If your dad is Bill Gates, you’re probably not getting a Starbucks gift card for graduating college.
In 2018, Jennifer Gates walked off the Stanford stage and onto a 124-acre, $15.82 million horse farm in North Salem, New York. According to Architectural Digest, the lavish estate was a graduation gift from her billionaire parents—and came complete with rolling pastures, three parcels of land, and proximity to New York City for her future studies.
But in case that sounds too much like the plot of “Succession: Equestrian Edition,” Melinda Gates would like to remind everyone: their kids were absolutely raised “middle class.”
I suppose, to her, having millions of dollars is soooo far away from her life that she has to look at it with binoculars and think that it should be middle-class.
I thought this was a Philomena Cunk meme at first
Never forget that Bill’s mom was on the board of directors at IBM and pushed for the company to use her boy’s software startup in the very beginning. Microsoft was built entirely on this nepotism and monopoly. There is nothing remotely middle class about that story.
cross class “networking” is common and more or less the only way people move up in the class system. Having rich colleagues/ aquatences is an important part of most extremely successful startups and is absolutely something that happens to “middle class” people, just not to those living paycheck to paycheck.
She wasn’t on the board of directors of IBM, she was on another board which the CEO of IBM was also on.
It’s a distinction without a difference, but still.
Gates may be one of the better billionaires, but it’s still like comparing prostate cancer to brain cancer.
What makes you think that ? The missing bad headlines in the newspapers ?
He’s such a philantropist
Maybe that’s why these 1%ers wealth hoard so hard, maybe they genuinely think they ARE middle class.
Well put yourself in their shoes. They ARE the middle class when they are surrounded by only the top 1%.
We are not existant/irrelevant others. That will stay the same as long as their heads remain attached.
I like your style.
They’re either extremely uneducated in current standards of living, or being purposefully deceitful. I’d like to think it’s the former. They should have a class for rich people so they can understand what life is like without family money or high salaries.
being purposefully deceitful
Warren Buffet keeps around the house he bought in Omaha, Nebraska in 1958 and brags about how little it is worth. The man travels on private jets and sleeps in hotel high rises, surrounded by an army of aides and adjuncts and a smattering of medical staff. But he’s still got the title to that old homestead from sixty years ago, so he’s perpetually middle class according to business talking heads.
No class can teach you what it feels like to be a few bucks away from homelessness.
When the class is over the billionaires go back to their worry free lives. The poor worry about ending up on the street.
See now if failure to pass the empathy class results in your forced destitution there might be some incentive to pay attention
Made me think of the Meme: “Who wants to be a millionaire? - but with Billionaires, so it’s more of a threat.”
If we made empathy classes a must with our current governing systems, I cannot imagine them not beeing corrupted and used against the poor within seconds of becoming obligatory.
In the U.K. there’s a somewhat popular TV series called “Rich House, Poor House”. We still worship the rich.
I remember seeing a clip a long time ago of someone asking Gates how much a box of rice-a-roni is and he was like… 5$?
I’d have the same difficulty tbh. I don’t live in the US so no rice-a-roni here anyway, but there are a lot of premade foods available here too, and… I just don’t really buy them very often, even if I’m alone, I just cook or throw like a frozen pizza in the oven, but I don’t experiment a lot with those boxed meals. I also only ever buy stuff like laundry detergents at discount so I never even think about the normal price. I go to the store, see a detergent at the regular price, go “fuck no” and buy something else that’s on discount and half the price per liter or per pod. There’s nearly always something available for a good price, sometimes it’s a local brand that’s already cheaper than the foreign brands.
I can, however, tell you the prices of different pasta brands (the cheaper ones, not the expensive ones) to within 20 cents. Usually half a kilo of dry pasta is like 1.19, or under 1 euro on discount. Frozen french fries - used to be around 1.20 for 750 grams, jumped to something like 1.79 and hell I think in some stores it’s 2.19 now unless there’s a discount. Pack of mince meat - depends on size and whether it’s pork, moo or a mixture of both, somewhere between 2.50 and 5 euros per package.
