Extremely rich people are, as a rule, at least a little bit bad. It’s nearly impossible to accumulate way more money than pretty much anyone without stepping on somebody, whether it’s someone else who is already well-off like the Winklevoss twins or normal people like the countless underpaid workers in Amazon warehouses. That being said, the world would be better off if more excessively rich people were like Bill Gates, who announced recently that he’s going to step down from his spot on Microsoft’s board of directors and from Warren Buffett’s financial management company Berkshire Hathaway so he can “dedicate more time to philanthropic priorities.”
That comes from a post on LinkedIn (apparently rich and famous business people are the ones who actually use LinkedIn), in which Gates explains that he won’t be “stepping away” from Microsoft even if he is leaving the board, saying he will “continue to be engaged with [current Chief Executive Satya Nadella]” and will continue to “help shape the vision and achieve the company’s ambitious goals.” He doesn’t say any specifics about his future plans beyond a desire to work with his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to further improve his “commitment to addressing some of the world’s toughest challenges.” So, to the average consumer, this probably won’t mean a whole lot unless his renewed focus on making the world a better place actually has some tangible results… which would be pretty nice right now.
We would’ve liked him to add something like “also the new Xbox is looking awesome and it’ll launch on time this year with a new Halo or whatever,” but he probably saves those messages for his real LinkedIn friends. (Though on LinkedIn they’re not called “friends,” they’re called “colleagues” or “associates” or “people who put smelly soups in the office microwave.”) Finally, we couldn’t decide which image to use for this story, so if you prefer this one at the bottom, please print this story out, cut out the bottom image, tape it over the one we used, scan it back onto the computer, and then share it in the comments. Maybe add a funny caption like we did? We’re looking for entertainment wherever we can get it.