1w ago

Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge after 15 years: Only 9 of the 256 billionaires actually followed through on giving away half their wealth

fortune.com Bill Gates and Warren Buffett's Giving Pledge after 15 years: Only 9 of the 256 billionaires actually followed through on giving away half their wealth

The Institute for Policy Studies’ report “The Giving Pledge at 15” finds that the initiative remains mostly unfulfilled.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett's Giving Pledge after 15 years: Only 9 of the 256 billionaires actually followed through on giving away half their wealth

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The prospect of still being billionaires, but with less billions, was just too much to handle
- Exactly why they need to be taxed more.
  
  Billionaires shouldn't exist to begin with and don't assume tax money are used by governments for good.
- I mean, you don’t become a billionaire by giving money away.
  
  Uh, yeah you do. What do you think charities are for? Helping people?

Now imagine if there was some way a government could take a percentage of that and put it towards improving society as a whole.
Oh well, guess we're fucked.
- BUT THAT WOULD BE COMMUNISM!!1!
- Now imagine if there was some way a government could take a percentage of that and put it towards improving society as a whole.
  Yes, some form of "giving pledge" where the amount was standardized and there was no option to back out. Radical thinking here.

Lol... While gates foundation does do some decent work. Let's be real it is astroturf operation inherently
Also, Warren already back out.
So this is just a shill op for these "good" parasites.
Read between the lines folks, these people are your enemies
- To people like this, the number in their bank account is like a scoreboard. They didn't get that high up the leaderboard purely by accident.
  Anyone who thinks that kind of person is just going to give up their place on the scoreboard is either incredibly naïve or gullible.
  Don't get me wrong, there are some people to there who may have some semblance of empathy, but as seen by the title, that's about 1 in 25.
  They also don't do good things out of the goodness of their hearts, they do it to win social points so that they don't get gunned down in the middle of a NYC street.
  
  To people like this, the number in their bank account is like a scoreboard.
  It's not just that.
  Besides the humanitarian work that the gates foundation does do "voluntarily", money is agency, it is power.
  There is very little argument and reason to believe that "people" and "countries" would actually be more responsible in spending it.
  If there was a big, motivated, carefully planned social movement that had a solid idea and spending plan, things would be different. And such a group could also force them to give up that money to spend it on these things. But such a movement doesn't exist.
  As it stands, the idea that they would voluntarily give up money is dumb. To do what? Feed the corruption and nepo network in their country, that then will benefit only the people that are just like them, but less rich? That makes no sense.
  It has to come from public pressure and equal wealth taxes.
  
  This doesn't make much sense to me.
  Sure. Gates is not a "nice" person. The business practices involved in becoming a billionaire require him to be a vile human being. Granted.
  That said, he has given up his place on the leaderboard. He has become dramatically less wealthy as a result of his philanthropic work.
  What are you claiming is Gates' motivation here? Not getting murdered? Come on. There are much more practical, reliable, and cheaper means to achieve that.
  
  They didn’t get that high up the leaderboard purely by accident.
  You also don't stay up there in the leaderboard by accident
- I assume that tax avoidance is also a factor.
  
  You wouldn't expect these clowns to pay taxes that's what w2 slaves are for. In fact, the treasury should be paying them. Just look at the national debt since 1980s then look at how fat these swine got.
  Crux of the everything crisis we got on our hands.
  But hey the good parasites paid 15k for a fluf piece, put on a suit and say thank you!
  
  Let's not forget ~~lobbying~~bribery. And since said political influence is ostensibly being bought for the sake of charity, nobody would even blink.
  Just my theory, mind you. But every one of these charitable foundations is primarily done for tax avoidance. No question. Well that is every one of these foundations except for the one set up by Mr President Tiny Dick. He just can't resist the temptation of embezzlement. I mean seriously, he bankrupted THREE casinos, and had a judge not just dissolve his foundation, but also bar him from running one of these so-called charitable foundations ever again.
  I don't even want to know how you can fuck up that egregiously. One of those things where you have to wonder if successfully finding understanding of how it happened is going to hopelessly corrupt your own soul for all of eternity.
  
  It always has been (points gun)
  
  Why would you waste $10 to save $5 in tax?
  
  What taxes?
- The only good billionaire is a dead billionaire whose stolen wealth has been returned to the people
  
  Does that mean Gates will be "good" if he spends all his money on vaccines and then dies of natural causes?
- also Gates have accused of vaccine colonialism by african countries, hes not doing out of his own heart, its most likely his way of laundering money, plus to distance himself from epstein.
  
