Microsoft founder and billionaire turned philanthropist Bill Gates laid to rest the long-time conspiracy theory that he owns some 80% of all U.S. farmland earlier this week in his 11th appearance in an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) session on Reddit.
What Happened: Gates, answering dozens of questions over the course of a few hours during the AMA, including: “Why are you buying up so much farmland, do you think this is a problem with billionaire wealth and how much you can disproportionally [sic] acquire?”
In response, he said, “I own less than 1/4000 of the farmland in the US. I have invested in these farms to make them more productive and create more jobs. There isn't some grand scheme involved - in fact all these decisions are made by a professional investment team.”
Conspiracy theorists claimed last year that the Microsoft founder was buying up farmland in the U.S. in order to starve Americans for an unknown reason, Snopes said, after researchers said in April that the world was facing a potential food shortage as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
According to a 2022 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Agriculture Statistics Service, there are 895,300,000 acres of farmland in the U.S.
Gates owns roughly 242,000 acres, amounting to about 0.03% of the total.
He is, with Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft (MSFT) - Get Free Report, one of the personalities most targeted by fans of conspiracy theories. They see his influence almost everywhere.
The American billionaire of Hungarian origin became a financial legend after a masterstroke in 1992. On Sept. 16, 1992, the pound sterling collapsed, forcing Great Britain to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. It was called Black Wednesday, aka the 1992 Sterling crisis.
Soros, at the time a currency trader, had bet against the British pound by shorting 10 billion pounds. His bet was based on the fact that the British government's attempts to support the pound would fail. The conspiracy theorists also jump on the fact that the hedge-fund tycoon is one of the Democratic Party's biggest donors.
During the 2022 midterm cycle, the investor, whose fortune was estimated at $8.5 billion as of Jan. 15 by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, spent $128.4 million on the midterms, says the Americans For Tax Fairness.
Open Society Foundations is one of the world's richest foundations, along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which allots billions to promote public health and development.
Negative and conspiratorial social-media tweets and messages about the billionaire are numerous.
It is in this context that a Twitter user posted a message on Jan. 15 regarding Soros. He imagines a scenario where the financier is interviewed on Twitter Space and therefore asks what questions could be asked of him.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla (TSLA) - Get Free Report and owner of Twitter, tweeted his question. This one is interesting because it touches on the way Soros uses his money and indirectly with the donations he makes.
"If we got George Soros in a Twitter Space what question would you ask him?" the user tweeted on Jan. 15.
No comments:
Post a Comment