> The problem is, many of those people also burn money for yachts and spaceships. Sure, but upper-middle-class people also burn money on upscale housing/food/t

> The problem is, many of those people also burn money for yachts and spaceships. Sure, but upper-middle-class people also burn money on upscale housing/food/travel etc. The main difference is that billionaires who've signed the giving pledge give a much larger fraction of their income and wealth to causes that help the needy. Also, it seems odd to lump together spaceships with yachts. When anti-intellectuals attack government funding for NASA, we're the first to defend NASA and all the beneficial progress that comes out of funding cutting edge engineering projects. It's disingenuous to then attack people like Bezos when they do the same thing with their own money. > Plus, to me all this charity stuff seems like a buyout. Gates basically made the world a worse place, before he started to make it better. Maybe. I'm certainly not saying that billionaires should be given tax breaks because of their virtuous character. Just pointing out that the needy might ironically be best served by a billionaire tax cut.