[Traum]

Bill Gates is one of the original "good" billionaires, if not the OG good billionaries. Outside of those who care about philanthropy, I don't think very many people pay much attention to him anymore because he has been shying away from the limelight. It seems to me that he mostly just wants to educate himself on the topics that his foundation is involved in so that he can make better decisions regarding those projects.

From his tech days to his current philanthropy work, I have always had a tremendous amount of respect for him. I wish the modern day tech billionaires are more like him.

I loosely follow some amount of European news, and I'd say there seems to be a quiet consensus among EU countries -- at least the big ones -- to impose a global wealth tax in some shape or form. This is hardly surprising bcos Europe has always been far more socialist than N.American countries. But I recall the news commentators suggesting that the plan couldn't really be successfully unless the US is fully onboard with it. Even back in the Biden days, the US gov has been lukewarm towards the idea, and now with Trump, he has either signed off on some sort of EO, or threatened the EU to slap them with sanctions or tariffs if they pass laws to go after American companies operating in EU for a hiding profits in offshore tax heavens. (Interestingly, Ireland is considered a tax heaven.) If the global corporate wealth tax scheme is imposed, the US would actually be the one benefiting from the higher tax revenues since they will be the ones collecting the extra tax revenue. But it seems like there is very little appetite for the US gov to go through with this idea.