I have great respect for the fact that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation spend a large portion of their money on charity (despite the fact that it’s actually sort of because of tax laws that they must do so), my question, and the one I would want President Obama to ask Mr. Gates is, why throw it away in Africa (where nothing seems to work in the past 200 years) instead of spreading ALL those $billions of dollars around in Appalachia, Detroit, Alabama, and everywhere else YOU ACTUALLY EARNED THAT MONEY?
The schools, libraries, and poor as well as the rich in this country paid for your license when they bought computers because of advertising despite the perfectly good free Unix operating system.
When you stop to think of it, the Gates Foundation money came from people who were forced to buy computers with MS-DOS and later Windows. (Have you ever tried to buy a computer without Microsoft software? Did you know that about $90 of every $300 computer went to Microsoft despite free software that works as well as that or better?)
OK, we paid for the convenience and marketing (That’s The American Way) but why shouldn’t WE also see the vast majority of the charity from a computer revolution which cost so many, many jobs???
We would through taxes if it weren’t for the foundation which “the great philanthropist” uses to spend the money elsewhere!
Just a thought. And, it is THE main question that, I, as a 45-year+ reporter would ask Mr. Gates, given the opportunity.
Is some other reporter or President willing to ask the question?
I’d really like to hear the honest answer.
Charity begins at home, except for people who make billions off the American and European peoples, I guess.
I donate where I LIVE, where I made my money, what about YOU, Mr. Gates? Are you a great humanitarian because you take our money and give it away in another country? How are you different from the government?
