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The people that are most famous for pledging to give it all away — Gates, Buffet — are far far richer than they were when the hoi polloi started reading public

The people that are most famous for pledging to give it all away — Gates, Buffet — are far far richer than they were when the hoi polloi started reading public relations articles about their philanthropic pledge. Amazing PR scam.

burkaman 4y ago
Yeah, just scan through the list of names on The Giving Pledge Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge), which helpfully lists their net wealth so you can see their failure at a glance. Also note that the pledge is only to give away "at least half" which is pretty unambitious for a multi-billionaire. If you have $10 billion and give away $5 billion, you've made no impact on your own life and sacrificed nothing. It is not comparable to someone with $100,000 giving away $50,000.
poulsbohemian 4y ago
Well... that's part of the irony really, in that when you are as rich as Crassus, it's actually work to try to divest it. What seems to really happen is that money moves from the family to a separate foundation, and then the foundation has the work in perpetuity of managing and granting out the money. With that much money, families really are set up through the end of time, assuming they have any degree of management and responsibility over the bit they don't put into a foundation.
- burkaman 4y ago
  It's work, but it's not like a lifetime of work. MacKenzie Scott has managed to donate $14 billion in her first three years of being a professional philanthropist. If you actually want to give your billions away you can pay some people to help you do it relatively quickly. There doesn't need to be a perpetual foundation unless you want there to be.
tchaffee 4y ago
Gates has given away about $60 billion so far. His net worth today is about $103 billion. So he's given away over half. How is that a scam? Especially for the charities that benefited and presumably are doing good work for those who need it the most.

burkaman 4y ago

Yeah, just scan through the list of names on The Giving Pledge Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge), which helpfully lists their net wealth so you can see their failure at a glance. Also note that the pledge is only to give away "at least half" which is pretty unambitious for a multi-billionaire. If you have $10 billion and give away $5 billion, you've made no impact on your own life and sacrificed nothing. It is not comparable to someone with $100,000 giving away $50,000.

poulsbohemian 4y ago

Well... that's part of the irony really, in that when you are as rich as Crassus, it's actually work to try to divest it. What seems to really happen is that money moves from the family to a separate foundation, and then the foundation has the work in perpetuity of managing and granting out the money. With that much money, families really are set up through the end of time, assuming they have any degree of management and responsibility over the bit they don't put into a foundation.

burkaman 4y ago
It's work, but it's not like a lifetime of work. MacKenzie Scott has managed to donate $14 billion in her first three years of being a professional philanthropist. If you actually want to give your billions away you can pay some people to help you do it relatively quickly. There doesn't need to be a perpetual foundation unless you want there to be.

tchaffee 4y ago

Gates has given away about $60 billion so far. His net worth today is about $103 billion. So he's given away over half. How is that a scam? Especially for the charities that benefited and presumably are doing good work for those who need it the most.