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Comment by SEJeff | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised that people are asking how / why he is giving money away and no one mentioned his Giving Pledge:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet pledged to give half of their net worth away during their life or death to charity. They're practicing what they preach.

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The man that inspired them... "Over the course of his life, Feeney has given away more than $8 billion.." "As of 2016, he lives in a rented apartment in San Francisco, with a remaining nest egg of $2 million"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Feeney

> Feeney is known for his frugality, living in a rented apartment

Seems like renting isn't that frugal in the long-term though... it's unlikely cheaper long-term than owning a condo or small home, ie. you're either paying your own mortgage or someone else's mortgage + rental profits.

He is also 86. Maybe he is trying to make his life a little easier at this age.

San Francisco has insane rent control. He's probably paying something like $300/mo if he's been there for decades.

California has insane property tax control, if he bought decades ago he'd be sitting on millions in property value and pay nearly nothing in taxes. Works both ways if you get lucky.

San Francisco has insane loopholes for rent control too. If he were really paying 300/mo he'd have been kicked out for an OMI 10 years ago.

They also have insane tax control. If you've been in your house for decades you pay a far lower tax rate than your neighbors. There are too many people without skin in the housing market game, we should get rid of both Proposition 13 and rent control and let everyone feel the pain of what happens when you don't build enough houses.

It's not that straightforward. Because the capital generally appreciates too, the rental costs can be driven down below mortgage costs in some cases. But even without that, most mortgages require deposits, and to compare that against rental you also need to compare potential return from investing that deposit instead.

You can certainly profit by buying - I have profited substantially that way -, and buying serves as a hedge against outsize increases in rental costs, but there are also many situations where you can profit by renting.

Calling it out as a demonstration of frugality on the other hand is a bit odd.

Gates and Buffett have, for many years now, publicly pledged to give away basically 99% of their wealth.

Buffett's premise on not giving much of his wealth to his children, goes back perhaps 40 or 50 years now based on what he has said. According to Gates, an article that Buffett wrote for a business magazine, published ~25 some years ago now, informed and altered Bill's thinking on the detriment of giving such immense wealth to the next generation.

The Giving Pledge is primarily for other billionaires to pledge to give away at least 50%. The 50% level made it an easier bar to jump over, as of course not all of the billionaires want to match the 99% marker Gates & Buffett have set.

Andrew Carnegie was the OG give-all-my-wealth-away-before-I-die incredibly wealthy person. I read an essay by him in high school where he though, philosophically, he shouldn't give his money to his kids rather than donate it.

I guess it really depends on what your view of the world, and your place in it, is. I was very surprised when my parents basically said that whatever wealth they accumulated, their goal was to leave that to me. I think they view it as their duty as parents, for that to be the right thing to do.

Others have a view of propagating their genes to the next generation and view inherited wealth as the way to do so (Yes, I realize my parent's view of good parenting indirectly coincides with this view).

Yet others believe in the strengthening of their community, and not just their own genetic offspring. e.g. I believe Carnegie established libraries, Universities etc. for the "people of Pittsburgh".

Those views are rather strictly tied to the number of 0's in ones bank balance I feel. Even 1% of Bill gates worth is many hundreds of millions. Where as the average person who seeks to leave everything to their children might be in the millions. But possibly even less.

This is from 2013[0], but the avg. inheritance in the US at that time was $177K according to an HSBC survey.

[0] http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/13/retirement/american-inherita...

I think for Carnegie it was more of a philosophical point. His belief (if I remember correctly) was that the idea of a birthright was fallacious and possibly counter-productive. Rather than pass his holdings down to his descendants, he believed that we all have an ethical prerogative to use what we've earned in our life to benefit society at large.

It's very hard for people to fathom this, but there is a level of wealth where it is rational to blow most of your money and set aside only a small percentage for your loved ones. If Bill Gates blows 99.999% of his wealth, his kids still get 9 million dollars inheritance!

Famous for a library in every town- over 2500 of them. Many still operating.

