
“People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them,” Gates, who turns 70 later this year, wrote. “There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people.”
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Gates announced on Thursday that he now plans to distribute “virtually all” of his wealth — around $200 billion, he estimates — within the next 20 years, before shuttering the [Gates] foundation on December 31, 2045.
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Over the next 20 years, the Gates Foundation will focus on three main goals: ending preventable deaths of moms and babies, eradicating deadly infectious diseases and lifting hundreds of millions of people around the world out of poverty.
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Gates accused fellow billionaire Elon Musk of “killing the world’s poorest children” because of his work at the Department of Government Efficiency cutting US international aid programs. In an event in New York on Thursday announcing the commitment, Gates said he met with Trump in February to express his concerns, in particular, about cuts to USAID.
CNN
I guess that fell on deaf ears. I wonder if that spurred his decision to handle his wealth in this way.
Gates wants to accelerate the foundation’s work on global health and equity initiatives and hopes the move will set a model for other billionaires, he said in a blog post published Thursday morning. The pledge builds on Gates’ track record of promoting philanthropy. He, along with ex-wife French Gates and Warren Buffett, launched the Giving Pledge in 2010 to encourage wealthy individuals to donate most of their fortunes to charitable causes either during their lifetimes or in their wills. It now has more than 240 signatories.
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The $200 billion he expects to give away through the foundation over the next 20 years will come from its existing $77 billion endowment and his personal wealth, including any earnings from ongoing business investments such as TerraPower, the nuclear power company he founded.
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The announcement comes weeks after Microsoft, now worth more than $3 trillion, marked 50 years since it was founded by Gates. “It feels right that I celebrate the milestone by committing to give away the resources I earned through the company,” he wrote.
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