On Thursday, Bill Gates promised to give away 200 billion dollars via his non -profit foundation by 2045, and hit Elon Musk, accusing the richest man in the world of having killed the poorest children in the world with enormous reductions in the American aid budget.
The 69-year-old billionaire co-founder of Microsoft said that he had accelerated his plans to sell almost all of his assets, and would close the foundation on December 31, 2045, years earlier than previously planned. Gates said he believed that the money would help achieve some of his goals, such as exterminating diseases such as Polio and Malaria, ending avoidable deaths in women and children and reducing global poverty.
His announcement follows the reversal of the governments, including the Trump administration to reduce international aid budgets that are used to prevent fatal diseases and famine.
The US cuts were monitored by Musk, who publicly brags to feed the US Agency for International Development “in the Wood Chipper” and his Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). Around 80 percent of the USAID programs are to be cut. The agency spent 44 billion US dollars worldwide in the 2023 financial year.
“The image of the richest man in the world who kills the poorest children in the world is not a pretty one,” said Gates from Financial Times.
In an interview with Reuters, Gates warned of a strong reversal of decades of progress in reducing mortality in the next four to six years due to the funding of the governments worldwide.
“The number of deaths will increase for the first time … It will be more than millions of deaths because of the resources,” Gate told Reuters.
Foundation cannot fill critical gaps, warns Gates
The Gates Foundation’s annual budget will be 9 billion US dollars in the USA by 2026 and around 10 billion US dollars a year and then due to the accelerated expenses. Gates has warned the White House that its foundation and other philanthropies cannot fill the gaps left by the governments.
“I think the governments will take care of children in the next 20 years of time who take care of children,” said Gates on Thursday.
Gates and musk, of which the latter is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, once agreed with the role of the rich to give away money to help others, but have met several times since then.
While the United States pour in a large part of its global “soft power” influence by trying to condemn shutter agencies like USAid like Canada, countries like Canada adapts to how they provide foreign help. The national asks to explain to the experts of the foreign assistance, Kate Higgins, and the global strategy analyst NOAM Unger how auxiliary cuts can destabilize the world and make humanitarian disasters worse.
When asked whether he recently spoke to Musk to change the course, Gates said that it was now the congress to decide on the future for the US aid expenses.
“Gates is a huge liar,” said Musk in response to a tweet on his X Social Media platform, in which an interview with Gates warns that warn of US aid shortcuts. Musk spokesman were not immediately available for a comment.
Gates said that despite the deep pockets of his foundation, it would not be possible without the government’s support.
“There are too many urgent problems that I can solve for myself to capture resources that could be used to help people,” wrote Gates in a post on his website. “It is unclear whether the richest countries in the world will continue to stand up for its poorest people.”
The foundation has given us $ 100 billion USD since the beginning
He praised the response to auxiliary cuts in Africa, in which some governments re -assigned the budgets, but said that Polio would not be eliminated as an example without US financing.
Gates made the announcement for the 25th anniversary of the foundation. He founded the organization in 2000 with his then wife Melinda French goals, and later they were accompanied by Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor.
Since the foundation, the foundation has given away 100 billion US dollars and helped to save millions of life and support initiatives such as the Gavi vaccination group and the global funds to combat aids, tuberculosis and malaria.
It will close after it spends around 99 percent of Gates’s personal assets, he said. The founders originally expected that the foundation would complete in the decades after their death.
Gates, whose assets currently have a value of around 108 billion US dollars in the United States, expects the foundation to spend around 200 billion US dollars by 2045, whereby the last number depends on the markets and inflation.
The foundation was criticized without the required accountability, including the World Health Organization, because it has oversized power and influence in this area without the required accountability.
Gates itself was also exposed to conspiracy theories, especially during the Covid 19 pandemic.
He has spoken to Trump several times in the past few months, and since the president took office on January 20, he said Reuters on Thursday about the importance of continued investments in global health.
“The world has values. My parents taught me that,” Gates told Reuters.
