11 ms·

Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

153 points by mike2477 10y ago

mike2477 10y ago
Hey there, data geeks! I am doing research on the rise of social entrepreneurship and got sidetracked by what a badass Bill Gates is. I found out that his foundation is 4x larger than the next largest private foundation in the US. And if you add up the wealth pledged as a part of The Giving Pledge it is 10x larger than that. I compiled The Giving Pledge data on my own by researching net worths of each pledgee. Planning to put the data on the Wikipedia page shortly. I found the other data from the following sources (see direct links in article): Foundation Center The Giving Pledge NP Trust GBD Compare AVAC Happy to answer any questions and would love feedback.
- brent_noorda 10y ago
  The Gates data is inspirational. Glad you put that in perspective. However, we need to see more data on the impact of the Giving Pledge, and whether it has led to more giving. In your chart, the assumption is that this money is more than would have been given without the Pledge. Also, the comparison to amount pledged (most of which will eventually make its way into foundations that will spread the money on their own time schedules) with the amount donated in 2014 is not a telling comparison. Consider, for example, my billionaire mother. Before she died, a couple of years ago, we discussed whether she should be joining The Giving Pledge. She decided she didn't want to be seen in the company of billionaires who had pledged to give away only 50% of their money. "Why would a billionaire want to keep half of their money, anyway? What could someone possibly do, personally, with half a billion dollars? I don't want to join a group like that!" To understand the impact of The Giving Pledge we'd need to know how much would have been given without the pledge? Does the Pledge provide peer pressure to give away more than they would have otherwise given? Or does this pledge lead to less giving, because it makes billionaires feel that it's morally OK to give away just 50%? Do you have the comparison data to answer these questions?
  - mike2477 10y ago
    Unfortunately I don't think that data is available. But from what I understand it has led to more giving. See this article - http://fortune.com/2010/06/16/the-600-billion-challenge/ http://fortune.com/2010/06/16/the-600-billion-challenge/
- vezycash 10y ago
  How about a comparison with historical philanthropists like Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie in constant currency?
  - eru 10y ago
    Or as ratio of nominal GDP at the time.
- tyrael71 10y ago
  Is there anywhere I could access/read the research, or is it just the information you have on that blog?
muntac 10y ago
The size of the Gates Foundation is only impressive if you believe public policy should be disproportionately influenced by the whims of a few rich individuals. Philanthropists may not be motivated by profit like lobbyists, but that doesn't mean they understand the needs of the people any better. For issues related to relatively concrete sciences like medicine this matters less. But in areas such as education for example, the role of the Gates foundation has been disastrous. https://theintercept.com/2015/11/25/how-the-gates-foundation-reflects-the-good-and-the-bad-of-hacker-philanthropy/ https://theintercept.com/2015/11/25/how-the-gates-foundation...
- solipsism 10y ago
  Disastrous? Isn't that a bit hyperbolic? Reading the article, perhaps "ineffective" could be argued. Maybe their support of Common Core and such did more harm than good, but they've pivoted based on evidence. They're trying their best to do good with their money. This is more than can be said for most billionaires. Are you suggesting it would be better if all billionaires simply kept their money in the family and didn't try to help others? Any bold investment carries a risk of failure. Does that mean no one should make bold investments, to you?
  - mike2477 10y ago
    Amen.
- pjscott 10y ago
  If you're right, then I'd say that it's still trivially outweighed by the Gates Foundation's efforts on disease reduction. Each billion dollars spent fighting malaria buys a whole lot of indulgences.
  - visarga 10y ago
    Also, he is giving back the money he took, and then more. That also buys him a lot of forgiveness.
    - 10y ago
octref 10y ago
More and more I feel the best data visualization for most scenario is just bar, line, and pie charts. They need no explanation and communicate information effectively. Too many visualizations that are fun and fancy but convey ideas poorly.
- csours 10y ago
  Pie Charts are the Worst [1]. In this context, a single pie chart is OK. I agree bar and line charts should usually be sufficient. http://www.businessinsider.com/pie-charts-are-the-worst-2013-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/pie-charts-are-the-worst-2013...
