The record-breaking donation came from a 93-year-old former professor, who is the widow of a wealthy investor.

The record-breaking donation came from a 93-year-old former professor, who is the widow of a wealthy investor.

  • aluminiumsandworm@kbin.social
    3·
    9 months ago

    how to be a good billionaire: give it all away at the first opportunity

    no idea how much she has left, but i imagine it’s still plenty to live on

    • DessertStorms@kbin.social
      3·
      9 months ago

      how to be a good billionaire

      No such thing. You cannot get to that point without trampling all over and exploiting others.

      give it all away at the first opportunity

      Similarly, a person who would do this wouldn’t hoard enough to qualify in the first place

      • aluminiumsandworm@kbin.social
        3·
        9 months ago

        yeah fair. it seems like she got the money from her husband, but still. getting that money in the first place is inherently unethical

      • admiralteal@kbin.social
        2·
        9 months ago

        It takes far less money than a billion dollars be able to make world-changing charitable donations. You could, say, fund a light rail system (yes, even in a decently-sized city) or housing for every homeless person in your home town for vastly less than that.

        There’s only so much you can invest in yourself and your personal hobbies before there is nothing more you can realistically buy. Any normal, reasonable person, once already confronted with a luxurious lifestyle for themselves and their loves ones that will last forever, looks at all their extra money and decides it would make them feel good to make those world-changing charitable donations. And so they do it.

        I’m sure everyone’s point of balancing anxiety and lifestyle is different… but any reasonable person, it’s WAY before they hit a billion.

        In short: a normal person starts wildly giving away their wealth long before they become a billionaire. You have to be some kind of antisocial weirdo not to.

      • 📛Maven@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        If you read the summary, she didn’t hoard it. Her husband did, and she gave it away pretty much immediately after he died.

        • DessertStorms@kbin.social
          1·
          9 months ago

          Lol, right, I’m sure she lived a life of poverty in a shack round the back of his mansion and had nothing to do with those ill-gotten billions and the privileges they bring… 🙄🙄

          • Kage520@lemmy.world
            1·
            9 months ago

            Wtf is wrong with Lemmy lol. “You didn’t give away all your wealth fast enough! Bad person.”

          • livus@kbin.social
            1·
            9 months ago

            Idk, maybe she played the long game.

            Her husband has turned into a sociopathic wealth hoarder

            • divorce or

            • keep her head down so she can redistribute all of it when he’s gone.

            Seems like she made a legit choice to me. I’d rather someone did the right thing late than not at all - I’d save my ire for the people who don’t.

  • Grimy@lemmy.world
    3·
    9 months ago

    So that would be 200 schools if we liquidated one really annoying billionaire. Just sayin

  • fubarx@lemmy.ml
    3·
    9 months ago

    At $60K tuition x 500 students = $30M / yr. Simple interest on $1B at 3% per year over 20 years = $30M / yr.

    They can pay for 500 medical students, practically forever, without touching the principal.

    According to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein_College_of_Medicine, in 2021, they matriculated 183 students (out of 9773 applicants). That means they can double the number of ‘free tuition’ students and the endowment will still keep growing.

  • raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org
    2·
    9 months ago

    While no individuals should ever be that wealthy to begin with, it’s good to see some of them are capable of letting it go in their old age and returning it to the community rather than selfishly hording it.

    • DessertStorms@kbin.social
      1·
      9 months ago

      rather than selfishly hording it.

      Make no mistake, even those who give away sums that to us seen unimaginable, are still doing that.

    • apis@beehaw.orgEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      Sounds like it was her husband who hoarded the wealth, and that she gave it up once he left it to her.

      So though she’d have benefitted greatly from being married to someone so rich, that money wasn’t under her control until he died.

      Seems her own work was worthwhile to the community.

  • RememberTheApollo@lemmy.world
    1·
    9 months ago

    But textbooks are still $1,500 and there are $50k in fees.

    /s. Sorta.

    It’s a great gift, but tuition isn’t the only expense.

    • Voyajer@lemmy.world
      2·
      9 months ago

      Hopefully PDFs of medical textbooks are as easy to find as they are for engineering textbooks.

    • admiralteal@kbin.social
      1·
      9 months ago

      With a huge pot of money infinitely annuitized like this, they could literally be paying their students to attend.

      Maybe that’s the next frontier. Hopefully. It’s definitely the best way to ensure access to education for the poor.