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Comment by cool_dude85 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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