  - eru 10y ago
    Scatter plots can be decent, too.
swampthinker 10y ago
Website needs some work for mobile view: http://i.imgur.com/vlwi2hh.jpg http://i.imgur.com/vlwi2hh.jpg
- nathancahill 10y ago
  Yes, and the Subscribe popup breaks it on mobile.
- mike2477 10y ago
  Definitely needs some work! Appreciate the feedback. Just launched the blog two weeks ago. Working out the kinks :)
dharmon 10y ago
If you put aside the "M$ was evil and he is just atoning" arguments, Gates is a huge inspiration, at least for me. This guy finds problems that he's passionate about and attacks them with such ferocity that it is truly awe inspiring. I'm mildly embarrassed to admit it, but he was my childhood hero through the 90's. Even later when everyone thought Jobs was the bee's knees, I wanted to be as effective as Gates.
- amelius 10y ago
  Also worth mentioning is that, over the years, Microsoft has published an impressive amount of research, whereas (e.g.) Apple has always been disappointingly closed.
  - ignoramous 10y ago
    I think Apple revolutionized HCI with the Mac and then with the iPod and now with iOS. They continue to push the bar in industrial design. They're contributing in different ways. I'd not belittle their achievements. Design principles that Apple has long been following are the norm today. Every tech company has done their part. I don't like this constant bickering, I wish people were more accepting and just saw the positive side of things more often.
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    With the ironic effect that I and a friend were often disappointed by the lack of innovation in MS products (that changed a bit recently).
- prodigal_erik 10y ago
  If we put aside that the money isn't his, he kneecapped better products with such ferocity that a generation later our industry is still struggling to make up for the lost progress.
  - philliphaydon 10y ago
    The FDA, CDC, American Government, and Patent System, have all crippled progress far more than Bill Gates or Microsoft ever did.
throwaway_xx9 10y ago
Before you lionize a convicted monopolist ... 1) The USA tax code encourages wealthy people to create foundations. The money in the foundation is still controlled by them and has tax benefits. 2) In other countries, wealthy people are taxed to provide social services like education and healthcare. In the USA, they're not - the capital gains rate of 15% is basically a round-off error compared to 90% last century. 3) Foundations work very well for tax planning. Who knows what their efficiency is as charity?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- the_economist 10y ago
  The capital gains tax rate is not 15%. It is 20%, plus a 3.8% Obamacare tax. So Bill Gates is probably paying 23.8% on investment profits. Here in California there is a lovely 13.3% tax, bringing the total to 37.1%. Bill Gates is a resident of Washington, though, so he doesn't pay that. You can't blame Washington for not having a state income tax, though. Their tax laws seem to have worked out very well for them in attracting companies like Microsoft and Amazon.
- strommen 10y ago
  "Convicted monopolist" really doesn't have much of a ring to it. Especially when the only thing his company was ever found guilty of was bundling a web browser with the OS...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - mcguire 10y ago
    How many copies of Windows have you paid for but never used? I have been running Linux on my personal machines since the early '90s. I try not to think about it.
    - WalterBright 10y ago
WalterBright 10y ago
Bill Gates was a tough competitor, to be sure, and you had to bring your A game when dealing with Microsoft. But the complaints that he was 'evil', when you drill down to see what the actual complaint is, just seem to fade away. Most of it seems to be simply envy. See "In Search of Stupidity" by Chapman. P.S. I was in the industry throughout that era, and competed directly against Microsoft in programming languages.
- visarga 10y ago
  > Most of it seems to be simply envy. For me it was frustration with Windows, until I gave it up back, in 2004. I used to rage at it's instability and difficult reinstallation process when various device drivers were involved. I would never have imagined I will have such a positive view on Bill Gates a decade later. He's smart because, after spending half his life amassing a fortune, he is now spending the other half of his life spending it. Money is just numbers sitting in an account if you don't do anything with it.
  - ekianjo 10y ago
    > He's smart because, after spending half his life amassing a fortune, he is now spending the other half of his life spending it So it does not matter how the fortune was amassed in the first place? As long as you spend some of it and polish your PR image later on ? People forget/forgive pretty fast, for me that's the only thing I retain from this story.
