You are viewing a single thread.
View all comments
18 points

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates created The Giving Pledge, a legally binding agreement to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropy by death or through last will and testament. It currently has over 240 signatures from over 30 countries.

https://givingpledge.org/

permalink
report
reply
2 points

There’s a big difference between giving away 99.975% of your wealth, leaving your self with what 1 person can OPTIMISTICALLY make in a lifetime for retirement, and allowing people to scarp half of whatever is left after your life of destruction.

Not only does that mean Gate’s grand children have a grandpa with unimaginable wealth and power, but half of that is still in the family and all of them and their children’s children are all set for an absolute decadent life even if they all decide to never move another muscle ever again. All while the world continues to burn rapidly, waiting for the dragon to bleed.

This is the bare minimum, and they only do it to gain sympathy and trick us into believing they aren’t evil.

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points
*
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
49 points
*
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
17 points

4 - High-end philanthropy is subsidized by regular taxpayers.

I feel like this is really under-appreciated. Like, Rich Dude decides he wants to donate $100M to…whatever - early childhood education. In the US, he avoids up to $37M taxes, which you can either look at as other taxpayers making $37M matching donation or $37M taken from other society objectives.

To the extent that government is a (marginally) publicly accountable system for funding a society’s competing goals - education, health, defense, research - charity allows the very wealthy not just to bypass the social structure for prioritizing goals, but to force other taxpayers to adopt their personal priorities. Maybe the goal is good, maybe it’s not - the point is that they’re completely unaccountable.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points
*

What makes high-end philanthropy different from low-end philanthropy? Don’t they both get the same tax cuts?

permalink
report
parent
reply
57 points
*
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
-2 points

Signing the pledge doesn’t duck you out of any taxes. Also, giv8ng money away can lower taxes you pay, but it doesn’t lower them as much as the amount of money you gave away. Not how it works.

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points
*
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
34 points

This video explains the scam that Billionaires use:
Why There’s No Such Thing as a Good Billionaire

permalink
report
parent
reply
39 points

“Can we have some of your billions?”

“Over my dead body”

  • The Giving Pledge
permalink
report
parent
reply

memes

!memes@lemmy.world

Create post

Community rules

1. Be civil

No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politics

This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world

3. No recent reposts

Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No bots

No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/Ads

No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.

Sister communities

Community stats

  • 12K

    Monthly active users

  • 2.7K

    Posts

  • 53K

    Comments