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Ok, lets look at this. A billion dollars is a 1000 millions. That means, with no investments at all, you could spend 1,000,000 bucks per year for a thousand years before you went broke. So, if you have 60 billion, as Gates is supposed to have, then you could pretty much dump 30 billion and not be hurt by the loss.

Even if you have a paltry billion and dumb 500,000,000 you would still be pretty set for life even without investing in a thing.

Before you get the wrong idea, I am all for people getting rich. I wish I had the brains and drive to make a few billion. However, when billionaires claim they are doing something great you need to put it in perspective.

I believe they will not really give their money away but will set up a trust of some kind so they still have control over it.

“Even if you have a paltry billion and dumb 500,000,000 you would still be pretty set for life even without investing in a thing.”
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Except that there is ZERO guarantee that a loaf of bread won’t cost a million dollars in two or three years! At the time the sixteenth amendment became effective people were lulled into submission by the promise that it would only apply to people earning over five thousand dollars a year. Very few expected to ever earn anywhere near that amount.

The income tax was passed in 1913, the very next year Henry Ford turned things upside down by paying employees FIVE DOLLARS A DAY. To qualify to earn forty percent of the threshold for the income tax employees had to show that they could be trusted not to waste this huge income on “riotous living”.

“On January 5, 1914, Henry Ford announced a minimum five dollar salary for all elegible employees working eight-hour days. It was conceived as a profit-sharing plan which would motivate Ford employees to adopt efficient and productive habits at both the factory and the home.”

“The Ford Sociological Department was created to administer the plan by sending field agents into the community to visit workers at home to determine the quality of their home lives. It was believed that influencing the behavior of employees at home would turn them into better workers. All employees over 22 were eligible for the plan, which included a shortened work day from nine to eight hours in addition to the opportunity to earn five dollars per day. In order for a worker to be eligible to receive his share of the company’s profits he “must show himself to be sober, saving, steady, industrious and must satisfy the...staff that his money will not be wasted in riotous living.” Workers who didn’t comply risked being payed half as much for performing the same work as their co-workers, and could eventually lose their jobs.”