Bill Gates: The Best Investment I’ve Ever Made

> our goal was to save lives and stop suffering... But they’ve also been successful in the way that investments traditionally are: They’ve created a lot of wealth, because when people aren’t sick in bed, they can go to work or school.

> The Copenhagen Consensus Center is a think tank that uses sophisticated algorithms and the best available data to compare alternate poverty-fighting strategies. Their tools have allowed us to test an interesting hypothesis: Suppose that our foundation hadn’t invested in Gavi, the Global Fund and GPEI and had instead put that $10 billion into the S&P 500, promising to give the balance to developing countries 18 years later. As of last week, those countries would have received about $12 billion, adjusted for inflation, or $17 billion if we factor in reinvested dividends.

> What if we had invested $10 billion in energy projects in the developing world? In that case, the return would have been $150 billion. What about infrastructure? $170 billion. By investing in global health institutions, however, we exceeded all of those returns: The $10 billion that we gave to help provide vaccines, drugs, bed nets and other supplies in developing countries created an estimated $200 billion in social and economic benefits.

> Every three to five years, each of these three organizations needs to raise new money. Most of the time, these “replenishments,” as they’re called, are spaced out, but that isn’t the case now. By a fluke of the calendar, Gavi, the Global Fund and the GPEI will all need more money over the next 18 months. The years 2019 and 2020 are the most important in recent memory for funding the fight against disease, and the urgent question for donors is: Will you continue to invest?

Regardless of your feelings on Bill Gates the individual, it would be nice if Gavi, the Global Fund and GPEI could get a fraction of the attention he does.

I hope his nuclear plans work.