Summary
Warren Buffett gave $1.1 billion in Berkshire Hathaway stock to family foundations and detailed plans for distributing his $147 billion fortune after his death.
His three children will oversee giving the remainder within 10 years, with designated successors in case they predecease him.
Buffett, 94, reaffirmed his belief in avoiding dynastic wealth, favoring philanthropy instead.
Over the years, he has donated $55 billion to the Gates Foundation but plans to shift focus to his family’s foundations.
Buffett continues leading Berkshire Hathaway while preparing Greg Abel as his successor.
Not Bill Gates, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “The primary stated goals of the foundation are to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty across the world, and to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology in the U.S.”.
What’s wrong with the Clinton Foundation?
Beginning in 2015, the foundation was accused of wrongdoing, including a bribery and pay-to-play scheme, but multiple investigations through 2019 found no evidence of malfeasance. The New York Times reported in September 2020 that a federal prosecutor appointed by attorney general Bill Barr to investigate the origins of the 2016 FBI Crossfire Hurricane investigation had also sought documents and interviews regarding how the FBI handled an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.[16] In May 2023, it was revealed that the Justice Department had continued to investigate the Foundation until days before the end of the Trump presidency, when FBI officials insisted the DOJ acknowledge in writing that there was no case to bring.[17]
Nothing. Just billionaires passing money back and forth under a non-profit label. Nothing to see here.
Meh. His arguments boil down to “isn’t the government better at spending money?” and “Rich people are bad, they shouldn’t be rich!”. None of his points really have anything to do with these foundations.
The government isn’t “better” at spending money. They have a LOT more of it to spend, though. If the US Government got some tax revenue from, say, inheritance tax when Warren Buffet dies, I don’t see how Congress is going to say “oh nice, a couple more billion dollars to go in our trillions of dollars budget, lets spend it on education”. They’re going to spend it on military or whatever. People lobby congress to spend money and make laws that benefit their company/industry. So that cancels out more than half of his 5 minute video for me.
The beginning of his video talks about how the media portrays it, which is a different subject.
Rich people being rich is an entirely different subject. They are rich, and you can’t go back in time and change that. So that cancels out another minute or two of his video.
He tries to make a point about how they only have to spend 5% of their money every year, like that’s somehow bad? Compare it to a person in retirement: If someone starts with some money in their retirement account with 4% interest (and 3% inflation), if they withdraw 5% of their balance every year, they’ll run out of money. The Gates foundation has a plan to spend a lot more than that after they die. They’re not required to, sure, but why should they be?
All in all, I still fail to see how this strategy is bad for society overall. Argue all you want that there shouldn’t be any individuals with this amount of money, but that’s a different subject.
The government isn’t “better” at spending money.
The government is elected, oligarchs are not. Governments certainly can waste a lot of money, but they can be frugal too. For instance, expense ratios for Medicare are just a small fraction of private health insurance. Meanwhile, Bill Gates spent a fortune bending the American educational standards to confirm with his political philosophy and, by his own auditor’s conclusions it raised costs for everyone while degrading educational outcomes.
Without embracing the idea that billionaires are somehow just better at everything than most citizens, there is no reason to think they should have seriously outsized influence on public policy. Anyone paying attention today would be insane to conclude that our system is any kind of meritocracy.
If billionaires want to spend their money on charitable causes, I think that is great. The problem comes in when they use foundations to hide their money from taxes, starve the government of revenue, then backfill the deficiencies with systems designed to drive even more money to the top. Charitable contributions beyond what most people can make should not be tax deductable. Billionaires should pay what they owe, then can choose to be charitable with the rest.
If you think these massive foundations are earning 4% interest, you are out of your mind. The S&P500 index averages well over 10%. Private equity does even better than that.
