If your dad is Bill Gates, you’re probably not getting a Starbucks gift card for graduating college.
In 2018, Jennifer Gates walked off the Stanford stage and onto a 124-acre, $15.82 million horse farm in North Salem, New York. According to Architectural Digest, the lavish estate was a graduation gift from her billionaire parents—and came complete with rolling pastures, three parcels of land, and proximity to New York City for her future studies.
But in case that sounds too much like the plot of “Succession: Equestrian Edition,” Melinda Gates would like to remind everyone: their kids were absolutely raised “middle class.”
“Middle class” isn’t a thing. There’s the working class and the ruling class.
Lol “middle class”… Does anyone know a middle class family? I just see people with money, and people who don’t have enough. That’s the real world… Maybe long ago there was a middle class?
Akshually. Depending on which definition you use they are middle class. The original meaning of middle class is the wealthy who don’t hold a title. They sit below the aristocracy aka upperclass, and above the peasantry aka the working class. The middle class is also called the bourgeoisie.
i like the original meaning because it made it a lot easier to point at the bourgeois and their politics (which is currently ruining my country and the proletariat is more than willing to lean even harder into their destructive mandates).
in my country/culture, middle class is (or at least was) anyone who have earned a professional title of high esteem. i.e. a doctor. and socially they were highly respected, regardless of actual wealth status. wealthy people used to be targets of ridicule (because they tried to flaunt their wealth in public. i still remember, 20 years ago, how one of our wealthiest individuals were literally crying on TV how no one respected her for wealth and she much preferred american culture. incidentally and totally unrelated; she launched a bunch of reality tv shows about worshipping wealth after that).
unfortunately american social media and said reality TV shows have radically changed how youth and the younger generation identify “status”. i always hear about how they will be rich one day and buy a super mansion. but if you ask what the purpose of that is; they couldn’t explain it - it’s just what they’re told to desire.
so from my perspective, the next 2-3 generations are on a path to ruin in the name of capital ownership for the few.
Never forget that Bill’s mom was on the board of directors at IBM and pushed for the company to use her boy’s software startup in the very beginning. Microsoft was built entirely on this nepotism and monopoly. There is nothing remotely middle class about that story.
She wasn’t on the board of directors of IBM, she was on another board which the CEO of IBM was also on.
It’s a distinction without a difference, but still.
and gates has to reinvent his image with his “charity work” he still a ruthless businessman, and countries complained about his vaccine requirements as well.
What could a horse ranch cost? $10?
They mean billionaire middleclass.
I think they actually do. $16 million is like weekend money for them, I’m guessing
They don’t even spend that money, as is all billionaire spending. They borrow against their assets and profit enough to pay back the loan so they literally don’t spend money by using that credit line to buy more assets. Gates, bezos, musk, etc. depending on their market situation they could literally take a piss and be 16 million dollars richer or poorer and it wouldn’t matter.
It’s insanely broken and dangerous. If money was gravity they’d be black holes, disrupting everything in the galaxy. Someday we’ll all be gone, and all that’s left will be one self-important machine counting all the money in the world until its circuits burn out. The heat death of capitalism.
Rich people always, without exception, fail to recognize their own disconnections from reality.
Well, okay, if that’s upper class then what size ranches do middle class people buy for their kids’ graduation?
Mattel brand. Less cost on maintenance also.
These motherfuckers clearly need to be paying more taxes.
Something Bill Gates actually agrees with. He’s one of the super rich who has been outspoken about the rich needing to pay more taxes.
So, Bill (after the divorce) buys the ranch as a gift, but the headline circles it back to a unsourced Melinda quote ON YAHOO FINANCE! This is another obfuscating hatchet job to whitewash billionaire behaviour by media owned by said billionaires. Please don’t engage. This is non-news. Down vote this to the sewer where it belongs.
Its middle class, how much do they need to spend on graduation? 1mil? Yeah, we’ll go 16mil and be the most middle class.
She means she told them to hold their wallet around the blacks in the city, and that only feminine gays are acceptable.
only feminine gays are acceptable.
I’m out of the loop for this. Is this something middle class families believe?
probably confusing it with UPPER middle class people, which are nowhere near middle class.
Ok.
