{"id":2526,"date":"2020-04-16T11:45:37","date_gmt":"2020-04-16T11:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=2526"},"modified":"2020-04-16T11:45:37","modified_gmt":"2020-04-16T11:45:37","slug":"bill-gatess-efforts-to-fight-coronavirus-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=2526","title":{"rendered":"Bill Gates\u2019s efforts to fight coronavirus, explained"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“From the top down, the official US government response has been slow, incompetent, and poorly suited to what was at stake. Abolishing billionaires would not magically make Trump more competent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In that context, I find it hard to wish that Bill Gates had been taxed until he no longer had the resources he\u2019s now spending to try to attack this pandemic. And until the problems that produced this government response are fixed, I\u2019m opposed to tearing down the philanthropic safety net that has been there to catch us when the Trump administration failed. To be sure, Gates isn\u2019t necessarily representative of his class. But the point remains: Abolishing the billionaire class hardly guarantees the kind of competent government response needed in a crisis like this.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“for all the good Gates and other billionaires might be doing, it\u2019s important to remember that it will not be nearly enough to meet the current crisis.In a catastrophe of this magnitude, no billionaire can actually do a fraction as much as the US government can. If Gates liquidated all his wealth \u2014 no more vaccine programs, no more Gates Foundation \u2014 to distribute to every American, everyone would get less than $300 each. The $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package spends far more money than all the billionaires in America combined could.So the sensible role for philanthropists is not replacing the government. They can\u2019t do that. It\u2019s filling in the gaps \u2014 moving faster than the government, moving around bureaucratic red tape, making sure that good ideas break ground immediately instead of waiting weeks for approval.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0https:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/2020\/4\/14\/21215592\/bill-gates-coronavirus-vaccines-treatments-billionaires<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“From the top down, the official US government response has been slow, incompetent, and poorly suited to what was at stake. Abolishing billionaires would not magically make Trump more competent.
\nIn that context, I find it hard to wish that Bill Gates had been taxed until he no longer had the resources he\u2019s now spending to try to attack this pandemic. And until the problems that produced this government response are fixed, I\u2019m opposed to tearing down the philanthropic safety net that has been there to catch us when the Trump administration failed. To be sure, Gates isn\u2019t necessarily representative of his class. But the point remains: Abolishing the billionaire class hardly guarantees the kind of competent government response needed in a crisis like this.” <\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“for all the good Gates and other billionaires might be doing, it\u2019s important to remember that it will not be nearly enough to meet the current crisis.<\/p>\n

In a catastrophe of this magnitude, no billionaire can actually do a fraction as much as the US government can. If Gates liquidated all his wealth \u2014 no more vaccine programs, no more Gates Foundation \u2014 to distribute to every American, everyone would get less than $300 each. The $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package spends far more money than all the billionaires in America combined could.So the sensible role for philanthropists is not replacing the government. They can\u2019t do that. It\u2019s filling in the gaps \u2014 moving faster than the government, moving around bureaucratic red tape, making sure that good ideas break ground immediately instead of waiting weeks for approval.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[690,691,588,409,483,167],"class_list":["post-2526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-bill-gates","tag-billionaires","tag-corona","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2526"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2527,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526\/revisions\/2527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}