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Warren Buffett gives away his fortune

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David123

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Hi Guys/Gals


Im wondering what sort of impact this will share on the USA sharemarket since hes worth billions...


Discuss?


(i cant find the link from ABC news about story) maybe sumone else can find it.

cheers
 
Re: Warren Buffet...Intending to slowly sell shares for charity

As the market trades Trillions each day wont be any more than a minor ripple.

If he dumped a few Billion in a few stocks tomorrow youd get a wave for a day.
 
He might not dump the stock, but rather transfer the assetts... and therefore ongoing income to his prefered charity. Just a thought.

Nice one Warren. Hope it is used wisely.
 
Some of you might remember me posting up on the forum the other week that warren buffett (or something about him) was about to be on the Oprah show.
It ended up being his daughter, however it was still very interesting.... she had dreds (hair) and everything. She spoke about Warren and how he still lives a fairly low key life in the same old street/town. She also mentioned that he was going to give his fortune to charity....
I almost fell over :eek:

Good man!
 
So, WB is a modern-day Robin Hood then? I hope he supports real charites, no those ones that spend 90% of the donations on "administration".
 
Well, WB has given most of his donations to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. A wonderful decision!!! He is an astute investor, but also an astute giver. I applaude and admire his wise decision - others may disagree. :2twocents
 
Good on the man. I might be TA but always enjoyed reading his annual address. The man is very long on good sense.

He is going to transfer the shares over a number of years. They are required to spend all of the money every year though. If they have a problem I'd be willing to take a million or two.

I don't think that there will be much waste and overhead with Bill at the helm.

I like what Warren said about leaving the money to his kids. He said that he will leave them enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing.

MIT
 
I have always held the notion that the wealthy people know how not to be frivolous with their money( ie hate parting with it) ,and how the strugglers /battlers ,have no option but to spend their money. Warren Buffett goes against this thought of mine .
I personally think there is much more behind this ,possibly he is airing some dirty linen out here.
Lastly a funny thought of mine is ,should it have been more ? aaaah damn it ,its 30th June !
 
Warren for a capitalist has always been liberal (small l) in his views. I think that when you get past your first 100million money must purely be a score card. Buffet is close enough to the end to realise that he needs to start planning. He doesn't want to give it all to his kids so he is going to give it away. Gatesy is the same. Even though he is a lot younger, he wants to retire in 2 years and is progressively giving money to his charity. I remember years ago when he was worth around 2 billion that a billion dollars is infinite money in that you could never spend it in your life time.

MIT
 
generous blokes, some of these atheists ;)
Buffet and Gates for instance.

Mind you , their software sucks (in the case of Gates anyway)

http://atheism.about.com/b/a/257812.htm

Warren Buffet: Atheist Philanthropist?
People sometimes say, or just imply, that atheists don't do charitable work like religious theists. This is supposed to demonstrate how much better theistic religion is than irreligious atheism. While it is true that there aren't any atheist "churches" running local soup kitchens, that doesn’t mean that there aren't any atheists doing charity work ”” some of whom are so prominent, they are missed.

The Jewish Atheist quotes from the Celebrity Atheist List:
“He did not subscribe to his family’s religion. Even at a young age he was too mathematical, too logical, to make the leap of faith. He adopted his father’s ethical underpinnings, but not his belief in an unseen divinity.” --from Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, by Roger Lowenstein (Doubleday, 1995), page 13.

Unless Warren Buffet believes in a seen divinity, or some divinity that is completely unlike whatever divinity his father believed in, it sounds like Warren Buffet doesn’t believe in any divinity at all. Of course, if he doesn’t believe in any gods, this makes Warren Buffet an atheist. Warren Buffet, if you remember, is giving away 85% of his USD $40 billion fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for the charitable work they do. Notice that he isn’t giving it to any religious foundations and he isn’t even giving to secular groups, like the United Way.

The Foundation, which is already worth USD $30 billion, was founded by Bill Gate ”” who may also be an atheist, according to the Celebrity Atheist List:
Click to expand...
Gates was interviewed November 1995 on PBS by David Frost. Below is the transcript with minor edits.

Frost: Do you believe in the Sermon on the Mount?

Gates: I don’t. I’m not somebody who goes to church on a regular basis. The specific elements of Christianity are not something I’m a huge believer in. There’s a lot of merit in the moral aspects of religion. I think it can have a very very positive impact.

Frost: I sometimes say to people, do you believe there is a god, or do you know there is a god? And, you’d say you don’t know?

Gates: In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don’t know if there’s a god or not, but I think religious principles are quite valid.
It’s interesting that he thinks “religious principles are quite valid,” but he isn’t a believer in the Sermon on the Mount. Usually, when an irreligious non-Christian recognizes any validity to Christianity, it’s usually through some of the principles in the Sermon on the Mount. I wonder what Bill Gates had in mind?
Click to expand...
Gates was profiled in a January 13, 1996 TIME magazine cover story. Here are some excerpts compiled by the Drudge Report:

“Isn’t there something special, perhaps even divine, about the human soul?” interviewer Walter Isaacson asks Gates “His face suddenly becomes expressionless,” writes Isaacson, “his squeaky voice turns toneless, and he folds his arms across his belly and vigorously rocks back and forth in a mannerism that has become so mimicked at MICROSOFT that a meeting there can resemble a round table of ecstatic rabbis.”

“I don’t have any evidence on that,” answers Gates. “I don’t have any evidence of that.”

He later states, “Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There’s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.”
So, Bill Gates doesn’t go to church on a regular basis, doesn’t believe much in the specific elements of Christianity, doesn’t think there is any evidence for souls, doesn’t know that there is any god, and doesn’t consider religion very efficient. Bill Gates is definitely irreligious and is definitely agnostic. He may or may not be an atheist, but he is also definitely not the sort of person whom religious believers have in mind when they claim that religion is necessary for charitable work. Bill Gates is thus an effective demonstration that charity is possible without religion playing any role whatsoever.
Click to expand...
 
Come on - it isn't hard to see that unless you want your kids to end up on the scrap heap, giving them billions of dollars each is a bad idea. In which case, what else do you do with your money? Makes little difference whether they are Christian, or religious, or otherwise. Just common sense.

ALso, just because they are two of the three richest people in the world, doesn't make them any better at giving than the rest of us. Check the rest of the multi-billionaires in the world and see what they are going to do with their billions after they stop amassing more - one would imagine that most will be giving it away?? Be interesting to see anyway.
 
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