If your dad is Bill Gates, you’re probably not getting a Starbucks gift card for graduating college.
In 2018, Jennifer Gates walked off the Stanford stage and onto a 124-acre, $15.82 million horse farm in North Salem, New York. According to Architectural Digest, the lavish estate was a graduation gift from her billionaire parents—and came complete with rolling pastures, three parcels of land, and proximity to New York City for her future studies.
But in case that sounds too much like the plot of “Succession: Equestrian Edition,” Melinda Gates would like to remind everyone: their kids were absolutely raised “middle class.”
A graduation gift worth more than most people will earn over an entire career.
This shows you how billionaires imagine middle class to be. They’re completely out of touch, as expected.
Never defend a billionaire, they would never defend you. Don’t defend them, idolize them, or trust them. Billionaires care about money and the power it provides, NOTHING ELSE. That’s the main prerequisite for becoming filthy rich, after all.
That’s right, they’re comparing to other billionaires and looking at themselves being so humble that they must be middle class. It’s unfathomable to them to know what it’s really like.
She’s that bored.
Ikr? Rich and power but still a weird horse girl
All I got was a beer
Rich people always, without exception, fail to recognize their own disconnections from reality.
These motherfuckers clearly need to be paying more taxes.
Something Bill Gates actually agrees with. He’s one of the super rich who has been outspoken about the rich needing to pay more taxes.
Something Bill Gates actually agrees with
It’s always interesting to me how people bring this up regarding Gates and Buffett, as if that makes their largesse and greed at the expense of others perfectly acceptable. It’s easy to say you support something when you know you’re never going to be held accountable for following through.
Few things in life are pure binary, and that’s especially true of humans themselves. My take on Gates is that he was a smart but cutthroat businessman who did a number of things that were at least somewhat unethical, and became one of the richest people in the world. Then he got older and started thinking about his life and his legacy. He has been giving away huge sums of money to really worthwhile causes, like trying to eradicate malaria. He seems pretty sincere in his lobbying for increased taxes for the rich.
Does his philanthropy now erase his unscrupulous behavior when he was young? Not to me, but I do believe he’s genuine in wanting to make the world s better place and putting his riches to good use.
Pff, he is still a piece of shit even with his “philantropies”. For example, he has given some money to fight some diseases (though even then there is an argument to be made that his focus on fashionable diseases has taken resources away from more pressing diseases affecting the global south, but that’s another discussion). But then as soon as it was convenient for him he rallied against lifting the patents of Covid-19 vaccines during a pandemic (https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/). So what fucking good are his philantropies if he still acts like a piece of shit at the most crucial moments. Everything he does is just to increase his power and influence, and to whitewash his image. He is still the same piece of shit he has always been. You have to be purposefully naive to think anyone who remains a billionaire is trying to do any good.
Everyone say it with me, “THERE. ARE. NO. GOOD. MILLIONAIRES. OR. BILLIONAIRES.”
…and not living behind gated walls. My partner works construction in some truly outrageous "communities " and the people in our city don’t even know the lavishness of the lives of those who live there.
What could a horse ranch cost? $10?
Much like the soon to be german chancellor, who told an interviewer, that he is upper middle class. All that while being a former Blackrock manager and owning (and using regularily) a personal private jet. Thats some kind of chancellor material…
You’ll love this:
Oh, I indeed love this XD Thanks for that
Tbf, it is “merely” a private prop plane, not a jet (which would be significantly more expensive still). But yeah, not exactly middle class material…
They mean billionaire middleclass.
I think they actually do. $16 million is like weekend money for them, I’m guessing
They don’t even spend that money, as is all billionaire spending. They borrow against their assets and profit enough to pay back the loan so they literally don’t spend money by using that credit line to buy more assets. Gates, bezos, musk, etc. depending on their market situation they could literally take a piss and be 16 million dollars richer or poorer and it wouldn’t matter.
It’s insanely broken and dangerous. If money was gravity they’d be black holes, disrupting everything in the galaxy. Someday we’ll all be gone, and all that’s left will be one self-important machine counting all the money in the world until its circuits burn out. The heat death of capitalism.
“Middle class” isn’t a thing. There’s the working class and the ruling class.
and in the narrow band where you neither need to work nor have the wealth to rule is the middle class.
I want to be this middle class…
Well, okay, if that’s upper class then what size ranches do middle class people buy for their kids’ graduation?
You crazy LEGO is crazy expensive!
Mattel brand. Less cost on maintenance also.
Rich people are so goddamn out of touch with reality.
Lol “middle class”… Does anyone know a middle class family? I just see people with money, and people who don’t have enough. That’s the real world… Maybe long ago there was a middle class?
I’ve met people who had enough but not too much. Never hurting for money, one vacation a year out of state but not out of the country, bought cars new but drove them for decades. Working class, but comfortable.
Yeah, some still exists, most have gone the way of the dodo
https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2024/05/31/the-state-of-the-american-middle-class/
Diminished sure, but still the largest group.
and gates has to reinvent his image with his “charity work” he still a ruthless businessman, and countries complained about his vaccine requirements as well.
