Billionaire Giving 99% of his Wealth Away

Me too!
It would be great to make them produce enough power to at least run the ipad/wii/x-box/whatever with physical exertion. Heck, I'd like to have one to run my laptop, I spend far too much of my day on my butt.

 

Manoj can do whatever he wants with his money...that is within the law....
I applaud what he is doing if it is genuinely to help a pet cause that he is fervently in favour of and that helps people..
My point is that society cannot depend on a handful of billionaires that pledge money in favour of their pet causes to take the role of what a democratically elected government should be doing for their people who elected them to do it

 

Agreed. Some help somewhere is better than no help at all.
Relying on billionaires to help is like people saying "you got property, you're rich, you pay for lunch". Unfortunately, I'm sure we all know people like that.

 

I don't understand this line of thinking.

If you were standing next to a drowning child and someone else was about to save them would you be saying 'oh the parents should be looking after their children better' or the government should be providing pool fences etc?

 

Great movie. Shah Rukh Kahn is an excellent actor.

 

And it's their money. They can fund whatever pet cause they like.

 

You know that other people would. Its very easy to sit on your high horse and blame others.
The parents of that child in that instance could go either way, be ashamed of what happened and make an effort to learn, or blame someone else for not doing something... seems that the latter occurs more often these days (but i could be wrong).

The government rather than spending money on education, spends money on prevention. You win more points that way, as its all about short term gain.

 

Perhaps a better analogy would be that, if there are 10 children drowning, the billionaire can choose to save only 2 and leave the others drowning. It's great that he saved two, but it's reasonable to ask, 'What about the other 8?'. That's why we need safety nets, public policy and government.

 

A politician would probably let all of them drown (unless media was present), use that to hype up the new initiative to pay for all pool fencing which will help pump money into jobs, so they can get elected again.

 

Thanks for the link Terry.

Private enterprise often does things more efficiently than government. Which is why it's an extremely important for these types of people with vast fortunes to invest in our futures. making use of the expertise that brought their vast fortunes is likely to further enhance their productivity in search of solutions to our problems.

Looking at the limitations of private philanthropy doesn't offer much IMO. Obviously a billionaire isn't allowed to hire a private police force to improve our general safety, reduce crime or engage in many other activities. that's not a reason to look at any of this in a negative light.

 

Thanks for sharing Terry and great work by Manoj. Wouldn't mind one of those bikes here and connect it to Tesla grid as suggested in one the posts before

 

It's a good tax deduction to. In theory the government foots nearly half the bill anyway.

 

@York Didn't know you were into Bollywood movies

 

Giving it away before you die is the way to go in my view. Alternative is to provide for charities in your will. May as well give it away when you are living and get the enjoyment that giving brings.

 

And the tax savings!

 

I know someone who was 95 and was deciding which charities to include in his will. Heavens, just give it away now I say.

 

I wonder if he'll start getting all the charity company junk mail that I get? Half the amazon has been chopped down to provide the tat that an array of charities have sent me in the past couple of years. Clearly there are no save the trees causes any more

 

It would help but diet is the biggest influencer. I've met people who run 5kms regularly and are really fat. They are better off than if they didn't run the 5km but they are still very unhealthy with fat around their organs etc You can't out-train a bad diet

 

Im.fat but i agree something needs to be done