Bill Gates Criticizes Warren: ‘I’m Not Sure How Open-Minded She Is’ on Tax Policy
Gates doesn’t hoard his money. Bill and Melinda Gates are America’s most generous philanthropists.
People keep bringing up the fact that Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) are millionaires so much that the two of them have centered their attacks on billionaires.
Warren wants a wealth tax targeting billionaires. Microsoft founder Bill Gates served up a dose of reality to Warren and others who believe billionaires should pay their so-called “fair share.”
At the Dealbook Conference, Gates, who is worth over $100 billion, reminded Warren that if the government taxes them too much it could interfere with “capital formation, innovation” produced in America. From Fox News:
“I’ve paid over $10 billion in taxes, I’ve paid more than anyone in taxes,” he continued. “If I’d had to have paid $20 billion in taxes – fine. But, when you say I should pay $100 billion, ‘OK, I’m starting to do a little math about what I have left over,'” Gates jokingly said during the interview.
Gates said he does not agree with Warren’s stance that billionaires should not exist at all in the U.S. “Maybe I’m just too biased to think that if you create a company that’s super-valuable, that at least some part of that, you should be able to have – a little bit for consumption, and hopefully the balance to do philanthropic things,” Gates continued.
Warren’s plan has led Gates to wonder “how open-minded she is” when it comes to tax policy. He also does not know if “she’d be willing to sit down with somebody who has large amounts of money.”
Gates is 100% correct. He built Microsoft from the ground up. He deserves his wealth and the right to manage it however he sees fit.
Also, his wealth allows him to grow Microsoft. He can make it better. He can produce better products for consumers. Growth also means more jobs for people.
Gates and his wife Melinda have also used their wealth for good. They are known as one of the most charitable couples in the world. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private foundation in the world with $50.7 billion in assets.
Gates encourages his fellow billionaires and other wealthy people “to donate the majority of their wealth to charity.” The foundation developed The Giving Pledge, which had over 170 signatures in 2017.
In 2018, they were named “the most generous philanthropists in America.” Overall they have donated more than $36 billion. They donated $4.8 billion in 2017 alone. From Business Insider:
Since its launch in 2000, their foundation has spent more than $36 billion to fund work in global health, emergency relief, education, poverty, and more.
The philanthropists have pledged about $2 billion to help defeat malaria alone. Their foundation most recently partnered with mosquito engineering company Oxitec to develop a male mosquito that would kill off future generations of malaria-transmitting bugs. The Gates Foundation wants to eliminate malaria “within a generation,” tackling a disease that has recently been on a fatal rise after decades of decline.
Bill and Melinda Gates are also working to end Ebola and polio; they donated more than $50 million in 2014 to help fight the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa, and they pledged $38 million to a Japanese pharmaceutical company that is working on creating a low-cost polio vaccine.
One of the foundation’s most significant partnerships is with the GAVI Alliance, a group of scientists, government leaders, businesses, and philanthropists working to improve access to vaccines in the poorest countries in the world. The Gates Foundation has committed at least $2.5 billion to the GAVI Alliance since 1999.
Warren and other so-called progressives would rather have the government “spread the wealth” instead of private charities. It also seems like they think these business owners hoard their money when the majority invest a lot of their wealth back into the company.
You take away their money they cannot give as much to charity. I am by no means wealthy, but I wish my taxes would go down so I could give even more to charity.
Gates has criticized President Donald Trump in the past, but he would not tell the conference who he would vote for if the ticket was between Trump or Warren:
“I’m not going to make political declarations,” Gates said. “But I do think no matter what policy somebody has in mind … whoever I decide will have the more professional approach in the current situation, probably is the thing I will weigh the most. And I hope that the more professional candidate is an electable candidate.”
Warren responded to Gates’s remarks:
I’m always happy to meet with people, even if we have different views. @BillGates, if we get the chance, I’d love to explain exactly how much you’d pay under my wealth tax. (I promise it’s not $100 billion.) https://t.co/m6G20hDNaV
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) November 7, 2019
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Comments
if the politician’s were really interested on taxing the “rich” and I use that word loosely, all they have to do is eliminate a volume of the IRS tax codes, get rid of some of the schedules.
Mary, I suggest that LI get an editor to check your posts.
“Him (SIC) and his wife are….” almost painful.
I was just going to leave the same message.
Nails to a chalkboard.
I think I’ll leave the correct sentence…..just in case.
Mary, “him” cannot donate, only “he” can.
“He and his wife are………”
“Warren’s plan has led Gates to wonder ‘how open-minded she is’ when it comes tax policy”
Bill baby, she’s EXTREMELY open-minded about taxes. And that’s the problem.
Gates apparently still hasn’t made the connection between freedom (personal, economic), the size of government, and Democrats.
Amazing how the Dems have so many people who know how to spend my money far more efficiently than I am able. The thing is, I have this money because I know how *not* to spend, a lesson that they are totally unable to learn, and thus I am unwilling to contribute to their ignorance until they have advanced their education.
Gates is the right guy to take on Warren. Leon Cooperman, whose spat with her is public, is an investor, not an entrepreneur, so Warren can criticize him on that score. Worse, Cooperman was sued by the SEC for insider trading and though he settled it for a small amount ($4M), he closed his fund the public could invest in and opened a limited, “family office.” Warren hasn’t gone after him on that but she might and if I were advising her, I’d suggest it. I add that Warren is anathema to me. I find her if not revolting at least unappetizing.