Yes, the scope is rather immense, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Carnegie_libraries

Yes, the small Ohio town my parents live in near the PA border still has an active Carnegie library, as do some nearby towns. I believe the town had started a library housed in existing town buildings, but after a few years of growth it needed its own location. The town wrote to Carnegie, who gave them a grant for a new library building, which is still used. I'm sure the story is the same in many other small towns.

> Buffett's premise on not giving much of his wealth to his children

I mean, it's still an insanely huge amount of money he'd be giving to his children (Gates as well). 1% of his networth is $762 million - you're talking about an insane amount some people are going to get just by being born (even after taking into account inheritance taxes and splitting the money among siblings).

And we should also remember that charity is a form of conspicuous consumption for the ultrawealthy. Huge charitable donations are the modern day equivalent to monuments or statues. You're well passed the point where your money can increase your personal well being, so you might as well spend it on something that makes people pay attention to you, wins you accolades and gives you a legacy.

We'd all be much better off if they just donated it to the United States Treasury, wouldn't we?

Reminder to any who feel that is a great idea and are inspired to emulate it, but don't make so much money that they can afford to donate half of it, there's a different pledge for us little guys, the Giving What We Can Pledge:

https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge/

The article covers it:

"Gates created the Giving Pledge in 2010 with billionaire investor Warren Buffett, and the pair have been joined by 168 others who’ve promised to give the majority of their wealth to charity."

Sure, I was just surprised to see no one else having mentioned it here in the comments.

it's capitalism at is best you start a company in your garage take it to be worth Bilions an then give it all away, doesn't get better than this.

What's the link with capitalism ?

Capitalism as in the private accumulation of large sums of capital.

if you give away your large sums of capital, then it isn't the accumulation of large sums of capital anymore, and therefore isn't capitalism.

Charity is very much a part of capitalism, if you want it to be. That's sort of the point. The choice of being able to keep your money or donate v. the requirement to give away most/all of what you earn to the state.

Charity is neither unique to capitalism nor a testament to it working. It's rather a monkey-patch fix to make it look more viable than it is - people think everything's fine as long as a few "heroes" donate.

Not necessarily. Depends who you cked over along the way, including your workers. Not saying this applies to Bill, though.

You missed the 90's I see.

The guy is a ruthless, greedy arsehole.

There's a good argument that he was in the 1990s. That doesn't mean he is one now. People change.

But let's suppose for a moment that he was one, and he hasn't changed, and he still is a terrible person underneath. Does that make the people who would have got malaria but didn't because of the Gates Foundation's efforts any sicker?

Or, contrariwise, consider some area where it turns out that the work of the Gates Foundation has done harm as well as good. Education seems like it might be an example. Let's suppose that in fact Gates is a total saint, motivated by nothing but pure benevolence. Does that make someone whose education was worsened by the foundation's activities any better educated?

I find I don't really care very much whether Gates is a good person, for any particular definition of "good". I care about the effects of what he does. Maybe he's giving his money away to make himself look good, or for a bet, or because he hopes it will placate an angry Microsoft-hating god, or something. Who cares? What matters is what actually happens as a result of his giving that money away.

On the whole, that's looking pretty good.

Missed the 90s? Not really. With psychotherapy I've almost recovered from years of testing IE4-6 incompatibilities.

I don't think you can really conflate capitalism with philanthropy like that. They're just... different things.

"Capitalism at it's best" isn't people giving away money... it's people being competitively compensated for their contributions to society-- the ability to take risks and reap the rewards.

Of course then you can argue that tax is a way to enforce a minimal amount of philanthropy onto people, forcing them to contribute to the greater good whether they want to or not... but people who seem to be very vocally in favour of pure capitalism also seem to be very vocally against high taxes.

  *it's people being competitively compensated for their contributions to society*

Sorry to nitpick .. you're describing meritocracy I think, as envisaged by free-market economics (which is entirely reasonable - to a point).

Capitalism isn't so much the emergent market behaviour as a system that provides a means to create and develop wealth (i.e. capital). The labour market is one aspect of this, but it's not exclusively tied to it.

  *Capitalism is an economic system and an ideology based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism

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