Handing away money you were never going to spend anyway is easy to praise and, according to the person doing it, not actually all that impressive. Melinda French Gates, one of the most prominent philanthropists in the world, said exactly that about her own giving. "It's important to acknowledge that giving away money your family will never need is not an especially noble act," she wrote. "The real standard for generosity is set by the people who give even when it means going without." Coming from someone with a personal fortune in the billions, the line reads less like false modesty and more like an honest correction aimed at how the word generosity usually gets applied to people like her.
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