    - tunesmith 10y ago
      I don't care so much in his case, but the problem is more that it doesn't scale - if someone is able to make money through means such as those, there's no guarantee that they'll give it back in such a "socially good" way - the odds are rather against it. But I think it's silly to put an asterisk on the good he's actually doing.
  - okasaki 10y ago
    His fortune went from 45B in 2008 to 75B in 2015. Hell of a way to spend money! edit: B, not M. Thanks.
known 10y ago
I'd request Gates to contribute to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Development_Goals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Development_Goals
- williadc 10y ago
  They're on it. http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Speeches/2013/03/High-Level-Dialogue-on-Health-in-the-Post-2015-Development-Agenda http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Speeches/2013/03...
k_lander 10y ago
i'm curious as to whether it is more effective for an individual to hold a contribute-as-you go style to philantrophy vs a make-money-first-then-donate strategy like gates did. Given that most people aren't going to be billionaires, I would guess the former but maybe someone who has looked at the data can provide some insight.
- TheLogothete 10y ago
  Donating money if you are not (filthy) rich is foolish. Those money would be MUCH better spent on you. If you want to help, do it with personal efforts.
  - eru 10y ago
    What makes you think so?
    - TheLogothete 10y ago
      Because your money would not be spent efficiently.
      - eru 10y ago
        I don't get it. If you are looking for pure efficiency, most people on here are much better working in IT and giving money to efficient charities. If by personal efforts you mean helping out in a soup kitchen or flying to Detroit to help struggling kids---that's pretty inefficient. Or did you mean something else?
lazaroclapp 10y ago
I was surprised to not find a comparison between those private charitable contributions and the money spent by nations all over the world on similar programs. Unless I am missing something, it would look to me like the Giving Pledge, all together, spent more money on the fight against AIDS in the last 10 years than the U.S. government did [0]. If that is true, then there are still the questions left of who spent money more efficiently, whether and which other uses of taxes are more important than the fight against AIDS, as well as the general philosophical question of whether we should allow a few individuals to control how a huge proportion of the resources of the world are used, and under which circumstances. But beyond all those delta-from-the-ideal-world questions, it is indeed a pretty huge amount of good likely being done there. [0] http://kff.org/global-health-policy/fact-sheet/u-s-federal-funding-for-hivaids-the-presidents-fy-2016-budget-request/ http://kff.org/global-health-policy/fact-sheet/u-s-federal-f...
zurn 10y ago
I was expecting to see a comparison to public sector development programs in countries with bigger government. For example USA does only 0.22% of GNI in foreign aid compared to the 0.7% target and 0.3-0.5% realized in its cohort of industrialized countries. (http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/press/07.htm http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/press/07.htm)
sametmax 10y ago
Don't you find very suspicous that since the past year, we get regularly those stories comming up in reddit, imgur, hacker news, etc ? Think about it: there are a ton of nice people doing nice things around. Even tech people. But you hear only about Bill. The Gate Foundation existed for a long time. It actually paid my bills 7 years ago (wasting half of the money before reaching me, BTW), and we didn't have this incredible "yeah, best man ever" crazy minset going around. It smells a lot like well done PR, with a lot of money behind to give a better image of the man, targetting social networks by subtils channels. And if you need PR and pays to much for it, you probably DON'T deserve the praises.
- forgetsusername 10y ago
  >It actually paid my bills 7 years ago (wasting half of the money before reaching me, BTW) Maybe you should have taken the moral high ground and declined the money, rather than taking it, criticizing how much was "wasted", then bad-mouthing it on a public forum. Talk about a sense of entitlement.
  - sametmax 10y ago
    Yes, I made a bad decision. I don't pretend to be a wonderful person. However, I can see people are trying very hard to make sure people think Gate is. And he is not.
mcguire 10y ago
I was just pondering Gate's legacy the other day. While I was blowing away another copy of Windows that I paid for but never booted.

