Channel 4, The Billionaires Who Made Our World. Bill Gates.

Channel 4, The Billionaires Who Made Our World. Bill Gates.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-billionaires-who-made-our-world/on-demand/72330-002

‘The Global Fund is one of the best and kindest thing people have ever done for one another.

Our Foundation announces a $500 million grant to The Global Fund.’ Bill Gates.

Dear Bill,

I’m sure you don’t remember me, but your algorithm does. You ‘friended’ me on Twitter. That was before the other richest man in the world liked the site so much he bought it. The cost was prohibitive and would have tanked the reputation of any normal genius.

You weren’t as quick as I thought you’d be to ‘unfriend’ me then. It was cool hanging out with you and Bill and Hillary Clinton. For a man without a house, a car and who uses a ten quid phone, these things matter. I might even have been a project. But I still suffer from survivor’s guilt that it was Hillary and not me that was forced to run against the moron’s moron and 45^th American President.

Just think, nobody knew then that Jeffrey Epstein was a serial paedophile, certainly not me. Certainly not Bill, or Prince Andrew or you. Although your wife did divorce you on that one and tell the world what she thought on a talk show.

But it might have been another one. You admitted to cheating. You tried to cheat your main partner at Microsoft when he’d cancer, but hey, every day’s a business opportunity. And we all know those women aren’t as smart as men. Sure we can put a few token faces on the board and a few more in the bedroom. Shit, we might even have daughters. You’re a numbers man. Fifty percent of the world’s population are female. Most of America is non-white, but you just can’t get the staff, because there’s only one of you. That’s all that really matters.

Nobody wants to be judged, not even a flower. But a rose is still a rose by any other name. Name calling hurts. We all know our blue planet has got multiple sclerosis (well apart from the 20% of elderly, white Americans who follow the moron’s moron, and think Covid was not just a hoax, but a global satanic conspiracy with Hillary at its head). But you wrote a book and told the world how to cure global warming in a step-by-step manner.   

You and your wife set up a charitable foundation and pledged to give all your money away. You went further than most. Urged other billionaires to do the same.  Told your children they would only inherit a measly $10 million when you die. That’s courageous. Most of your friends would agree that you could spend $100 million on your house so it looks slightly older, more lived-in than it should, perhaps add an Olympic-sized swimming pool for paddling in.  

OK, the poor old American taxpayer kicks in with 50 cents for every dollar of your charitable work. Only poor people pay taxes. I’m not smart. Not a geek. I couldn’t, for example, get the equivalent math grade to get into any college.

Bill, what doesn’t add up to me is, since your charitable work, say around 2016, when we were so cruelly ‘unfriended’, you’ve become richer not poorer. Perhaps you could explain to me the alchemy of turning charity into gold, or the dollar equivalent? When you give something away how does it boomerang back with more?  

Cheers mate from a former ‘friend’.

p.s. I didn’t unfriend you, or Bill. And I was never friends with Jeffrey or Prince Andrew.

Notes.

https://parade.com/1204965/jessicasager/bill-gates-net-worth/

Is Bill Gates the richest man in the world?

Nope, and he hasn't been for a while. On Forbes' 2021 World's Billionaires List, Bezos was ranked #1 with a fortune of $177 billion, followed by Tesla founder Elon Musk, whose worth was estimated at $151 billion. Coming in third was French investor Bernard Arnault with $150 billion, followed by Gates at No. 4 with an estimated net worth of $124 billion (which, as of March 2022, had increased to $133.8 billion, but still put him at fourth on the list of world's richest people).

How did Bill Gates make his money?

Gates co-founded Microsoft with his childhood best friend, Paul Allen, in 1975, and since its inception has served as CEO, chairman and chief software architect of the company. Their MS-DOS platform became the operating system for IBM computers in 1980. When Microsoft went public, Gates' shares alone were worth $350 million, making him one of the wealthiest men in America. The release of Microsoft Office in 1990 only further grew Gates' big bucks, and when Windows 95 launched in 1995, Gates was, for a time, the richest man on Earth; his fortune hit the $100 billion mark in 1999.

How much does Bill Gates give to charity?

Gates and pal Warren Buffettcreated The Giving Pledge, which urges billionaires to spend the majority of their wealth on philanthropy. He and Melinda formed their eponymous Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has spent more than $40 billion fighting global poverty and diseases like malaria and polio around the world. He wrote in an annual letter in 2018, "If we think it’s unfair that we have so much wealth, why don’t we give it all to the government? The answer is that we think there’s always going to be a unique role for foundations. They’re able to take a global view to find the greatest needs, take a long-term approach to solving problems, and manage high-risk projects that governments can’t take on and corporations won’t. If a government tries an idea that fails, someone wasn’t doing their job. Whereas if we don’t try some ideas that fail, we’re not doing our jobs."