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Re:20 years to give away virtually all my wealth by reaperducer on Thursday May 08, 2025 @03:37PM (#43930434)
Exactly. He doesn't need 20 years. That's just him trying to draw attention to himself.

If he was really serious about giving away his money, he could write a single check to the Red Cross || Doctors Without Borders || insert charity here and in five minutes be done with it.

The world doesn't need more vanity charities. It needs its existing charities to be better funded.

Re:20 years to give away virtually all my wealth by SteveNuts on Thursday May 08, 2025 @03:58PM (#43930670)
That much wealth could probably fund every food bank in the country indefinitely, even at extremely conservative returns.
Re:20 years to give away virtually all my wealth by JumpCrisscross on Thursday May 08, 2025 @04:39PM (#43931076)
> That much wealth could probably fund every food bank in the country indefinitely

That seems like an incredibly stupid way to spend money that has been eradicating diseases and saving lives in countries where food insecurity isn’t a choice.

Re:20 years to give away virtually all my wealth by jkestner on Thursday May 08, 2025 @05:12PM (#43931408)
Food insecurity is a choice in the US? I suppose yes, if you mean it's the government's choice: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/food-banks-usda-cuts-im...
Re:20 years to give away virtually all my wealth by JumpCrisscross on Thursday May 08, 2025 @06:07PM (#43931860)
> Food insecurity is a choice in the US? I suppose yes, if you mean it's the government's choice

That’s what I mean. Like the housing shortage, food insecurity is trivially solved if voters cared about it. We don’t at almost every political level.

Re:20 years to give away virtually all my wealth by therealdrag0 on Friday May 09, 2025 @02:35AM (#43934337)
Do food banks lack funding? In my region they often struggle to give away food before throwing it out. Even the poor in America don’t starve.
Re:20 years to give away virtually all my wealth by jncfhnb on Thursday May 08, 2025 @04:10PM (#43930783)
The Red Cross is not equipped to make effective use of all that money at once
Re:20 years to give away virtually all my wealth by PaulRobinson on Thursday May 08, 2025 @04:31PM (#43930987)
Says who? They can (ethically) invest it and fund programs off a 5%-8% or better return. They can find new things to do. They can donate some of it into health research that is currently under-funded.
Re:20 years to give away virtually all my wealth by JumpCrisscross on Thursday May 08, 2025 @04:39PM (#43931067)
> They can (ethically) invest it and fund programs off a 5%-8% or better return

They can also lose or squander it. One of the Gates Foundation’s value adds is monitoring.

Re:20 years to give away virtually all my wealth by 2muchcoffeeman on Thursday May 08, 2025 @05:16PM (#43931455)
And with such a sum of money they would surely have to hire staff to work all that out. Can thy do that?

I’ve tried volunteering at certain orgs before, I filled out forms and literally they rejected me because they had no more staff to organise and oversee more volunteers.

If your solution is just invest it, well, the Gates Foundation may as well hang on to it (you think you can do better job than Buffet?) and setup a system to dole it out.

If the org has to find new uses for it, surely the Gates Foundation is in a better position to get that done?

Re:20 years to give away virtually all my wealth by jncfhnb on Friday May 09, 2025 @08:37AM (#43936063)
These are things that the Gates Foundation does currently and the Red Cross does not (at the scale of the Gates Foundation).
Re:20 years to give away virtually all my wealth by kurthr on Thursday May 08, 2025 @03:58PM (#43930666)
I'd be more willing to give this idea credit, if the total annual budget for the ICRC ($2B) and Doctors Without Borders ($1.6B) was more than a few percent of the total amount being proposed (>$100B invested or ~$8B/yr for 20 years).

You'd require those organizations to more than double in size to use the funding provided. That's not a good plan. Bluntly, his plan is better than yours.

I've got no love for Gates, but are you just trying to draw attention to yourself? What's your agenda? You're the one making a fairly outrageous unsupported claims.