153 points by mike2477 10y ago

Hey there, data geeks! I am doing research on the rise of social entrepreneurship and got sidetracked by what a badass Bill Gates is. I found out that his foundation is 4x larger than the next largest private foundation in the US. And if you add up the wealth pledged as a part of The Giving Pledge it is 10x larger than that. I compiled The Giving Pledge data on my own by researching net worths of each pledgee. Planning to put the data on the Wikipedia page shortly. I found the other data from the following sources (see direct links in article): Foundation Center The Giving Pledge NP Trust GBD Compare AVAC Happy to answer any questions and would love feedback.

brent_noorda 10y ago
The Gates data is inspirational. Glad you put that in perspective. However, we need to see more data on the impact of the Giving Pledge, and whether it has led to more giving. In your chart, the assumption is that this money is more than would have been given without the Pledge. Also, the comparison to amount pledged (most of which will eventually make its way into foundations that will spread the money on their own time schedules) with the amount donated in 2014 is not a telling comparison. Consider, for example, my billionaire mother. Before she died, a couple of years ago, we discussed whether she should be joining The Giving Pledge. She decided she didn't want to be seen in the company of billionaires who had pledged to give away only 50% of their money. "Why would a billionaire want to keep half of their money, anyway? What could someone possibly do, personally, with half a billion dollars? I don't want to join a group like that!" To understand the impact of The Giving Pledge we'd need to know how much would have been given without the pledge? Does the Pledge provide peer pressure to give away more than they would have otherwise given? Or does this pledge lead to less giving, because it makes billionaires feel that it's morally OK to give away just 50%? Do you have the comparison data to answer these questions?
- mike2477 10y ago
  Unfortunately I don't think that data is available. But from what I understand it has led to more giving. See this article - http://fortune.com/2010/06/16/the-600-billion-challenge/ http://fortune.com/2010/06/16/the-600-billion-challenge/
vezycash 10y ago
How about a comparison with historical philanthropists like Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie in constant currency?
- eru 10y ago
  Or as ratio of nominal GDP at the time.
tyrael71 10y ago
Is there anywhere I could access/read the research, or is it just the information you have on that blog?

muntac 10y ago

The size of the Gates Foundation is only impressive if you believe public policy should be disproportionately influenced by the whims of a few rich individuals. Philanthropists may not be motivated by profit like lobbyists, but that doesn't mean they understand the needs of the people any better. For issues related to relatively concrete sciences like medicine this matters less. But in areas such as education for example, the role of the Gates foundation has been disastrous. https://theintercept.com/2015/11/25/how-the-gates-foundation-reflects-the-good-and-the-bad-of-hacker-philanthropy/ https://theintercept.com/2015/11/25/how-the-gates-foundation...

solipsism 10y ago
Disastrous? Isn't that a bit hyperbolic? Reading the article, perhaps "ineffective" could be argued. Maybe their support of Common Core and such did more harm than good, but they've pivoted based on evidence. They're trying their best to do good with their money. This is more than can be said for most billionaires. Are you suggesting it would be better if all billionaires simply kept their money in the family and didn't try to help others? Any bold investment carries a risk of failure. Does that mean no one should make bold investments, to you?
- mike2477 10y ago
  Amen.
pjscott 10y ago
If you're right, then I'd say that it's still trivially outweighed by the Gates Foundation's efforts on disease reduction. Each billion dollars spent fighting malaria buys a whole lot of indulgences.
- visarga 10y ago
  Also, he is giving back the money he took, and then more. That also buys him a lot of forgiveness.
  - 10y ago

octref 10y ago

More and more I feel the best data visualization for most scenario is just bar, line, and pie charts. They need no explanation and communicate information effectively. Too many visualizations that are fun and fancy but convey ideas poorly.

csours 10y ago
Pie Charts are the Worst [1]. In this context, a single pie chart is OK. I agree bar and line charts should usually be sufficient. http://www.businessinsider.com/pie-charts-are-the-worst-2013-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/pie-charts-are-the-worst-2013...
- eru 10y ago
  Scatter plots can be decent, too.

