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ipnon

This is how you transfer intergenerational wealth.

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Gates is famous for rejecting intergenerational wealth transfer.

Well, $10m is definitely wealth to you or me, but not to Bill Gates.

https://www.bankrate.com/financing/wealth/what-will-gates-ch...

He's been giving his money away for many years now and strangely is still one of the richest men in the world. I suspect that his desire to not give his kids money will work out much the same way - he gives them "only" $10m (of course, enough to live comfortably on for their entire lives) - but also, control of some billion dollar philanthropic fund.

> He's been giving his money away for many years now and strangely is still one of the richest men in the world.

My understanding is that most of his wealth is held in MSFT stock which has increased in value by over 4x since 2016.

So if he had given away 75% of his wealth in 2016, he'd still have the same net worth today.

Not to mention that he probably owns a lot of stakes in tech startups, which have, on paper at least, appreciated quite dramatically in recent years.

I think Gates is probably to the point where it's functionally impossible for him to give away all of his money. The value of his personal brand and network is such that startups will probably give away decent chunks of their business just to be a part of that network.

Bill Gates holdings are actually pretty diversified. Most of his wealth is not in microsoft.

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

Thanks for the correction, I didn't know this!

Reframe “donations” as “PR expenses” and his continual wealth increase will make sense.

Yeah, but no. The problem is that the man invested in Microsoft, which has been proving itself to be a hell of an investment.

Sorry but spending / donating money is not a difficult thing to do. If you have billions of dollars, claim to be donating much of it, but somehow your wealth continues to increase, perhaps you’re not trying hard enough?

There's no "claim" - those donations and the records of the foundations are a matter of public record.

Also, completely liquidating and giving away his assets would result in a large payout once.. and then nothing ever again. You need money to make money, so holding onto some to appreciate in value (investments, interest, etc) results in more money being donated over a longer amount of time.

Giving away a million is easy, giving away a billion - or several - not so much. At least if you want the money to have an impact.

That doesn't make sense at all! What is this PR for? Are people buying more Windows Licenses because he is paying to charity? Are people sending money to him? Is he making billions of dollars getting commission for books he recommend? What do you mean?

The PR is to counteract the realization that a handful of ultra wealthy individuals own more than the other 90% of humanity combined.

That's just a PR job.

Can you elaborate a little bit ?

A lot of "family farms" in the US these days are essentially a tax dodge.

https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/112844547165831987...

Basically, there's a lot of tax breaks available if you designate your land a "farm", even if you don't grow anything. About 22% of farms in the US produce 0 output.

This is true and visible in the Bay Area. There are a number of large properties where the owners have a vineyard. The vineyard is really so some of their land can qualify for agricultural proprietary tax rate.

How do you know that's the reason and not that they legitimately wanted to have a vineyard? They don't tend to it and harvest from it? All the ones I've seen looked to be in use, but don't know for sure.

Many are in use, often with operations leased out. This produces some modicum of revenue to cover the farm designation. The real upside is the ownership and associated capital appreciation w/o as large an annual carry given reduced property taxes.

On the east coast you often see alpacas; their fur get harvested periodically.

Unfortunately these tricks are common in many states, especially in high tax states with wealthy residents trying to dodge taxes.

Hmm...I have this data, I'm going to double check. Need to ensure the linked twitter thread is referring to sales, and not profit. Easy to hid profits in farming (nothing dodgy about it either). No better, no worse than every other industry in America. They take advantage of the laws as they are written.

Yeah, I don't fault any individual for using tax breaks legitimately available to them. It's a failure of leadership for not closing loopholes.

He's giving away basically all of his money, and leaving comparatively little to his kids, $10 million I think. It's a ton of money, but a small enough amount that they could spend through it in a generation if they aren't careful. Apparently he finds the idea of passing on vast fortunes to be distasteful.

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