The giving pledge is blatant fraud, pure and simple. 0% of billionaires are upstanding, they are all exploiters and vultures. The signees haven't even made any

The giving pledge is blatant fraud, pure and simple. 0% of billionaires are upstanding, they are all exploiters and vultures. The signees haven't even made any moves towards actually giving away a significant fraction of their wealth, their collective wealth has more than doubled over 10 years. Add to this that the majority of donations have been given to private foundations[¤], and that donations to charity are tax-deductible, means it really is no more than a giant tax scheme, under a thin veil of "charity". [¤] Often family foundations, which pay salaries to family members of the donors and don't disclose where the donations actually go. Once again, it is impossible to amass such wealth (a significant fraction of any country's GDP) and keep it, without extracting an extreme excess of value from the labor of others. You cannot become this rich by simply "working hard", you cannot amass such wealth through any kind of individual labor. It can only come from the mass exploitation of the labor of others, from not paying people the fair value of their labor. Pretending to give away a tiny portion of that to charity, after the fact, is like putting a Hello Kitty band aid on a massive gaping chest wound. Ineffective at best, and in reality an abject insult. The fact that we know that we could make the world better, by taxing corporations, capital gains and inheritances much higher, yet refuse to do so, is a scathing condemnation of the callous and inhumane nature of capitalism.