Warren Buffett donates another $4.1B, resigns as Gates trustee

[clydethefrog]

Buffett spreads his wealth tax-free to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [of which he was a trustee], Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation [founded by himself], Sherwood Foundation [founded by his daughter], Howard G. Buffett Foundation [founded by his son] and NoVo Foundation [founded by his other son].

[542458]

I don’t see how this is nefarious (in itself). The big challenge with donating money is trusting that it will get used “correctly”. Donating to organizations under control of people you know and trust is the easiest way to do this.

If there was some sort of slush-fund thing going on it would be a problem, but I haven’t seen any evidence of that. The tax rate on gifts isn’t that high, and so you’d have to be doing really extreme fraud for it to me more profitable than a straight gift.

[mekal]

The internet today...dude gives a shit-ton of his money to philanthropy and people find a way to complain about it.

[shadowgovt]

Capitalism as practiced in America is a meritocracy... As long as you stretch the definition far enough to include "being friends with, or descended from, a billionaire" in the tent of "merit."

Edit: to paraphrase Hannibal Buress, you can boo me, but I'm right. ;) Some people succeed by having a better idea and executing on it with technical proficiency, some succeed by convincing someone with a lot of resources to support their endeavors. Most succeed through a mix of the two, but pretending that support of entrenched big-money interests has minimal impact is disjoint from reality.

[mushufasa]

Warren Buffett is also 90 years old now, and has been resigning from all corporate boards except his own. Hard to say if the resignation is actually a story or if the reporter wanted to create one.

[ipqk]

“For years I have been a trustee — an inactive trustee at that — of only one recipient of my funds, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMG). I am now resigning from that post, just as I have done at all corporate boards other than Berkshire’s,” Buffett said. “The CEO of BMG is Mark Suzman, an outstanding recent selection who has my full support. My goals are 100% in sync with those of the foundation, and my physical participation is in no way needed to achieve these goals.”

[irjustin]

I think it's fair to say it's a mix of both.

[nscalf]

Honest question: What do you want from the guy? Billionaire donates billions, you hate him. Billionaire doesn't donate billions, you hate him. Billionaire bails out company saving thousands of jobs, you hate him. Billionaire doesn't bail out company, you hate him. You can hate the system for letting people become billionaires, but Warren is giving away all of his money to charity and lives a frugal life. Is this just fetishizing the hate of rich people?

[danielrpa]

Just imagine the world we'd live in if 20% of the billionaires were like Warren Buffett... Not saying we should have that many (or few) billionaires, just that as far as billionaires are concerned, it's hard to be much better than him.

[lorlou]

Are you surprised that petty people are jealous of successful people? Haters gonna hate.

[sys_64738]

We'd never have heard of Bill Gates without his mom knowing the Microsoft chairman.

[ksec]

>We'd never have heard of Bill Gates without his mom knowing the Microsoft chairman.

You mean IBM?

[clintonwoo]

The article says Buffett has resigned from all boards except Berkshire Hathaway. It must be because he thinks he's getting old, which he's mentioned a number of times regarding succession planning.

[cbg0]

Keep it from reaching daylight? The rumors have been in every major news outlet worldwide.

[austhrow743]

If he’s successfully squashing information about being toxic how do you know he is?

[volkk]

explain

[robtherobber]

This, I believe, is not really news worthy unless you consider the fact that no one should ever accumulated that much wealth to begin with.

[smt88]

The donation is newsworthy in the sense that Buffett is donating ~2,000 lifetimes of income (for a US citizen) to various organizations.

The resignation is newsworthy because it suggests Buffett's transition into full retirement. As someone who can move markets with a quote in a newspaper, his potential retirement is certainly important enough to hit the "publish" button on a digital outlet.

[mkr-hn]

Listen to the latest three episodes of Acquired for a ~9 hour exploration of Warren Buffet/Berkshire Hathaway. It gives a lot of context for people trying to figure out what this news means.

https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/berkshire-hathaway-part-i

https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/berkshire-hathaway-part-ii

https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/berkshire-hathaway-part-iii

[nextstep]

>> “In 2006, I pledged to distribute all of my Berkshire Hathaway shares — more than 99% of my net worth — to philanthropy. With today’s $4.1 billion distribution, I’m halfway there.”

So that would imply his net worth is half what it was in 2006. But of course it’s not, it’s never been higher (103 Billion according to Forbes last year). Interesting that CNBC chose not to explore this rather obvious inconsistency in Buffet’s statement.

[tinco]

According to the article he's donated 45 billion, which is really close to half of the 103 billion figure you're quoting, especially considering that those donations were made over the last decade. So where's the inconsistency?

[pjscott]

He’s halfway there in terms of how many of his shares of stock have been given away.

[nextstep]

If I’m misunderstanding the math here, can someone please explain this (instead of just downvoting me )? The numbers from Forbes show him roughly doubling his wealth since 2006.