[Wolves] OT:Bill Gates the modern day Robin Hood?

[Simon Morris]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

David Morley wrote:
> No I respect Bill's business sense which is why he has done so well, I
> don't particularly like his product or his closed source build method.

Part of my argument (that I am definitely *not having (*sigh* why can't I
ignore threads sometimes?? )) was that the original email had nothing to
do with closed source, open source or tomato sauce - it was about Bill
Gates giving to charity. This has nothing to do with Microsoft business
practices at all - but of course he takes a tax benefit from doing so.
All large businesses do this so why is Bill Gates particularly more evil
than anyone else for giving money to charity?

Again - this is besides all of the nasty stuff that Microsoft do, and is
also besides giving software to developing countries which is a bit of a
trojan horse

>  But I am sure that Ron and any self employed person on the list will
> tell you that if they have a good accountant they are much better off,
> and pay little or no tax.  This is because of legitimate loopholes in
> the way tax is paid.  Do you not think then knowing this that Bill
> gates as a Business man who has a selfmade empire will not hire the
> best of the best in terms of lawyers and accountants?

Duh, yeah? How else are they managing to evade courts over most of the
world?

> Believe me when I say that Bill gives to charities he has a vested
> interest in, he wouldn't waste his money giving to any old charity but
> he will still claim this money back or his accountants would be doing
> their job if they didn't.

Should I believe you simply because you said the words "Believe me when
I say that...."? If so some bloke in the pub yesterday told me the
Hammers were going to win the cup this year, and as much as I want that
to be true I won't believe it just because he told me so.

Yes - I fully understand that he claims tax back on his charitable
donations. I fully believe that a lot of corporations and self-employed
people do. Could you explain why that makes Bill Gates worse than anyone
else for doing this?

Kevanf1's original post was about software donations - I think we agree
that these are a "bad thing"

~sm


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFEPMuHtjeLJb8KijsRAnuHAJ46oX/UTlfJXkywHYf2kl2mQ6WBSwCfXZ/9
Zq6ebReXgdjk+BgJGAaQHLg=
=4GjC
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----