Warren Buffett To Give Away Fortune

This is honestly incredible news. Warren Buffett who is the 2nd richest person in the world will start giving away 85% of his fortune or about $40 billion dollars. $30 billion will go to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The money will be split among 5 or 6 different organizations. This is an amazing move and will do wonders for charities around the world. Here is the full story at cnn.com

money.cnn.com...

Enjoy.

Hey Warren, Remember The Twenty Million Bucks I Lent Ya?

Here's hoping Mr. Buffett:

1. Is an avid member of ATS, and

2. Remembers his old buddy Majic.

Hey, no harm in asking.

Interesting that the two richest people in the world are now pouring so much money into the same charitable foundation.

On a conspiracy site like this, it's only natural to wonder what the underlying motive may be...



[edit on 6/25/2006 by Majic]

If I ever get out of here
Thought of giving it all away
To a registered charity
All I need is a pint a day
If I ever get out of here
If we ever get out of here

Originally posted by Indy
This is honestly incredible news. Warren Buffett who is the 2nd richest person in the world will start giving away 85% of his fortune or about $40 billion dollars. $30 billion will go to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The money will be split among 5 or 6 different organizations. This is an amazing move and will do wonders for charities around the world. Here is the full story at cnn.com

money.cnn.com...

Enjoy.

At the end of your life, you will be remembered not by how much you earned, but by how much you gave away.

So, I like characters like Buffet (shrude capitalist, know and play the game, that's for sure), but at the same time, knows full well, that he will not take it with him, in his coffin. And giving it to close relative, is not always a brite idea.

P.S.: And it does not even have to be money (if you don't have any).

Silly me- that fleeting thought that i could tap Warren for a couple of thousand just went out the window.

Its nice to dream. Anyway, that's a good thing he's doing. You cant take it with you.

Hmmmmmmmm.....

The 75-year-old Berkshire chairman and CEO had been expected to leave his vast holdings of Berkshire stock largely to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, begun by Buffett and his late wife. That foundation has given millions of dollars to hospitals, universities and teachers, as well as to Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights groups.
Yahoo news source

Population reduction supports. Funded hospitals, universities and teacher unions (the reporter failed to research that Buffett gave money to teacher unions, not teachers directly) instead of funding free clinics and free education for the poor and putting the money in the hands of the most corrupted, Marxist-indoctrinated unions in America.

arent donations to charity tax deductible?

I know that here in australia any donation over $2 is.

Thats really incredible, its got to be the largest single charitable donation ever no?

As an aside, if he is #2 in terms of raw wealth, and gates is #1, and he just gave the bulk of his fortune to gates, that secures gates' position no?

Wow, maybe this will start some sort of philanthropical competition amoung the 10 ten wealthiest?! Maybe Gates wil give away the bulk of his fortune to charity too (and, like Buffet, still like the high life, a win win situation really).

That's a big chunk of change. I hope Bill and him aren't trying to buy the developing world. Maybe they just got sick of global inaction on poverty related issues, plus you can't take it with you. It will be interesting to watch what develops from this, that's for sure.

37 Billion would have gone a long way in helping Americans get a health care system started. We could have used it here, where we have plenty of poor people.

Why the third world? To make sure the sweat shops over there stay healthy and keep those products pumping out of those factories? This happened after the Bilderburg meeting didnt it?

Kudos to Buffet and for all of the vilification of Gates he has set up the biggest charitable organization this planet has ever seen.

They actually are helping rather than the typical Red Cross crap of paying huge salaries and generating more money.

I wonder what you get a multi-billionaire for his birthday? It just hit me.


Anyhow, I heard somewhere that Bill Gates, his will states that every member of his close family gets $10m each (wife, kids, parents) and the rest is going into his charity, which is still a HUGE amount of money.

Anyhow, i thought that was nice of him, and decided to share it with the ATS community.

Originally posted by LoneGunMan
37 Billion would have gone a long way in helping Americans get a health care system started. We could have used it here, where we have plenty of poor people.

Why the third world? To make sure the sweat shops over there stay healthy and keep those products pumping out of those factories? This happened after the Bilderburg meeting didnt it?

I agree that this incredible amount of money could have easily helped initiate a health care system in the U.S. or, for that matter, it could have helped "America's poor". But, when compared to the genuine poverty elsewhere in the world, America's poor would actually seem wealthy.

To contribute such a large sum of money to the third world seems like the most logical thing to do. It would go a long way to actually helping to alleviate the suffering and hunger in places where it simply would make the most difference. What would be the reaction of a "poor" American who was given a fifty pound bag of rice? My guess would be disdain. On the other hand, a bag of rice given to someone in the third world would mean life for an entire family. Of course this example is quite a simplistic one. I would hope that the distribution of this charitable contribution would go towards efforts to help develop sustained means of feeding the poor in the third world such as technological aid for agriculture. Nevertheless, there is a massive difference between the "poor" in America and the poor in the third world.

When you give some homeless person a buck, do you need a 'foundation' to do it? No, you don't. And no billionaire needs one either. You will need one, however, to realize the substantial tax benefits that accrue. When you put your fortune into a non-taxable trust, it's technically no longer yours, but you can you still control how that money is used and invested. The catch is you have to give some tiny proportion away to charity; though that proportion is far lower than the rate at which it would have been taxed had the fortune remained in private hands. And usually far lower than the rate at which the foundation's assets accumulate. Which is why non-profits like the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, Carnegie Fund, etc. are worth far more than when they started to give away money.