Also, his wealth allows him to grow Microsoft. He can make it better. He can produce better products for consumers.
He sure can (at least in theory). It’d be nice if he did, instead of the
New! Improved!same old Windows crap he keeps pushing on us.Bill Gates hasn’t been meaningfully involved in Microsoft since 2006, and withdrew completely in 2014.
Regardless of the moral argument, the utilitarian argument that he uses his wealth to make Microsoft better is false. Even when he was involved with Microsoft, the argument was false, unless you have evidence he was investing his own personal wealth back into the company.
Also, most of his wealth is in the form of Microsoft stock. Raising his taxes significantly would force him to sell a lot of that, which would depress the price per share and impact the portfolios held by many pension funds, not to mention smaller investors.
Not mentioned nearly as often as the “wealth” tax, which is nothing more than asset confiscation, are the plans being bandied about by Sanders, Warren and others to tax UNREALIZED capital gains and at rates as high as ordinary income. This would be truly devastating to public and private markets in all forms of asset classes.
We’re already taxed on unrealized gains in the value of our homes.
I’m sure they’d like to tax investments the same way: every year they’ll look at what they think you could get if you sold and calculate the tax on that amount (rather than how much it’s appreciated since the previous year).
You go to all the trouble to make yourself look like a saint for buying mosquito nets when you could eliminate teh problem altogether. Fauxcahontas comes along and screws up all you and warrens best-laid plans.
It’s probably $200 Billion.
I think the net value to society from a billionaire spending and investing his own money for his own purposes, even wholly selfish purposes, is likely to be higher than laundering the same amount of money through the government.
Our government is inefficient, and it’s the best of the lot. Nevertheless, every project by the government has enormous overhead from debate, dealmaking, and employee salaries. That is in addition to the overhead from whatever entity performs the project.
I do believe in a social safety net, and in government investment in large, national-scope projects that nobody else wants to do. We need to keep an eye on the graft, though, because it has gotten out of hand, and only the election of DJT has curbed it.
Also, I have not in principle favored term limitations, but the behavior of old, career politicians and their children has led me to reconsider. The formation of these dynasties is not a net benefit for our country as a whole, because it has led to corruption and in particular, vulnerability to people and countries of ill will.
I’m staying out of this. The globalist Masters of the Universe unleashed these Children of the Corn onto Americans so they have no one to blame but themselves that these communists want to tax them out existence. Very entertaining listening to them whimper.
Hear! Hear!
America’s most generous philanthropists?
Some would say most opportunistic….in every way……
How so? He and has wife have given away about $36B since starting their foundation. What parts of that would you classify as opportunistic?
I never liked Gates not Microsoft because the company acted as a monopoly in the desktop software market, with largely crappy products no less, for close to 2 decades but I have a hard time arguing against the man, with the exception of his association with Epstein, since he became a full time philanthropist.
I agree. Gates – like other billionaire commie plutocrats – has been bankrolling socialism for years, heedless of the disaster and suffering it has caused to those less politically connected than him.
Perhaps it is time Gates got to “enjoy” the benefits of what he has been funding all of these years.
Should Warren Buffet turn all his money and his family’s money over to Elizabeth Warren? After all Warren says “You didn’t build that”. If you didn’t build it you don’t deserve the rewards.
Maybe Princess Bull Squat could just take over Buffets railroads
She could be the Injun-eer
Netflix has “Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates” – nice look at all his philanthropic works. I can’t imagine the gov’t through a wealth tax would come any where near the positive results Gates is coming up with. I suppose that’s the root fallacy of gov’t – their belief that the power is in the money, and not the creative mind that made it.
Watching Warren strut around the stage, cackling about her wealth tax is indicative of the crazy this woman has descended to. She is dangerous.
I’ll happily grant that Bill earned every cent of his fortune, but while he could easily pay $20B in taxes vs. $10B, but he has no genuine motivation to kick Warren or any other psycho wannabe Socialist between the legs where the economy and taxes of any description are concerned. Tax Bill 99/% of his wealth, and he could easily live large for the rest of his life. Not so, anyone else.
You supported all of these hacks for years, Gates. It bought you acceptance in Washington State, while your candidates destroyed Seattle and Tacoma with their strange left wing policies and hatred. Now they have come for you. Just like they came for Bezos.
Yep.
The only high tax I support is taxing those that preach to the rest of us to pay more. 100% of everything over 100K for them would be fine.
The truly wealthy tech folks and Wall Street wealthy folks supported the D and Rinos, who pushed the globalist mantra. Unfortunately for them, the D also created a federal tax code which exempts the bottom 45% or so of income earners. So with the rise of populist sentiment within Trump base voters against the super wealthy globalist folks that supported offshoring manufacturing out of U.S. these globalist folks don’t have a lot of allies. That is why Wall street is terrified of Warren and Sanders. So they are stuck with Biden.
Eventually, once USMCA is ratified the calculations will rapidly shift and they will begin bringing manufacturing investments back to U.S. Not that the globalist folks will ever be on the Trump Train politically. They are realizing that they have created the monster and don’t have very good options from their perspective.
He’s “not sure?”
Bill, open your ears.
“Warren’s plan has led Gates to wonder ‘how open-minded she is’ when it comes tax policy”
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She’s real open minded when it’s other peoples money she’s using to buy votes.
Gates is either a liar or stupid.
I don’t think he’s stupid.
I thought the Constitution prohibited property seizure without due process of law. How could a wealth confiscation “tax” possibly be lawful?