Working-age Americans who make $50,000 to $100,000 a year are two to six times more generous in the share of their investment assets that they give to charity than those Americans who make more than $10 million, a pioneering study of federal tax data shows.

The least generous of all working-age Americans in 2003, the latest year for which Internal Revenue Service data is available, were among the young and prosperous - the 285 taxpayers age 35 and under who made more than $10 million - and the 18,600 taxpayers making $500,000 to $1 million. The top group had on average $101 million of investment assets while the other group had on average $2.4 million of investment assets.

On average these two groups made charitable gifts equal to 0.4 percent of their assets, while people the same age who made $50,000 to $100,000 gave gifts equal to more than 2.5 percent of their investment assets, six times that of their far wealthier peers.

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The I.R.S. data was analyzed by the New hing Group, a San Francisco-based philanthropic research organization that since 1998 has been encouraging the most prosperous Americans to give more. The full report was posted last night at www.new hing.org .
NY Times

Bill Gates foundation to "fight Aids" is really a fight against loose Intellectual Property restrictions in the developing world. The same laws that protect AZT (which was developed almost ENTIRELY on taxpayer money) protect the outrageously overpriced Windows and Office from royalty free replication.

Bill Gates' "charity" is really just a way to protect his own bottom line.