Bill Gates arrives for a press conference to launch the World Polio Eradication initiative at the Berlaymont headquarters from the European Commission in Brussels on October 11, 2023.
Simon Wohlfahrt | AFP | Getty images
Billionaire Bill Gates announced Thursday that he will double his charitable work to $ 200 billion over the next 20 years.
In a blog article, the Microsoft The co-founder wrote that he was motivated by the many challenges that the world is faced, such as children’s health and climate change, as well as the late warning by Andrew Carnegie of the telesaurization of wealth.
“People will say a lot about me when I die, but I am determined that” he died rich “will not be one of them,” wrote Gates. “There are too many urgent problems to solve so that I can keep resources that could be used to help people.”
Gates is currently the richest fifth in the world with a fortune of $ 168 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires index. The commitment of $ 200 billion assumes that the endowment of its charity will increase through investments.
The Gates Foundation, founded by Gates and its ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, in 2000, has already given more than $ 100 billion. After Bill Gates gave “almost all” his wealth, the foundation will close at the end of 2045, he said.
Gates is one of the rare billionaires to publicly intensify their charitable gifts, because non -profit organizations and universities are reduced by federal financing cuts. Despite his increase in donations, he said that philanthropists could not cover foreign aid cuts of several billion dollars by the United States and other rich countries.
“The United States, the United Kingdom, France and other countries around the world reduce their aid budgets by tens of billions of dollars. And no philanthropic organization-even a size of the Gates Foundation-can invent the Gulf in the funding that emerges at the moment,” he wrote. “We do not know if the richest countries in the world will continue to defend its poorest people.”
In an interview with The Financial Times, Gates criticized Elon Musk for his role in reducing foreign aid in the United States. In February, the so-called Department of Musk government efficiency actually closed the American agency for international development. The Federal Agency spent $ 42.5 billion in 2023, according to government data, which provided vital assistance, including health care, drinking water and food around the world.
“The image of the richest man in the world killing the poorest children in the world is not pretty,” Gates at the Financial Times told.
In early March, the agency estimated that the cuts would have disastrous consequences, including 1 million children with severe acute malnutrition which are not treated and up to 166,000 additional malaria deaths.
Gates, then-female and Warren Buffett, founded the commitment of donations in 2010 as a commitment to the richest people in the world to give more than half of their wealth in their lives or their will. French Gates has since left the Gates Foundation but has its own philanthropic organization.
Musk has signed the commitment of donations. Gates told New York Times that he didn’t know if Musk would follow.
“Don’s commitment-an unusual aspect of it that you can wait until you die and always make it. So who knows? He could continue to be a great philanthrope,” he said before pointing Musk’s involvement in foreign help cuts.
Musk gave less than 1% of his wealth, according to Forbes. The publication estimates its donations outside – gifts that have been paid, not only promised or parked in a foundation – at 620 million dollars during its life until 2023.
