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Rich people are a huge benefit of the system. Think of Elon Musk putting his wealth into SpaceX or Bill Gates into charity work. The fact that people who've demonstrated the ability to successfully manage capital investment and innovation get to control more resources is a positive feature.

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I don't care about SpaceX. It doesn't benefit me at all in any way. In fact, some of my tax money probably subsidizes those spaceships so that big telecom companies can launch their satellites into space more cheaply and juice more profits out of my current ADSL contract; which won't get cheaper.

I appreciate Bill Gate's charity work but I understand that it also doesn't benefit me personally - It probably costs me as well. Lifting people out of poverty means that they will be able to get an education to compete against me in the job marketplace in the future and will lower my wage. I can cope with that on a moral basis, but I'm pretty sure that Bill Gate's donations cost me more (in terms of how it affects my humble net worth) than it costs Bill Gates himself (in terms of how it affects his net worth).

If you are going to include remote effects like competition from poor people getting education, you also need to include an infinite amount of other effects; in particular world stability, the chances of terrorist attacks, 3rd world war, refugee crises, trade wars etc

With the technology we have now the world does in fact have plenty of resources to have basic needs satisfied for everyone (e.g., we throw away many times more food than what it would take to fix hunger). There is no actual need to compete. Such a world is safer for everyone, including the rich, and Bill Gates is one of many working long term towards that goal.

See lifting the poor as a rather cheap insurance against political instability.

We are always one major war or one generation away from having the entire system toppled, and the very meaning of "property rights" that make the rich rich overturned. Civilizations are not forever, whatever the people currently at the top may hope for.

Intentionally keeping the poor poor, and keep concentrating wealth, is not a recipe for stability.

SpaceX providing launch services significantly cheaper than their competitors has probably benefited you personally far more than those initial subsidies to SpaceX. In fact, the recurring subsidies to their competitor, ULA, are substantially higher.

Bill Gates is worth ~96B as of September 1st, according to Forbes. A report from last August noted he had so far donated ~50B. So, you would profess that the resultant effect on your employment market from Gates' donations has negatively impacted your salary by more than 50%? That sounds like a preposterous claim, but obviously one that cannot be proven.

Meaningless relative comparison, and you know that.

Point is, that in relative terms, Gates' donations absolutely _don't_ cost OP more than they do Gates.

As a software developer who works in Europe, a large proportion of my colleagues come from developing countries and they have a great work ethic, so it doesn't seem that far-fetched that the added competition would have a significant negative impact on wages in my industry across Europe.

I agree that it's very complex though and we can't really measure how much Bill Gates' philanthropy may have contributed towards this trend.

I just wanted to point out that good things tend to have negative unintended side effects. For every deal, there is always a winner and a loser.

Instead of "trickling down", a perfectly tight pipeline system was designed and build so that each single drop is taken care of... one can lick the pipes still.

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