swampthinker 10y ago

Website needs some work for mobile view: http://i.imgur.com/vlwi2hh.jpg http://i.imgur.com/vlwi2hh.jpg

nathancahill 10y ago
Yes, and the Subscribe popup breaks it on mobile.
mike2477 10y ago
Definitely needs some work! Appreciate the feedback. Just launched the blog two weeks ago. Working out the kinks :)

dharmon 10y ago

If you put aside the "M$ was evil and he is just atoning" arguments, Gates is a huge inspiration, at least for me. This guy finds problems that he's passionate about and attacks them with such ferocity that it is truly awe inspiring. I'm mildly embarrassed to admit it, but he was my childhood hero through the 90's. Even later when everyone thought Jobs was the bee's knees, I wanted to be as effective as Gates.

amelius 10y ago
Also worth mentioning is that, over the years, Microsoft has published an impressive amount of research, whereas (e.g.) Apple has always been disappointingly closed.
- ignoramous 10y ago
  I think Apple revolutionized HCI with the Mac and then with the iPod and now with iOS. They continue to push the bar in industrial design. They're contributing in different ways. I'd not belittle their achievements. Design principles that Apple has long been following are the norm today. Every tech company has done their part. I don't like this constant bickering, I wish people were more accepting and just saw the positive side of things more often.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  With the ironic effect that I and a friend were often disappointed by the lack of innovation in MS products (that changed a bit recently).
prodigal_erik 10y ago
If we put aside that the money isn't his, he kneecapped better products with such ferocity that a generation later our industry is still struggling to make up for the lost progress.
- philliphaydon 10y ago
  The FDA, CDC, American Government, and Patent System, have all crippled progress far more than Bill Gates or Microsoft ever did.

throwaway_xx9 10y ago

Before you lionize a convicted monopolist ... 1) The USA tax code encourages wealthy people to create foundations. The money in the foundation is still controlled by them and has tax benefits. 2) In other countries, wealthy people are taxed to provide social services like education and healthcare. In the USA, they're not - the capital gains rate of 15% is basically a round-off error compared to 90% last century. 3) Foundations work very well for tax planning. Who knows what their efficiency is as charity?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
the_economist 10y ago
The capital gains tax rate is not 15%. It is 20%, plus a 3.8% Obamacare tax. So Bill Gates is probably paying 23.8% on investment profits. Here in California there is a lovely 13.3% tax, bringing the total to 37.1%. Bill Gates is a resident of Washington, though, so he doesn't pay that. You can't blame Washington for not having a state income tax, though. Their tax laws seem to have worked out very well for them in attracting companies like Microsoft and Amazon.
strommen 10y ago
"Convicted monopolist" really doesn't have much of a ring to it. Especially when the only thing his company was ever found guilty of was bundling a web browser with the OS...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mcguire 10y ago
  How many copies of Windows have you paid for but never used? I have been running Linux on my personal machines since the early '90s. I try not to think about it.
  - WalterBright 10y ago

WalterBright 10y ago

Bill Gates was a tough competitor, to be sure, and you had to bring your A game when dealing with Microsoft. But the complaints that he was 'evil', when you drill down to see what the actual complaint is, just seem to fade away. Most of it seems to be simply envy. See "In Search of Stupidity" by Chapman. P.S. I was in the industry throughout that era, and competed directly against Microsoft in programming languages.