  This doesn't make any sense.
  He's been doing this since long before Epstein was arrested.
  He also doesn't need to launder money because he's already paid tax on all his money. He's becoming demonstrably, significantly less wealthy in the course of distributing vaccines. If he were laundering money he would be becoming more wealthy.

Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
- I really like that as a term, never come across it before.
- Financial obesity is literally capitalism. That's the disease. Period.
  
  Financial obesity is a large part of capitalism, but it’s by no means exclusive to it. Replacing capitalism with anything that tolerates obscene wealth accumulation would be a categorical failure.

tbh I'm surprised that there are 9 who did
- as a reward we should leave them for last

On an unrelated note, Bill Gates is in the epstein list.
- And the reason Melinda divorced him.
  
  Serious or joke?
- And he didn't donate shit without an economic incentive, it's all a tax writeoff, it's all a scam. Even that shit he did pumping money into AIDS research as "charity" went into companies where he held stake himself. It's so fucking vile.
  guillotine.jpg
- Didn't know that, but not surprised.
  
  In an email sent after Gates went to have dinner with Epstein in his Manhattan mansion he wrote A very attractive Swedish woman and her daughter dropped by and I ended up staying there quite late

Meh. I actually don't think its a good idea. You just draw power away from the best of a segment empowering the biggest assholes. Taxes should be progressive and include all sources of income not just wages and the tax brackets should go all the way up to the highest income level. So there should be a level for over 100 billion and another for over 10 billion and over 1 billion and so on. Five figure income should be zero.
- Taxes should be progressive
  Yeah ofc. Why do you think the billionaires came up with this BS plan instead?
- I agree with you and your proposal with the exception of 5 figure income having no income tax. At a billion level it might not be so important the difference between one or two billion. But on the 5 digits salaries, the difference of someone making 30k or someone making 80k is definitely meaningful. And as someone being in a comfy point in between there I do think everyone in my bracket should be paying taxes. Not high, but definitely something. Then lower incomes then yes, definitely 0% tax. But the amount of people on 5 digits salaries that are on the higher end is definitely worth having some tax, even when a small amount it already helps support the system with so many.
  
  At the upper end you might be able to swing the more modest of housing and put away for retirement and that is great but it is not like changes circumstances that much. I would argue that opposite that the 2billion is one billion of funny money over what the one bilion guy has and should be taxed along the lines of lottery winnings.
- and the tax brackets should go all the way up to the highest income level
  What does that even mean? They're lower limits. Everything that exceeds the lower limit for the top bracket (which has no upper limit) is taxed the top rate.
  
  It means the highest tax bracket should not be in thousands when the top makes hundreds of billions.
- Five figure income should be zero? $10,000/year is not a livable income.
  
  They're saying the tax rate should be 0 for 5-figure incomes.
  
  as papastevesy said im advocating for zero tax on five figures which would go up to 99,999.99
  
  It's not a serious income. Why penalise the ppl at the bottom?

The fact that there are 256 billionaires is an absolute failure of our society.
- 256 billionaires that we know of!
  
  Soon to be a few trillionaires and a thousand billionaires
- If there were 3 billion would that be a failure?

Wowza scoob. Imagine that. Rich people lying.
Just wow.
- Sound like rich people ought to be dying
- Ruh roh!

They broke their arms patting themselves on their backs and can’t write checks anymore. 😢

why did they only use an 8-bit number to count billionaires , surely there are more of em
/dumbface
- What are you, one-based or something? If it were an 8-bit integer there would have been 255.
  
  it's 255 for maximum index, but still 256 for maximum count though lol but agreed, 255 would be more obvious

I forget where I heard this story, but apparently Bill and Melinda were at a dinner party during the Obama Presidency. Bill said that he had "way more power than Obama" and Melinda kicked him under the table. TBF I think he was completely right: politicians in the US derive their power from their ability to raise money from rich donors, while rich donors derive their power directly from their money. And they continue to derive power from their money even when they deposit it into a "foundation" which doles it out tax-free to favored recipients.
In Gates' case, a lot of his "charity" involves donating patent-protected drugs to third world countries to forestall their saying "fuck your patents" and producing life-saving drugs for themselves. Preserving intellectual property rights is the primary goal here, with actually helping people secondary. Anyone who thinks these ruthless multi-billionaires suddenly become benign, caring people in their advanced years is a rube.
- politicians in the US derive their power from their ability to raise money from rich donors, while rich donors derive their power directly from their money
  Technically they derive their power from the electoral mandate, but to achieve it requires a lot of money from said rich donors - so they don't derive their power from it, it's more a prerequisite to play at all. The second half is true. The rich are just rich, nobody voted them into wealth, that's why they're more powerful than the politicians.