The billionaire cannot legally spend the foundation's money on himself(other than the six-figure fee the foundation spends on the trustee's officers(him and his rich friends), the foundation's corporate jet he will need to travel to meetings, the retreat and yacht the foundations needs to do business, important meetings at exclusive resorts, etc) but by that time, Mr. Billionaire already has all the toys he needs, and the only thing left to buy is POLITICAL POWER, which he can do through all those assets he has 'given away'(but still controls). This whole scam was exposed all the way back in the 1930's by something called the Reese Commission.

Oh by the way, guess who gets to make up for all the tax dollars the gub'mint can no longer collect from Mr. Buffet?

Charity my ass!

[edit on 27-6-2006 by starviego]

[edit on 27-6-2006 by starviego]

starviego glad to see someone is smart

buffett's donation is a annual delivery of a certain amount of share's of berkshire hathaway based on a few conditions.

And as another reader (i think) said, bill and melinda gates charity , simply needs to donate ONLY 5% of their net assets worth per year, and as long as they do this, and are still alive Warren gives them the stock's to have or to "hold".

from wikipedia

The foundation invests the assets that it has not yet distributed, with the exclusive goal of maximizing its return on investment. As a result, its investments include companies that have been criticized for worsening poverty in the same developing countries where the Foundation is attempting to relieve poverty. These include companies that pollute heavily and pharmaceutical companies that do not sell into the developing world.[47] In response to press criticism, the foundation announced in 2007 a review of its investments to assess social responsibility.[48] It subsequently cancelled the review and stood by its policy of investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence company practices

well Bill and Melinda and Now warren (he is a trustee in the foundation now), a foundation which gives a HEAVY donation to

The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization .


And guess what Warren Buffet and other big time investor George Soros are betting heavily on in the future. the M F flu plague

finance.yahoo.com...'End-of-the-World'-Plays?tickers=GSK,SNY,MAPP,SVNT,JNJ,GENZ,BRK- B

this is not a good thing, but those that feel helpless contemplating the worst, throw up that wall of cognotive dissonance.

Now should any horrible diseases be created/ just happen and reduce populaton (club of rome) certain people will gain even more influence/ wealth /power.

now i should add that these people are not evil devils but they sure as heck dont care for you and me, and imo believe in survival of the (financially) fittest.

They have deluded themselves into forming clubs and groups who goals are to perpetuate the current hierarchy of power, using whatever skills are used in the field of business (as well as what they can get away with) including manipulation and deception.

They believe the masses need to be scared by global warming. They see the capitalistic structure of debt being a pyramid ponzi scheme which unfortunately most economies rest upon and like every other society built on debt and high interest in our world's historythis is not sustainable. hisotory shows these are not sustainable and the collapse of which certainly brings down living standards for "the masses" and could threaten to take not only society into chaos but tear their hierarchy down.

so they see in the future people's standard of livings going down , but they worry of the social backlash anger that a unhappy populace could inflict and they PRIORITIZE a need to manipulate and negotiate the masses into willfully doing so (accepting a lower standard of living) , and getting them to believe that treating mother nature's fever (that they caused) is one way to do so. The problem arises when not enough people take this "manipulated and exagerated threat seriously" it can be tempting to trigger a food or flu panic and associate this with Global warming to get people to see some deaths that then scare them straight so they can willfully "get with the agenda" and accept the lower standard of life, while the elite preserve their role in the hierarchy. In fairness to these elite figures with enourmous influence and wealth getting human beings (several billion) to operate on a high enough level where society is so "advanced" and complex is no easy feat, and no matter that we all take this for granted.

Behind the scenes life is not the fairytale thay we are often sold by the media. Behind the scenes is corruption, death, poverty, sex-trade, and a group of people who understand and are willing to make the difficult decisions to put in Harms/ diseases way a few million in order to scare/herd society into the direction where the infrastructure has been built in order to perpetuate the current system of power. If not morally bankrupt these elitiest's may delude themselves into thinking this sacrifice is for the benefit of the rest who would be themselves theatened should society delve into chaos.



[edit on 20-4-2008 by cpdaman]

Thats so cool to hear. But for the Record, Buffet is the richest person in the world, Gates is 3rd behind Buffet and some Mexican telecom guy.

The thing about Gates giving only 10 mil to each family member and the rest to charity is true. Also, before Buffet's wife passed away, She spent a few years of her life simply reading people letters that said how bad their life was going and why they needed money, and if she liked the story, she wrote them a check. Whether or not half the people ever actually needed the money or not is beyond me, but she did it. Also, Arnold Schwarzenegger makes around $100,000 a year as the govenor, but he doesnt accept a penny of it, it all goes to a charity (we all know hes already loaded from the films anyhow).

Ive always said that if i ever became a multi millionaire, i would donate most of it.

EDIT: Wow, that Bill Gates statment was written by me, so i replied to my own post haha. I had no idea this was even an old Thread, no wonder everyone thought WB was 2nd richest. Why was the thread ressurected? its 2 years old.

[edit on 4/21/2008 by Schmidt1989]

I dont know, while a lot of materialistic people are guessing why he is choosing to do this, and speculating on the agenda behind it, I feel my heart and it would be a big unloading perhaps for the man.

Hope he decides to give college scholarships too.