How do you raise a child “middle class in this house:
Bill Gates designed and owns a 66,000-square-foot (6,100 m2) mansion that is on Lake Washington in Medina, Washington.In 2009, property taxes were reported to be US$1.063 million on a total assessed value of US$147.5 million.
The house features an estate-wide server system, a 60-foot (18 m) swimming pool with an underwater music system, a 2,500-square-foot (230 m2) gym, and a 1,000-square-foot (93 m2) dining room. There are six kitchens and 24 bathrooms, ten of which contain bathtubs.
Hmmph. The most surprising part is that there are ten tubs for 24 bathrooms. You’d think those sort of people would just have combined the ten tubs into three giant tubs in 8 giant bathrooms so they could do their kinky stuff. Wasn’t bill a multiple time guest of epstein?
Why TF would you put in a pool that is 7 m shorter than Olympic sized? There’s a reason they are 25 m. It makes it much easier to determine your daily workout.
Bill Gates is rich enough to have other people work out for him.
20 yards is still a nice number, but it is weird to not just go a bit further and hit the 25m distance of a standard competitive pool
Olympic-sized is 50 meters, but your point stands.
My sister and husband were confused when I said its sad Microsoft owns Xbox, one of our favorite past times. And it because of shit like this. Tax the fuckers, tax them one cent I dare u.
To be fair, out of all the billionaires they at least have made attempts to not make their kids shiteheads which is in stark contrast to most billionaires. At one point in time at least, they were only leaving $10m to each child, with plans to donate everything else.
Is that enough to live better than 99.99% of us? Absolutely. But it’s also not: I can do whatever I want and buy whatever I want and never have to think about money again.
this is not how generational wealth work.
lets say you are 17. having a party in the house with 100k cash in your bank account. you hear dad talk about a big merger “this company will be this company and the stock will go up” you put 50k on that and now you have 300k or something.
I sat with a few upper class once, if I have cache on hand I will be millionaire by now, it doesn’t take much to get rich when you hang out with rich people…
It’s more like “Hey, I have an idea for a new type of toilet. Can you get me a meeting with your golf buddy who is the CEO of the largest toilet company in the world?”. This is literally how Microsoft started.
But it’s also not: I can do whatever I want and buy whatever I want and never have to think about money again.
leaving $10m to each child, with plans to donate everything else
The plans were to donate everything else to a tax-advantaged “charity” in which the Gates family retains complete financial control.
This is not philanthropy. It is tax avoidance, greenwashing, and a public relations campaign.
when gates was on reddit, he choose AMA sub, so he wouldnt get criticized, they wouldnt allow you to question him on his charities being used tax evasion or money laundering.
Yeah, it might be public relations, but the malaria nets and polio vaccines and HIV treatments and guinea work eradication did actually save millions of lives.
It’s one thing to argue that doing good doesn’t make up for doing bad, but it’s another thing to refuse to acknowledge the good at all.
the countries have complained about his vaccines as being only sourced from us backed countries, so most of them couldnt afford it. he still pretty much a ruthless business man, like the above comments he is greenwashing his image.
How many billionaires are sourcing from locals? Guessing the answer is closer to none.
That’s all she’s saying. They raised the kids with limits. That’s what she should have said. They obviously weren’t raised “middle class” or anything like it.
I mean, its really open to interpretation.
If Melinda got them up in the morning, made them breakfast and drove them to school herself and picked them up (Even if its in a Bentley), make their snacks when they get home and helped them with their homework(even if you’re getting the snacks out of a walk-in fridge and the housekeeper bought them) thats some regular people shit.
If you have the nanny get them up, the driver take them to school and pick them up then their tutor helps them with their homework while your chef asks them what they would like for dinner… thats not.
I don’t agree that it’s open to interpretation or that your first example constitutes “regular people shit” in any meaningful way. I agree that there’s a difference between having servants and not, obviously, but I don’t think it’s that helpful of a distinction here.
Second of all, flying on a private jet and living in a mega mansion is in no way middle class. I just can’t get on board with the idea of mom picking you up in a Bentley and getting snacks out of a walk-in fridge as being middle class.
I think my point stands. I think it was good to raise them with limits and some humility, that will help them in life, but I think “middle class” and “regular people shit” is simply inapplicable here.
