Warren Buffet Giving Away Almost $40 Billion! (1 Viewer)

Warren Buffet Gives It Away

According to Fortune, the bulk of the money will go to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Man, hopefully with that kind of philanthropy we can see a couple of diseases wiped out in my lifetime.

Where do I sign up? One or two mill. would do me fine. After all I've contributed to his fortune through all the COKE I have bought. Come on Buffet....give back.

I'd like to get in on that as well.

i'm glad these guys are the ones with the money. i love to slam bill gates, but he's giving so much of his money away even now, he's doing great work. when i think about some of the guys like the oil tycoons who spend billions on palaces and cars, it's refreshing to see guys like gates and buffett doing the right thing, imo.

CJ

Coke is Buffett too? Damn... I didn't know that.

Lets have these guys give directly for biomedical research on diseases we have no cure for. THEN I will applaud them.

You have to have a very strong will to give away nearly your entire fortune for the betterment of mankind.

Can you imagine all of his advisors who are probably now in the hospital with heart conditions?!?!?!

The only thing is that I feel that if you give to charity no one but you should know about it, but with that kind of high profile person that would be very difficult.

I can't fault him for that at all.

I would venture to say that it is immoral for a person to amass that kind of money and not distribute it for some betterment. It is good to see those with this kind of wealth taking the right road.

I am not suggesting people should give over everything they have worked for, just doing something positive with some of what they have earned.

I sincerely applaud his humanitarian gesture. Anonymous or not, its hard to fault somebody who gives that much back to society. Truly inspiring!

Time for some applause? I think this certainly counts as donations towards finding cures.

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/nr/pu...challenges.htm

I heard a quote attributed to Buffet on the news this evening regarding bequeathing his wealth to his children...

"Leave enough money for your children so that they can do anything they want, but not enough so that they can do nothing."

Wonder if the kids are in line with that credo?

Never really thought much of the man before (not negative, not positive, just never really thought of him at all), but color me impressed. Especially with that quote Michael posted.

I've often thought about how much is "too much" to pass on to your kids. I'm in a much better financial position than my parents ever were (largely due to sacrifices they made in raising me), and because of some of the creature comforts we can afford (like a home theater ) I sometimes fear that my kids won't have monetary discipline. I want them to have the freedom Buffett was referring to -- the opportunity to pursue whatever calling they want, whether it's a musician, a doctor, teacher, etc., but also feel the self-worth of earning and managing their own money.

The way i heard it,whoever gets some money,they have to match it.

The cynics would argue...well, he's still rich

But they are missing the point. The man is donating about $40,000,000,000 to make the world a better place. That he still has (I don't know) $15,000,000,000 is a moot point. He's donating 11 figures.

When you are hungry, you want to eat. You don't care if the guy feeding you ate a steak last night. When you are sick, you don't care where the medicine comes from.

It's hugely generous, and the man has earned our thanks.

Just to clarify, I heard Buffet's kids will get around a billion dollars a piece. IMO, that takes nothing away from his donation which is beyond generous, but I don't think his quote "Leave enough money for your children so that they can do anything they want, but not enough so that they can do nothing" is very accurate.

Edit: I don't have a problem with him leaving his kids as much money as he wants since it is his money and his family. Just pointing out that his kids will have plenty of money to do absolutely nothing if they choose.

Bill Gates made a similiar pledge years ago too. Again, I'm sure they won't be on welfare

Would it have killed him to donate a few hundred million to Warner to film a live action Justice League movie that stars Christian Bale(Bats) and Brandon Routh(Supes)??

Seriously, Thats pretty charitable of the guy....Although I still like the JL movie.

And not one dime of it to me.

BTW, Buffet (like Gates) has already made the world a better place in the course of amassing all that money in the first place. How many millions of people around the world directly and indirectly owe their jobs to these two men? The personal computer revolution would not have happened if Steve Jobs and his boutique computers (which he thought people should be grateful that he was selling at any price) had been the only game in town or if IBM had come up with some similarly closed system. For all the bile poured out on them it was Bill Gates who empowered the clone makers to steal the PC biz out from under IBM and make it a semi-open system, and Gates who brought the ease of use features Jobs had previously stolen from Xerox to the IBM-compatible side of the street, thus creating a mass market in cheap home computers. Buffet's financial innovations have done nearly as much for businesses needing capital and for small investors needing expanding markets (not to mention what the various manufacturing and service businesses Buffet is invested in produce.)

These men had already contributed more to the common good in the course of getting to where they are now than all the self-congratulatory jerks in show business and politics ever have or ever will.

Regards,

Joe

Any critcisms I had of Warren Buffet were just taken to the cleaners, thoroughly washed/bleached/pressed, and now I have to admit I respect the guy. He always had it as a businessman and investor (I mean c'mon!), but this really shows personal character. It is not trivial for someone to give up 40 billion dollars for any reason, doubly so if a good chunk of their life was strictly dedicated to amassing that wealth.

Bravo Mr. Buffet (and the Gates), philanthropy is truly not dead.

Double Edged sword - Think about all the people who SHOULDN'T be using computers, but do because of their 'accessibility'.