Who would have thought

You don't understand, they're making money so much faster than they can reasonably give away.
- making money
  I think you mean stealing money.
  
  Not true.
  They’re also using imaginary methods to make money grow out of other money.
- This is kind of the actual problem though. It's hard to actually have effective charities. Even some of the most ethical, and well run charities, end up with surplus funds (Dolly Parton's charity for example). The government is setup to spend that much money helping people though. But paying taxes is somehow bad and wrong. I don't know if I had a real point other than maybe we should actually tax these rich folks so they can achieve their dream of giving away at least half their wealth.
  
  There was a post a while ago where a German person posted that they were confused by the US nonprofit systems, they basically said I pay my taxes and the government makes sure it's spent feeding the needy and foreign aid and all that. Why should I go through the trouble of researching all these charities trying to find a good one to donate to.
  Not that Germany doesn't have non profits, but they really should be for special interest type cases where you explicitly want to send money to a cause, not general global well being.
  
  Paying taxes is only wrong when it goes to a democratically elected government whose purpose is to benefit all citizens. But if it's paying tithes to the church or tribute to monarchs, then it's a MORAL DUTY!
  
  Please do not compare Dolly Parton to Bill Gates.
- Then they're not really trying. I get what @Hobo@Lemmy.World is saying, but I find it hard to believe. If their bar for "respectable charities" leads to them not being able to find charities, then just lower the bar. Or just give money to people.
  
  Yep, pay for everyone's university for a year, pay everyone's healthcare debt, do something.

by followed up you mean: "Ok after I die, I will donate half of my money to my tax-exempt family-owned-and-operated charity, that just happened to only pay salaries and donations to causes that serve the interests of our family-owned-and-operated shell companies"... :D
it's like sequeezing your late's father dry-drenched cumsocket which he used his entire life, then drinking it, and brag about it... to which I say thanks but no fucking thanks.

And I don't believe shit of it. I think all their "donations" to foundations and "charity" are tax scams. I've seen so many of these deeply immoral and greedy fucks do this and go on charity drives and I'm not buying any of it, I know these people are just scamming us somehow, they don't do anything out of the kindness of their hearts and betterment of society, it's all about money.
The worst part is- they are not the problem per se, the system is. The system creates this, capitalism creates this, it promotes these people to the top sure, but if not them then anybody else willing to sell their souls to the literal antichrist.
Capitalism is a malignant cancer and needs to be excised and chemod or we all die. DIE. Civilization GONE. Humanity GONE. Culture GONE.
It's us or capitalism.

Link to report instead of awful Fortune link: Giving Pledge

These people are genuinely sick in the head, this level of pointless greed is not normal. Of course they aren't going through with it.
- Exactly like gambling addicts. They are blinded by capitalism, because capitalism is nothing but gambling, and not only are these people addicts, the game has completely usurped society itself. Just think about it- what dictates our society? It's not our values, or ideals, our wishes and wants and dreams, it's the economy.
  The Economy is a fucking golem that has overtaken democracy, we have no say, what The Economy wants always takes precedence, and the only thing The Economy wants is MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE. MORE people, MORE things, MORE money, MORE. You know what else does that? Cancer.
  
  Exactly! And like cancer, it will eventually consume and destroy its host. It may take time, but it will.

giving half their wealth to what? charities that they control for pushing agendas (and possibly money laundering if we are talking about billionaires in third world countries with much less regulations)
- I was about to say. There's a girl on Youtube that's documenting how Carnage Melon's old trust fund is alive and kicking and authoring dystopian plans to censor and monitor the internet. They are the authors of England's new Online Safety Act. Don't trust billionaires, especially when they turn into philanthropists. You can't say philanthropist without making the same sounds as full on rapist.

Is any of that because what would have been half their worth 15 years ago is now less than half of what it would be?
Like, if someone had 100 billion in 2010, and did give away 50 billion in that time, but also made a further 20 billion in that time, did they give away half their worth or not?
I've not read the article, so maybe that question is answered in there.

Can't say that I'm shocked.

Lmao fuck them my taxesare higher then half

Once you start to have money, you get a money dependency. No matter how rich you get, the "baseline you really need to live the life you want and nothing more" growths together with your wealth.
Take lottery winners and ask them if they could give away half of their gains. Will you be surprised if most of them say no, even though the day before they would have set their "minimum needed to live a happy life for the rest of my days" at a much smaller fraction of it?
Now take a similar population, but who in addition rationalized them deserving that money through their hard work and talent.

