Microsoft King Bill Gates is one of the biggest private landowners in the United States. Gates owns 275,000 acres of farmland according to a 2022 Land Report.
In a yearly Reddit Ask Me Anything session on Jan 11, Gates was asked why he made all these purchases.
“Why are you buying up so much farmland, do you think this is a problem with billionaire wealth and how much you can disproportionately acquire?”, asked a Reddit user.
Bill Gates’s reply to the question was, “I own less than 1/4000 of the farmland in the US. I have invested in these farms to make them more productive and create more jobs. There isn’t some grand scheme involved – in fact, all these decisions are made by a professional investment team.”
“In terms of the very rich, I think they should pay a lot more in taxes and they should give away their wealth over time. It has been very fulfilling for me and is my full-time job,” said Gates.
Bill Gates and taxes
Gates has been advocating for higher taxes for the wealthy for some time now. In a blog post way back in 2020 he had said, “The rich should pay more than they currently do, and that includes Melinda and me.”
This is also not the first time Bill Gates has been asked about his farmland. Last year a Reddit user asked him, “What do you plan to do with all the farmland you have purchased?”
His reply was, “My investment team bought the farmland. It is less than 0.1% of all US farmland because the ownership is so diverse. We invest in farms to raise productivity. Some are near cities and might end up having other uses.”
Bill Gates himself is no stranger to controversy, after his divorce and rumours of hushed-up affairs as well as being involved with the likes of Jeffrey Epstein, Gates has lost what was once upon a time a philanthropic halo around his head. Despite that his good billionaire and civic-minded reputation still exists and has some value for the work he does.
Gates is one of the founders of Giving Pledge, which advocates for the world’s wealthiest people to give away most of their fortunes to charitable causes. The pledge was an initiative created together with his ex-wife Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet.
The Bloomberg Billionaire Index lists Gates as the sixth richest man in the world with a net worth of $111 billion.
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