this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

So imagine there exists a charitable billionaire that wants to do good. How in your eyes would a billionaire go about donating their money without drawing this same criticism?

Hasn't Gates already pledged pretty much his entire fortune to charity after he dies?

I guess the Devil's advocate argument here is would you rather trust Bill Gate's charity to spend the money or the US Government? Because from what I've seen, any time there is excess money in the US government it is not spent on social programs but on enriching government contractors and tax breaks for the wealthy.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

So imagine there exists a charitable billionaire that wants to do good. How in your eyes would a billionaire go about donating their money without drawing this same criticism?

I'd say the answer to that, is that they should simply give significantly more than what they're currently giving. We're talking of people who could easily give away 99% of their wealth with 0 personal sacrifices. If they're giving less than 0.1%¹ instead, I just want to know why?

I found this webpage extremely helpful for putting into perspective just how much good they could be doing: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

¹) That number probably needs to be a lot smaller, but I don't want to make any claims.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

They could use their money and influence to lobby the government in a positive direction, such as making sure taxes go toward social programs instead of killing brown people, and then simultaneously help fund that by filing their taxes fairly and paying their intended share rather than do this arcane skullfuckery to pay as little as possible. A great next step would be to lobby for reforming tax code so other, less charitably minded billionaires start doing the same whether they want to or not.