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Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 22:50:14 -0400 (EDT)
To: improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu
From: Daniel Reeves <dreeves &AElig umich.edu>
Subject: children international and the estate tax and warren buffet and  yootles
Status: O

I just sponsored a 10-year-old in Ecuador through Children International 
(children.org).  It seems like a good organization.  I recommend 
charitynavigator.org for checking out specific charities.  I think one of you 
told me about that (Mekayla?).

In other news...

I haven't followed it too closely but I gather from factcheck.org that any ads 
you may have seen arguing against the death/estate tax are lying through their 
teeth.  If anyone wants to expound, please do.

Relatedly, Warren Buffet, the world's second richest person (second to Bill 
Gates) announced over the weekend he'll donate 85% of his net worth ($30some 
billion) to charities with >80% going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 
I understand this is the single largest monetary donation in history.  Buffett 
also said he intends to donate the remaining 15% of his wealth before he dies. 
He said that "a very rich person should leave their kids enough to do anything 
but not enough to do nothing."

On slashdot (the premier nerd community, where Microsoft is widely reviled) 
this donation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in general was widely 
lauded.

I liked the following rebuke to someone complaining about the unequal 
distribution of wealth:

   > this is only possible due to a system in which the vast majority are
   > pushed into poverty and a tiny minority accumulate nearly all the
   > wealth

   You're falling into the classic "the pie is only so big" trap. Do you
   really think that if Bill Gates and MS had never happened (likewise
   with, say, IBM or Sun or anyone/everyone else) that poor people would
   have somehow had a share of his billions in their pockets, instead? They
   don't call it "making" money for nothing: you do something people want
   and are willing to buy, and that creates demand and sets a price. Those
   people do the same with what they do for a living (or don't do it, if
   they don't produce anything, of course). The point is that vast
   fortunes have been made by lots of people because of MS's economic
   activity and innovation (yes, innovation - despite the groupthink, they
   do some of that, and their marketing vigor is no small bit all by
   itself, and is something that lots of other less-innovative companies
   copy, BTW). Some of that income has been earned by people like school
   bus drivers with some of their 401k in a mutual fund that has invested
   in MS's future.

   This notion that the only reason Michael Jordon is rich is because
   someone else is now poor... or that Michael Moore's $200M from making
   his silly "documentary" is money that those movie-goers would have
   otherwise have used to buy applesauce for starving babies... it's
   nonsense. No matter how much people resent successful businesses (or
   just what their thriftier neighbor is able to buy for not having wasted
   so much on stupid crap), it's usually just that: frustration at not
   having cowboyed up and done the same sort of work themselves, and
   created value where it didn't exist before. The really busy people make
   the pie bigger. We can split hairs over whether or not Netscape might
   one day have made some piece of that pie bigger than MS made it - but
   would you say that Netscape's early pile of cash and investment somehow
   made poor people poorer? Or that Red Hat does?

If you're still reading, you might be interested in my new baby at Yahoo: 
www.yootles.com .  We (Yahoo) are now hiring full-time programmers to work 
on it.  If you know anyone, please put them in touch with me!

-- 
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves  - -  search://"Daniel Reeves"