Every country would need to adopt a universal taxation of wealthy individual for increased taxes to work. What I am saying is if US has a 75% for those earning over certain amount. Then other countries have to do the same. If not then Billionaires will run/relocate to the cheapest taxes. Which would be easy since the country they move to will be happy to get Billionaires tax money.
- Relocation is a bogus threat. Billionaires will not leave first world countries.
  
  They will, on paper.
  
  Someone needs to read up on "capital flight", this is a known phenomenon we're talking about, not speculation.
- Or. If billionaires leave the USA. We seize their properties and industry in the name of national defense.
  
  That is a slippery slope. If a millionaire is approaching that certain number. They would just leave before it hits their bank account.
  What you are describing is straight up Nazi type tactics.
  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1938-nazi-law-forced-jews-register-their-wealthmaking-it-easier-steal-180968894/

It’s like a high score in a video games for them, nobody needs that much wealth
- I don't get why the countries don't all join forces to push wealth taxes at the same time... Suddenly the loop holes close and either the countries get huge funding to fix their economies, or the wage thieves take their money back and pay it all back to the workers they stole it from.
  
  There was a push for an international minimum tax rate from some guy. But that guy was old and so people decided to replace that old guy with an old guy that's a billionaire, but because he's crazy he doesn't seem as old I guess. But anyway, it's highly doubtful something like that will happen any time soon.
  
  Because the countries are controlled by the ultrarich.

Pledge
Words are meaningless.
This article has slightly more dirt but still seems a bit vague on hard numbers and names.
- I pledged allegiance to the flag for over a decade. that pledge doesn't mean shit to me.

Look, I'm fully aware that this won't sit well with the billionaires are horrifying monsters that not only should be slain but should be strung up in the town square and be given the blood eagle...BUT if you're going to make the argument that traffic fines or any other monetary penalties should be a percentage of your net wealth or yearly income, then you have to acknowledge that giving away half of your lifetime earnings is a tremendous act of good will.
Now--there is a difference between me giving up $5000 of my roughly $11,000 in liquidity. We still have around $40,000 in student loan debt and $120k in a 25 year mortgage while we make about $100k per year. And these billionaires could still buy a second house in Cabo with a helipad using what is remaining, but it is SOMETHING. If they truly are "spurning" their billionaire status they should start with giving away half their fortune and continue to give away half their yearly income on top of that, but I won't totally disregard the contribution that they've already made. Unless they're republican. Then I'm nearly certain that money is going exactly where it shouldn't.
- And these billionaires could still buy a second house in Cabo with a helipad using what is remaining
  Important to remember just how much a billion dollars is. Even a billionaire who has only $500m after giving away half would be able to buy a dozen of those properties. A multi-billionaire could potentially buy hundreds of similar properties with money left over. A billion dollars is a TREMENDOUS amount of money.
  
  A hundred million dollars is 10% of one billion.
  $100,000,000 is only ten percent of a billion dollars.
  I personally, am a kind of guy who likes to walk around with ten thousand dollars cold hard cash. But I always keep it in my dirty socks so they will be sure to get foot fungus when they rob me.
  And my feet get real sweaty, too.
  Haha!
  I line my socks with fake two dollar bills from the monthly potluck Alesha or whatever her name is always brings. I bring stuff sometimes, too.
- billionaires... should be strung up in the town square and be given the blood eagle
  Meh. People are always saying blood eagle this and blood eagle that. Of all the ways to die, the blood eagle isn't all that bad. Once the lungs are pulled out, that's it. You choke to death within a minute. All the good tortures last at least hours; look at crucifixion, which sometimes dragged on for days. The description of scaphism (which was written by someone who allegedly often stretched tales) said the longest one was 17 days, I think.

Pikachu Face

Or their wealth has grown so rapidly that they gave away half of their 2010 wealth?

That’s 247 billionaires we could have put in the buffet. Never trust a billionaire. Eat them at first opportunity.

As though a wealthy person would speak the Truth...

Wow the greediest scumbags on the planet lied about giving up their ill gotten power? I'm shocked! SHOCKED! \s
- Even if they gave half of their fortune they will still be rich, but no we need 9 yachts and private islands.

Take it from them all
- Take it all from them*
- As soon as you give up everything you own.

Jesse Welles - Philantropist

mildly?

To be fair, I would have a hard time giving billions away. I don't have any, and I probably will never (except if an event of hyper inflation happens), but that's just a technicality.

Anyone surprised?
- Not really but having the report is handy to counter those "at least they're donating half their money, what have you ever done so impactful?" mindless drones on reddit and hackernews.

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