Eat the rich, they said. Noooooo, not all of 'em!
- Thread starter Diogenes
- Start date
Bill and Melinda Gates bitterly hate each other.
That has squat to do with their foundation's spending.
The marital issues between Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates (divorce finalized after the 2021 announcement, with Melinda fully resigning as co-chair in June 2024) have already been resolved structurally for the foundation’s grantmaking.
What actually happened to the money and control
- The core Gates Foundation endowment is an irrevocable charitable trust. It cannot be split or clawed back as a personal marital asset. Operations continued under joint leadership for a transition period, then Melinda stepped away entirely. The organization was renamed simply the Gates Foundation, with Bill as sole chair and a professional board/staff running day-to-day decisions.
- As part of the separation, Bill agreed to provide Melinda roughly $12.5 billion (personally, not from the foundation’s endowment) for her independent philanthropy. Much of this has already transferred to her Pivotal entities (Pivotal Philanthropies Foundation and related vehicles). Tax filings show large transfers in 2024 (around $8 billion initially reported, with additional amounts bringing the total higher). Her focus is now primarily women, girls, and related issues via Pivotal.
- The main foundation continues large-scale grantmaking (billions annually), with plans announced by Bill to accelerate spending and wind down the organization by the end of 2045. Recent budgets and leadership changes reflect that trajectory, not residual personal conflict.
Relevance to Cambridge / Antarctic research funding
- Gates Cambridge Scholarships (the major ongoing Cambridge link) originated from a large one-time donation in 2000. That program is administered by the independent Gates Cambridge Trust at the university and is not subject to year-to-year personal decisions by either Gates. It continues awarding scholarships normally.
- Any specific project-level funding for narrative/cultural research on Antarctica (the “heroic white male explorer” framing referenced by Charlotte Gill) would, if coming from the main foundation, now sit under the post-2024 structure controlled by Bill and the professional team. Melinda no longer holds a formal decision-making role there.
- There is no public indication that personal marital friction is currently delaying, canceling, or redirecting individual academic grants of this type. Foundation grant decisions are handled by program officers and the board according to strategic priorities (global health, development, education, etc.), not personal dynamics years after the split.
Is that so?
Is that a fact?
evince
Truthmatters
The flipside of American progress: economic failure or failed economics? - Economics Observatory
Unbridled capitalism—an idea often mistakenly attributed to Adam Smith—has flourished in the United States. But it ignores deep inequalities, not just economic but also in health and wellbeing.
www.economicsobservatory.com
evince
Truthmatters
Adam Smith understood and celebrated the power of markets, but he did much more. Fewer of his other insights and warnings feature in today’s mainstream economics. The transformation of Smith’s economics into Chicago economics has not only emaciated the subject, but it has done great harm to public policy and is at least partly responsible for what I see as a failure of American society.
The flipside of American progress: economic failure or failed economics? - Economics Observatory
Unbridled capitalism—an idea often mistakenly attributed to Adam Smith—has flourished in the United States. But it ignores deep inequalities, not just economic but also in health and wellbeing.
The piece is a concise opinion/essay rather than a full empirical paper. It draws on themes from Deaton and Anne Case’s Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism.
Weaknesses and Limitations
- Causal overreach: The essay links outcomes heavily to “failed economics” (Chicago/market-centered thinking) and insufficient regulation. It underplays other large forces: skill-biased technical change, globalization/China shock, decline of private-sector unions, family structure changes, education system performance, opioid supply shocks, and cultural shifts. These are not primarily products of economists’ definitions.
- Selective historical reading: U.S. healthcare is market-oriented in financing and delivery relative to Europe, but it is also heavily regulated, subsidized, and distorted by third-party payment, occupational licensing, certificate-of-need laws, and tax treatment of employer insurance. Blaming “markets” alone is incomplete.
- Progress is not uniformly halted: Absolute poverty (after transfers), material living standards (housing size, consumer goods, longevity for most groups until the recent stagnation), and access to information/communication have improved. The stagnation is concentrated in relative wages, labor-force participation for some groups, and certain health/mortality outcomes.
- Policy implication is underspecified: Diagnosing “failed economics” is easier than specifying the institutional alternative that would restore broad-based gains without sacrificing the innovation Deaton himself notes. European social models have their own trade-offs (lower growth, higher youth unemployment in some periods, fiscal pressures).
- Short format constraint: As a brief Observatory piece, it asserts rather than quantifies.
Opinion. Got any FACTS?
T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
Said who?
Not any more.
evince
Truthmatters
Fucking racist scumIs this who's doing the research at Cambridge for them?
T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
He sees how billionaires "lie, cheat, and steal to get whatever they can out of the system..." because that's EXACTLY what he, as a billionaire, does! He's speaking from personal experience!