this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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Warren Buffett and Bill Gates created The Giving Pledge, a legally binding agreement to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropy by death or through last will and testament. It currently has over 240 signatures from over 30 countries.
https://givingpledge.org/
I feel like this is really under-appreciated. Like, Rich Dude decides he wants to donate $100M to...whatever - early childhood education. In the US, he avoids up to $37M taxes, which you can either look at as other taxpayers making $37M matching donation or $37M taken from other society objectives.
To the extent that government is a (marginally) publicly accountable system for funding a society's competing goals - education, health, defense, research - charity allows the very wealthy not just to bypass the social structure for prioritizing goals, but to force other taxpayers to adopt their personal priorities. Maybe the goal is good, maybe it's not - the point is that they're completely unaccountable.
What makes high-end philanthropy different from low-end philanthropy? Don't they both get the same tax cuts?
They probably do not get the same tax cuts: a "normal" person, making a paltry $250,000/year only reduces taxes by 24% of their giving, where the ultra-rich get 37%.
But the real difference is scale. A million people each giving $100 to their favorite charity is going to distribute that money more-or-less according to the community's overall priorities. One person giving $100M to their favorite charity has no connection to the broader community and social goals. They supercharge that one thing, which takes attention and resources from everything else.