Bill Gates: I’ve paid $10 billion in taxes. I should have paid more. - Sensationalist Headlines

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/2/27/18243183/bill-gates-foundation-reddit-ama-billionaire-taxes He's the billionaire we deserve

bill is gr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TCxE0bWQeQ

I hate him as a billionaire, but I don't hate him as a person, so that's more than I can say for most billionaires.

What does that mean?

Yeah I think the way most billionaires have it easy than most people and especially with our current president it's easy to just be greedy. Despite this I think Bill Gates is one of the nicest, humble, and honest people out there who does something worthwhile with his money than just live lavishly. I can name like a couple of rich people who can donate to charities, but it feels like Bill goes out of his way to know who is worth donating to and puts it all out there who really need it. Bill Gates is like a rich nice elderly man in the community who gives back to the people in any fashion and wishes he can do more when he has given enough already..

The belief that billionaires existing is inherently immoral and they shouldn't exist

In America, I'd have to agree. You don't become rich without exploiting people. No exceptions.

I wonder what it would be like if Bill used some of his money to influence politicians to change the amount of taxes he pays. With the amount of money he has, he could certainly pay more than a lot of other people with money.

Essentially what you said. The fact that he's a billionaire at all means he got there by exploiting people. That's what I mean by "disliking him as a billionaire". However, once he got there, he didn't decide to be a loathsome weasel and try to horde his wealth and get more tax cuts. He is trying to use his wealth and power, in some way, to help. That's what I mean by "liking him as a person".

absolutely not that'd piss off half the U.S. population and things are getting hairy.

he was a mean SOB at microsoft and still cuts checks to organizations that advocate for lowering his taxes

He's earned his money fair and square. Yeah not all money making is clean - there's a lot of sketchy shit that goes on within EVERY company. But Bill didn't get hand outs from daddy. He earned his wealth and is doing great things with it.

then why dont you give the rest away now, moneyman?

Lol I hope this was sarcasm

Lets not forget that it took Bill Gates being essentially push away from Microsoft for being so anti-competitive that the US government had to sue Microsoft when they tried to take over the internet with Internet Explorer because it was the final straw. It humbled him but before that he was as capitalist as it got. Microsoft was a fucking monster in the 80's, 90's.

bill and melinda have pledged to give their wealth away before or when they die and started a campaign to convince other billionaires and rich people to do similar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge

I know. It's just one of those pipe dreams.

you can write the government a check, bill

I don't think bill wants to write the current government a check.

Unfortantley corporations learned from this, and now are more powerful and influential than Microsoft ever was. Yet we don't see any anti-trust lawsuits like we saw with Microsoft. Funny how politicians in the 90's understood the implications of this better than most today.

People forget the photoshops of Bill Gates as a Borg and as Darth Vader leading an evil empire. Boss-of-Microsoft-era Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were very similar in that they were ruthless and absolutely driven and focused on turning their companies into omnipotent machines or as close as possible to it. But where Steve had keen fashion sense and hippy-dippy herbal extracts or some shit to fight his cancer, Bill has a strong appreciation for the value and importance of medical science. I'm not glad Steve Jobs died before his time, but if we had to choose which of the two to become retired billionaire philantropist grandpa and the other to die before Trump happened, I'm glad we got the one that's pouring gobs of money into immunization and research into solutions for the medical crisies the world both faces today and will likely face in the near future, instead of the one who'd be trying to sell us iPod crocs.

🤮 🤮 🤮

Melinda has been a great influence on him. That's stupid. Don't judge people on characteristics like that without taking into account what they have actually done.

accruing the largest wealth known to any person in history at the onset of a period of exploding wealth inequality and becoming the figurehead and arch-lieutenant of billionaire paternalism, of giving whatever you want whenever you want to whomever you want at virtually no humanly measurable expense to yourself and getting lavished in praise for not spending your untold wealth down to the last red penny? frankly sad that people decided to collectively shit on the worthwhile nuance of that post

As was already said, he is going to give it all away. If he did it right now, he might not be able to use it as effectively for philanthropy as he would if he used more time to continue to study where it should go.

Except he is? Do you not know about his foundation or the pledges he's made? By the time he dies, virtually all of it will be gone.

You shouldn't assume all charity is "charity" though. Bill gates is quite big on charter schools and those suck for a variety of reasons. Using gate foundation money to invest in for profit prisons. Demonstrators Protest Gates Foundation’s $2.2 Million Investmen.. For somebody so deadset on giving away all of his cash he still seems to be getting richer and richer. Furthermore consider the amount of political leverage that his non profit is providing him in third world countries. Its a great excuse to go talk to world leaders for opportunities other then just charity. I'm pretty convinced that a large portion of all of this charity is simply a means to an end. Even if he had good intentions would it even matter if in his misplaced self confidence ended up causing him to mismanage or actively harm people with his "charitable" investments?

To be honest: He can play lipservice about making taxes higher. He also has the warchest and influence to make it possible.

Do you seriously believe that he could do that even if he tried?

I'd say it might be more accurate to say its plausible. How much of a tax increase would you need to create before it "counts"? Lets for a second imagine that the following premises from this article are accurate: IRS Computer System Crashes A Year After An Official Warning Was.. IRS has a dated computer system IRS has been underfunded over the years. Trying to manage the very difficult task of teaching millions of not very computer savvy americans to file taxes via online forms. Would you say any of these 3 areas would fall under the expertise of Bill gates or people that he could easily access and influence?