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.
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.
He's still worth a shitload of money just by being him. His name, brand, network, intelligence, and the cache of knowing him are worth a lot of money. That's wealth that is inherent to him, thus can't really be given away, and could be tapped at anytime.
He could walk away from everything tomorrow, and be a millionaire the next day by just asking for money. He could probably be a billionaire again in a decade if he tried.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
