Bill Gates

William Henry Gates III, or Bill Gates is an American billionaire and one of the richest men in the world. He was the richest for several years.

Gates went to Harvard, but dropped out before completing his degree. He went to an elite prep school for high school.

Gates co-founded Microsoft along with Paul Allen in 1975. He is currently the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with his wife(sep 2021), Melinda French Gates, which he does full-time. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does charity work based on solving problems like disease, starvation, lack of education, and poverty, but it also cannot be denied that it, and Gates himself, have a massive influence over the rest of the world which is not as unambiguously beneficial. For example, the Gates Foundation invests in many companies with the exclusive goal of a maximum return on investment, which includes investing in fossil fuels, pharmaceutical companies, private prisons, and other companies that create and worsen the issues the foundation aims to solve. The foundation also exerts massive influence over education, health, and agriculture, and has been accused of using that influence help companies Gates invests in or to prioritize programs that look good but provide relatively little benefit for the amount of money put into them, even to the point of draining people and resources from programs favored by health and education experts to whatever programs Gates personally thinks will be effective. The foundation has also given awards to people like the Hindu nationalist prime minister of India Narendra Modi.

While Gates is not the son of a billionaire, his father (William Henry Gates II) was relatively powerful. He was an attorney, a director of Costco, the president of both the Seattle/King County Bar Association and the Washington State Bar Association, a leader in the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce and King County United Way, the founder of the Technology Alliance, and a member of the University of Washington's Board of Regents. His mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way of America, as well as the University of Washington's board of regents. Gates's maternal grandfather was J. W. Maxwell, a national bank president, and his paternal grandfather was a store owner.

Positions of Power:

* Co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
	+ Which has billions of dollars of investments, including in
		- Berkshire Hathaway
		- Waste Management
		- Caterpillar
		- Walmart
		- UPS
* Owner of Cascade Investment LLC., which owns
	+ 47% of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts
	+ 34% of Republic Services
	+ 25% of Ecolab
	+ 14% of Canadian National Railway
	+ 14% of AutoNation
	+ 4% of Berkshire Hathaway
	+ 269,000 acres of farmland
* Owner of massive amounts of real estate, including:
	+ A private island in Belize
	+ A 30-acre estate in Florida
	+ Hundreds of Thousands of acres of farmland

https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/leadership/bill-gates

https://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/billionaire-news/richest-person-in-the-world-1987-to-2000/

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/04/next-comes-the-divorce-settlement-breakdown-of-bill-gates-wealth.html#:~:text=Private%20holdings%20and%20common%20stock&text=Through%20Cascade%20Investment%2C%20Gates%20has,a%20few%20of%20the%20many.

https://landreport.com/americas-100-largest-landowners/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade\_Investment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill\_Gates

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill\_Gates\_Sr.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary\_Maxwell\_Gates