What could a horse ranch cost? $10?
I know people want to hate on Bill for being rich, and I can understand that, but I still prefer him to a certain South African billionaire.
Maybe some people will say that’s like comparing a giant douche to a turd sandwich though.
Why are you choosing favorites?
I know what they mean. Id definitely love to see him in some kind of death match.
You don’t have to choose a favourite when none should exist
It’s a nice race to the bottom 🤷♂️
At least Bill gives away a lot of his money, and his stance on politics seems relatively sensible and measured. Whereas the South African billionaire gets a kick out of being stupid and damaging to the US (and beyond the US if you look at his comments on foreign politics).
At least Bill gives away a lot of his money
Does he? If you still control how it is spent, are you really giving it away?
If you still control how it is spent, are you really giving it away?
Actually yeah. You can’t just give a billion to an organization. Most of the organizations that receive money have the capacity to handle millions at most. Anything above that would just sit on their bank accounts because they’d have to scale up massively.
The amount of money the Gates Foundation is handling requires so much managing that they have 2000 employees.
I suggest to read up on what they are actually doing:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gates_Foundation
- https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/committed-grants
It’s quite altruistic in nature.
Giving it away allows other people to decide what to do with it.
Gates is in full control of what he “gives” away.
I literally explained why it is set up like that. Except for the part where they use money of the foundation to make more money for the foundation.
Gates is in full control of what he “gives” away.
And rightfully so. The foundation is always looking for organizations to give grants to. You can’t just give it all away randomly. To give away so much money you need to put it somewhere where it can be distributed fairly. Which is exactly what the foundation is doing.
The only real argument you can have against Gates is whether or not he should be giving even more. But that is not the best argument because he still is giving away much more than people more wealthy as him.
Not surprising given that Cascade Investments controls both the foundation and Bill’s personal portfolio.
He spends quite big sums on healthcare I think? I’m not saying he’s a perfect guy. Maybe the world would be better if taxes were such that nobody could be a billionaire. I just think I prefer Bill Gates to other billionaires, especially the prominent South African one.
He blocked Oxford university from open sourcing it’s covid vaccine so that his other vaccine investments paid off.
These rich people are so disconnected from the actual reality that the rest of us live in that it’s not funny. And to make matters worse, a lot of these rich people see themselves as visionaries and leaders. Imagine that, blind visionaries. And to make matters even worse than that, a lot of people worship these ‘visionaries’ that can’t even picture what life is like without billions of dollars, as if they have all the answers.
But Daaaaaaaad, all the other kids are getting a horse farm!
Akshually. Depending on which definition you use they are middle class. The original meaning of middle class is the wealthy who don’t hold a title. They sit below the aristocracy aka upperclass, and above the peasantry aka the working class. The middle class is also called the bourgeoisie.
i like the original meaning because it made it a lot easier to point at the bourgeois and their politics (which is currently ruining my country and the proletariat is more than willing to lean even harder into their destructive mandates).
in my country/culture, middle class is (or at least was) anyone who have earned a professional title of high esteem. i.e. a doctor. and socially they were highly respected, regardless of actual wealth status. wealthy people used to be targets of ridicule (because they tried to flaunt their wealth in public. i still remember, 20 years ago, how one of our wealthiest individuals were literally crying on TV how no one respected her for wealth and she much preferred american culture. incidentally and totally unrelated; she launched a bunch of reality tv shows about worshipping wealth after that).
unfortunately american social media and said reality TV shows have radically changed how youth and the younger generation identify “status”. i always hear about how they will be rich one day and buy a super mansion. but if you ask what the purpose of that is; they couldn’t explain it - it’s just what they’re told to desire.
so from my perspective, the next 2-3 generations are on a path to ruin in the name of capital ownership for the few.
This shows you how billionaires imagine middle class to be. They’re completely out of touch, as expected.
Never defend a billionaire, they would never defend you. Don’t defend them, idolize them, or trust them. Billionaires care about money and the power it provides, NOTHING ELSE. That’s the main prerequisite for becoming filthy rich, after all.
That’s right, they’re comparing to other billionaires and looking at themselves being so humble that they must be middle class. It’s unfathomable to them to know what it’s really like.
