Bill Gates says he won't die a rich man. Don't believe him
A picture is worth a thousand words: Gates has been boasting about his generosity for years, but notice how how his personal wealth has skyrocketed during his tenure as a philanthropist? Now Gates is launching a new PR campaign around yet another promise to give away all of his money. While virtually every journalist covering this story—and that appears to be most mainstream outlets—are buying what Gates is selling, I’m not. Read on:
On the 25th anniversary of the Gates Foundation, Bill Gates has generated a massive PR hit—-by announcing that he’s going to give away his entire wealth over the next 20 years. This $200 billion, he tells us, will be used to fight infectious diseases, poverty, and preventable deaths of women and children.
And Gates’s surge in generousity will mean that the Gates Foundation will formally close at the end of 2045.
These are big announcements, widely covered—and praised—by the news media. But they are also complete bullshit.
Bill Gates’s entire philanthropic career has been organized around ambitious, forward-looking goals and announcements—-that don’t deliver. Two decades ago, Gates’s said he knew how to “revolutionize” African agriculture through philanthropy. Independent research shows that in the nations in which Gates’s works, we’re going backwards on many metrics. More than that, farmer organizations across the African continent are calling on the foundation to pay reparations for all the harm it has done.
Across all of the foundation’s work—from public education to public health—we see the same trend. Bill Gates makes grand announcements, accompanied by huge financial donations. Journalists, as the current news cycle illustrates well, go into stenography mode, exalting Gates as the unimpeachable humanitarian. And when Gates’s charitable crusades fail, and cause all kinds of collateral damage and opportunity costs, journalists tend not to notice.
Gates deserves a special level of scrutiny around his promise to empty the vault—to give away all of his enormous wealth. Gates says he is determined to not ‘die a rich man.’
Mark my words: Bill Gates, when he dies, will be extraordinarily wealthy. He may find ways to move huge sums of money to his children (or maybe a future spouse), but that’s not really ‘giving away’ money, is it? That’s simply enriching and expanding his legacy, and creating a new era of aristocrats.
Gates’s eldest daughter reportedly lives in a $50 million penthouse in New York. His son, meanwhile, is apparently a much sought-after political donor. His youngest daughter appears to be the most public-facing of the three, using her wealth and power exactly as her parents do—-as a kind of philanthropist-cum-investor-cum-political-advocate.
Arguably, Gates’s children are already worthy of the title of aristocrats. Certainly we should expect Gates to transfer massive sums to them—-probably in ways that we cannot fully track or trace—-over the decades ahead.
Just because Gates says the foundation will close down in 2045, or that he will have given away 99% of his wealth by that time, does not mean that will actually happen. To be sure, billionaires have a tendency to change their minds.
Warren Buffett waited until the ripe old age of 94 to suddenly announce radical changes to his wealth planning. Instead of giving his currently estimated $160 billion fortune to the Gates Foundation, as he had always indicated he would, he suddenly decided to give his wealth to his children—-specifically, to a vague philanthropic project run by his children.
Is it really that difficult to imagine Gates doing the same (or similar)? Deciding that the Gates Foundation is just too important to shutter? That his children are uniquely qualified to run it? Or that they deserve to have their own billionaire philanthropies?
For 25 years, Gates has fooled us into seeing him as a good billionaire, giving away all of his money in a highly effective manner to save lives and drive social progress. It’s been an enormously successful PR campaign, but it’s now time that we understand that’s all it is, PR.
Gates is not a philanthropist. He’s an oligarch—-and one of the most powerful, least scrutinized, least regulated political actors in the world. What Gates is doing through philanthropy is not giving away money but buying influence—donating money to political advocacy groups, researchers, think tanks, and journalists who can amplify his narrow, wrong-headed (and often self-serving) solutions to big social problems.
We should not wait 20 years for Gates to voluntarily, maybe shutter the Gates Foundation. We should be finding ways, in the here and now, to regulate, or dismantle, this harmful, undemocratic project.