Comment by jltsiren
3 days ago
There are large numbers, and then there are even larger numbers.
Academic research is roughly $100 billion a year in the US. A foundation with $2 trillion could support that indefinitely with the required 5% minimum distributions. By today's numbers, the seven richest Americans could fund that.
I don't know worldwide numbers, but 4x the US is usually a good rule of thumb. You would probably need the 100–150 richest people to support all academic research worldwide.
> By today's numbers, the seven richest Americans could fund that.
Yes, they could, by paying their taxes.
But we’ve all seen that they really don’t want to share any of their wealth for any purpose, other than propping up a geriatric orange clown that campaigned on lowering their taxes.
PS: I said their taxes, not yours. Yours are going up, they’re just called tariffs, but that’s a tax: tariffs are your money getting collected by the government.