Microsoft Co-founder Giving Half His Money Away
Charitable billionaires are promising half of their money to charity.
Bill Gates is famously a very charitable man. However, there's another charitable soul in Microsoft's history. Paul Allen, who helped Gates found Microsoft in the 70's but left in the 80's and officially resigned from his place on the board in 2000, is constantly donating money to different causes. Now, Allen has promised to give away the majority of his fortune when he dies.
Paul Allen is already a dedicated philanthropist. He's donated millions upon millions of dollars to the University of Washington and has made substantial multi-million dollar donations to various different charities and medical organizations. Allen has already given more than the average person can (the New York Times puts it at about $1 billion so far), but last night the Microsoft co-founder said he would be giving more than half of his $13.5 billion to philanthropy.
"I’ve planned for many years now that the majority of my estate will be left to philanthropy to continue the work of the foundation and to fund nonprofit scientific research, like the ground breaking work being done at the Allen Institute for Brain Science," NYT cites Allen as saying in a statement.
Allen's pledge is in response to Warren Buffet and Bill Gates' call for the country’s billionaires to give half their money to charity. Several other billionaires have made the same promise as Allen, including Eli and Edythe Broad and John and Ann Doerr.

who needs their own personal jumbo jetliner?
who needs their own personal jumbo jetliner?
Good on him. It gets to the point where you realize you have everything you could ever want, and you eventually get over the whole obsession with material possessions. He did a wonderful thing
dont say stupid things, switching whos hands the moneys in doesnt help the economy.please take an economy class before commenting on it
Gotta have some left for the family.
For profit pharmecuticals have done far more to cure diseases then any charity has been able to muster with greater resources.
Just because i didn't elaborate on WHICH people should directly take hold of the money doesn't mean i don't know what i'm talking about. Before you call someone stupid, maybe you should take a look at our current situation, and the 30's. Money hoarding leads to economic downfall in the long run. I think it's a good thing he's giving away half of his money, but there's a point when being wealthy becomes ridiculous. When you have enough to buy pretty much anything you'd ever want in life, you've earned far past your share.
It doesn't take a genious to figure out how many jobs could be moved back to the U.S. which would cut production costs, increasing profit margins, and increasing the amount of dollars in the AMERICAN workforce' pockets. Maybe YOU don't have to worry about feeding your family like everyone else, but the rest of us do. When the percentage of people out of work reaches double digits and doesn't fall for over a year, there's an obvious problem. I don't remember saying give everyone $2 million to blow on Corvettes. Maybe you should think before you speak before calling someone stupid.
LOL. The jobs will come back as soon as people decide they will go back to the line for the same monetary compensation as someone in Taiwan.
There is no ceiling for how much money you can make, no "past your share". Just because you have a rough lot in your life doesn't mean you need to go around pointing fingers at people with more money than you - its not a good quality to have.
What jobs? Kinda hard to get a job when all available positions are filled and businesses keep going under. Businesses have a hard time staying afloat when people don't have money to spend, or don't have jobs. You obviously didn't understand anything I said. I seem to remember only pointing fingers at those pointing their fingers and doing the name calling. It's disappointing how ignorant a few of you can be.
Of course, the 13.5 billion leftover can still get you plenty of Jumbo Jetliners....
haha, thats probably because you have to make decent products and profit before you can give that magnitude of money!
I agree. And if the half that don't have it were so adept at handling large sums of money, they'd already have it. Quite often, legitimately earned money seems to find its way to people who know how to manage it in the first place.
It's his money, it'll go wherever the heck he wants it go to, minus estate taxes and attorneys fees, etc.