Is Bill Gates the Carnegie of our times/?

[strathmore]

Just read this article

‘The strain is the worst of my lifetime’: how Bill Gates is staying optimistic

It confirms that Bill Gates is putting another $20bn into his charitable foundation. Wow. You don’t see Bezos or Musk or the Waltons doing that (let alone any of the Russian billionaires).
His foundation focuses on health and wellbeing of the people of poorer nations. Vaccinations and food production. Incredible work.
I’m constantly staggered by the ignorant criticism of Gates. I’m even more staggered that the vitriol Gates gets is not directed at the other billionaires who clearly have no sense of decency when it comes to their riches.

[butterscotch]

You’ll have to remind me of what Carnegie did.

I agree somewhat about Gates. He’s getting a lot of crazy flak.

“There have been a few cases where I’ve run into people in public where they are yelling at me that I’m putting chips into people and that’s kind of strange to see: ‘Wow, those people really exist, it’s not just some robot sending out crazy messages.’

“It was quite a phenomenon; here in the US, it focused on myself and Tony Fauci, and internationally it was more just me because they didn’t know who Tony was, he really missed out on that!

But he has a hard sell. He’s trying to convince people with stretched budgets to invest in poor countries because high tides raises all boats. When people are struggling to get their own boat afloat, that almost sounds like an affront.

He may have the bigger picture right (and I need more convincing of that) but it’s hard to get people to do the right thing.

“Which is somewhat different to helping with the long-term Africa productivity crisis, so the strain on budgets, particularly European budgets, is greater today than anytime in my lifetime.”

But cutting back on health spending, he believes, would be “tragic”.

[strathmore]

@butterscotch

You’ll have to remind me of what Carnegie did.

This is off the top of my head but my recollection of Carnegie is:
Born in Scotland, to a fairly poor family. Went to the US and made is fortune in steel. By fortune, I mean the richest man alive. Estimated at $300bn in todays money. So quite comfortable. Determined to give it all away to good causes. So many of the public libraries in the UK are Carnegie libraries. Also donated huge sums to universities, research, technology and world peace. Quite a man.