visarga 10y ago
> Most of it seems to be simply envy. For me it was frustration with Windows, until I gave it up back, in 2004. I used to rage at it's instability and difficult reinstallation process when various device drivers were involved. I would never have imagined I will have such a positive view on Bill Gates a decade later. He's smart because, after spending half his life amassing a fortune, he is now spending the other half of his life spending it. Money is just numbers sitting in an account if you don't do anything with it.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  > He's smart because, after spending half his life amassing a fortune, he is now spending the other half of his life spending it So it does not matter how the fortune was amassed in the first place? As long as you spend some of it and polish your PR image later on ? People forget/forgive pretty fast, for me that's the only thing I retain from this story.
  - tunesmith 10y ago
    I don't care so much in his case, but the problem is more that it doesn't scale - if someone is able to make money through means such as those, there's no guarantee that they'll give it back in such a "socially good" way - the odds are rather against it. But I think it's silly to put an asterisk on the good he's actually doing.
- okasaki 10y ago
  His fortune went from 45B in 2008 to 75B in 2015. Hell of a way to spend money! edit: B, not M. Thanks.

known 10y ago

I'd request Gates to contribute to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Development_Goals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Development_Goals

williadc 10y ago
They're on it. http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Speeches/2013/03/High-Level-Dialogue-on-Health-in-the-Post-2015-Development-Agenda http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Speeches/2013/03...

k_lander 10y ago

i'm curious as to whether it is more effective for an individual to hold a contribute-as-you go style to philantrophy vs a make-money-first-then-donate strategy like gates did. Given that most people aren't going to be billionaires, I would guess the former but maybe someone who has looked at the data can provide some insight.

TheLogothete 10y ago
Donating money if you are not (filthy) rich is foolish. Those money would be MUCH better spent on you. If you want to help, do it with personal efforts.
- eru 10y ago
  What makes you think so?
  - TheLogothete 10y ago
    Because your money would not be spent efficiently.
    - eru 10y ago
      I don't get it. If you are looking for pure efficiency, most people on here are much better working in IT and giving money to efficient charities. If by personal efforts you mean helping out in a soup kitchen or flying to Detroit to help struggling kids---that's pretty inefficient. Or did you mean something else?

lazaroclapp 10y ago

I was surprised to not find a comparison between those private charitable contributions and the money spent by nations all over the world on similar programs. Unless I am missing something, it would look to me like the Giving Pledge, all together, spent more money on the fight against AIDS in the last 10 years than the U.S. government did [0]. If that is true, then there are still the questions left of who spent money more efficiently, whether and which other uses of taxes are more important than the fight against AIDS, as well as the general philosophical question of whether we should allow a few individuals to control how a huge proportion of the resources of the world are used, and under which circumstances. But beyond all those delta-from-the-ideal-world questions, it is indeed a pretty huge amount of good likely being done there. [0] http://kff.org/global-health-policy/fact-sheet/u-s-federal-funding-for-hivaids-the-presidents-fy-2016-budget-request/ http://kff.org/global-health-policy/fact-sheet/u-s-federal-f...

zurn 10y ago

I was expecting to see a comparison to public sector development programs in countries with bigger government. For example USA does only 0.22% of GNI in foreign aid compared to the 0.7% target and 0.3-0.5% realized in its cohort of industrialized countries. (http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/press/07.htm http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/press/07.htm)

sametmax 10y ago

Don't you find very suspicous that since the past year, we get regularly those stories comming up in reddit, imgur, hacker news, etc ? Think about it: there are a ton of nice people doing nice things around. Even tech people. But you hear only about Bill. The Gate Foundation existed for a long time. It actually paid my bills 7 years ago (wasting half of the money before reaching me, BTW), and we didn't have this incredible "yeah, best man ever" crazy minset going around. It smells a lot like well done PR, with a lot of money behind to give a better image of the man, targetting social networks by subtils channels. And if you need PR and pays to much for it, you probably DON'T deserve the praises.

forgetsusername 10y ago
>It actually paid my bills 7 years ago (wasting half of the money before reaching me, BTW) Maybe you should have taken the moral high ground and declined the money, rather than taking it, criticizing how much was "wasted", then bad-mouthing it on a public forum. Talk about a sense of entitlement.
- sametmax 10y ago
  Yes, I made a bad decision. I don't pretend to be a wonderful person. However, I can see people are trying very hard to make sure people think Gate is. And he is not.

mcguire 10y ago

I was just pondering Gate's legacy the other day. While I was blowing away another copy of Windows that I paid for but never booted.