s with some pretty aggressive corporate practices, and gates was the beneficiary of that.

      I also agree that billionaires just generally shouldn’t exist.

      That said, I guarantee that 99% of commenters in this thread have pension funds holding investments in infinitely worse scumbag companies.

      Also, Gates more or less just stopped. He still has a 1% holding in Microsoft or something, but he’s not grinding away burning baby dolphin oil for personal gain.

      There’s plenty of hatred for terrible corporate practices to go around, but I don’t understand why Gates is targeted more than anyone else.