He can't give it away FAST ENOUGH: Bill Gates richest man in world again Despite Bill Gates' best efforts to offload his massive pile of cash, it seems there's literally nothing the Microsoft founder can do to avoid being the richest man in the world. Gates was named wealthiest human on the planet by Forbes for 16 of the past 21 years. According to the research, last year Gates made more money than …
if my sums are right he gave away about 3% of his total assets in a year. That's the equivalent of a 'normal' person who, let's say has 100k equity in their house and 50k in savings and cash giving away 5k in a year to charity. I think the super rich could try harder.... Although I guess he's better that most of the money hoarders at that level
I'd prefer he continues to take his time giving it away. So far he has backed some extremely good causes and successfully avoided buying London Bridge. The faster he shovels it out the harder it will be to avoid the scammers & freeloaders. His foundation will outlive him and do good for a very long time to come.
You miss the point. Giving away 3% of £150k is easy. Giving away 3% of £50bn - in a way that you're happy all the recipients are deserving courses and will use it responsibility - is very different. He's using the money to fund the creation of new charitable projects, not just bunging cash at existing charities, as well.
To be fair to Bill Gates, Warren Buffett also made things more difficult for him. Buffett gave his foundation a ton of money a few years ago, with the instructions that it all has to be spent quickly. I think there's more when that comes from when he dies, and Buffett has said that he wants all that spent within 5 years of his death. So he's got the short-term angle covered, and that leaves Gates organising the foundation and setting it up to spend his money over the long term.
Although I am tragically without a superyacht to my name, and it can't be right that I don't also own a submarine, a jet fighter and mansion with swimming pool. So there's room for Gates to help the poor yet...
Well, sometimes you do.
It seems mostly to be a matter of where the money is thrown. Giving money to actual poor people has a decent track record of solving poverty on a personal level - that is to say it often succeeds better in getting those individuals out of poverty and keeping them out than drip-feed type "support" programs.
What it doesn't address is the factors that caused them to end up in poverty in the first place of course, and no, throwing money at that seems to rarely help. It tends to just vanish into bureaucracy and/or corruption.
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