I know Jeff Bezos, the wealthiest man in the world, is viewed as a ruthless individual who will fire whistleblowers during a pandemic, take away healthcare benefits from essential workers, and destroy whole industries.
But how real is the philanthropist image of Bill Gates, the second wealthiest individual on the planet?
In 2000, when Bill Gates left Microsoft he was worth $63 billion. (Forbes)
After twenty years of philanthropy, one would assume that his remaining fortune would be significantly less than that.
But in twenty years his net worth has increased from $63 billion to over $100 billion. (Wikipedia)
I should state that all of the conspiracy theories insisting that Bill Gates created the coronavirus in order to make money off of a vaccine are ridiculous—he already has over $100 BILLION!
Or to put it in perspective, he could buy up everything of Michael Bloomberg’s, set it on fire, and still have $50 billion left over.
Do billionaires want to be Bat Man 🦇?
By day they are Bruce Wayne, creating inequities through their Wayne Industries corporation. By night, they’re Bat Man promising to correct the problems that they helped to create.
Back to the conspiracy theorists for a moment. A fact used to support Bill Gates as pandemic creator is that Netflix released a puff-piece series, Inside Bill’s Brain, three months before the pandemic.
However, the timing, imho, has more to do with the wealth tax that multiple Democratic candidates for President were advocating:
If Bernie's wealth tax was signed into law in '82 Gates would be worth $9.9B; his family would inherit $2.5B w/Bernie's estate tax bill. (Warren Gunnels)
What the series did was to create this wonderful image of Gates as savior of humanity; so when he subsequently goes on television saying that a wealth tax isn’t a good idea, we instinctively believe him.
Bill Gates, in fact, originally created the whole philanthropist image to change public sentiment towards breaking up Microsoft by the Federal government.