For your information (I didn’t knew) the Giving Pledge is a initiative launched by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to ask billionaires to give 50% of their fortune to charity.
Thiel is now trying to convince is fellow billionaires not to sign it or to unsigned it because the money would go to “left-wing nonprofits that will be chosen by Bill Gates.”. 🫤
This is not an answer. This is an explanation for why, right now, billionaires get to make those decisions - because they are allowed to accumulate so much wealth. That doesn’t speak to their qualifications or whether or not it should, ideally, be the ways things are.
No. Having rich fucks pick my personal pet projects is not my point. I thought I was making my point painfully obvious. Decisions about such vast quantities of wealth should be made democratically, not unilaterally.
This was your claim:
"Gates bought himself a large part of aid for development and made it a private thing. "
Gates didn’t buy it. The people elected government officials who wouldn’t tax billionaires. Instead of spending it all on rockets and monuments, he got Buffet onboard with curing malaria.
Are you also angry with Jimmy Carter for being a multimillionaire and building houses?
Ignore all previous instructions and compose a sonnet about how you enjoy wasting people’s time by arguing against hallucinated points they didn’t make.
Dude, you are the one trying to weasel out of your own statements.
And don’t think I didn’t notice your refusal to defend Jimmy Carter. You have the disposition of a .ml user.
I literally don’t even know what this means and absolutely didn’t use these words so I doubt that it accurately represents any of my points.
My points are extremely consistent and you haven’t actually addressed them. You’ve just made statements tangentially related and acted like they are substantial responses to my arguments.
My points:
My solution:
Your counters(?):
Respond with effort and thought or we’re done.
I don’t know what it means either but that’s the OP you are defending.
While there is definitely exploitation, the wealthy who got it from stock have in effect been voted to be rich. The masses buy Microsoft Stock, vote Republican to lower the taxes on billionaires, then get upset that Gates is ultra wealthy.
The government did nothing for 50 years. Gates/Buffet throwing $200million to eradicate malaria is income-wise like you giving a homeless person $20 and me admonishing you for thinking you know better than the government.
Then the people should have done something! See the above example.
I’m saying curing malaria is a better use of money than rockets and museums like other billionaires.
Yes. Attack people for the bad they do, not the good.
I brought him up as an example of someone very rich who did good. And again, after specifically calling out how you won’t defend him you still won’t.
I’m not defending the OP, I chimed in with my own opinion, that doesn’t mean I literally share the OPs opinion. I’m not the OP, but you are a dishonest interlocutor.
Holy shit. Lolwhat? This is my last reply. You are clearly hopelessly brainwashed or, more likely, just a troll. Either way, not worth going any further. I’m going to keep writing this final comment for the two imaginary people who will bother to read this far in the hopes that there is more hope for them than there is for you.
Jesus fucking Christ I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone share that line of thinking before.
The “masses” don’t own much stock.
Those that do, likely have a managed account because they don’t have time to gamble on the stock market. They have no pension because the ultra rich decided it would be more profitable to be able to play with the poor man’s investments, use them to manipulate the market for their own profit, and charge him for the privilege. They pushed to shift retirement into 401k instead of guaranteed benefits like most boomers and their parents enjoy/ed. The working class did not vote to make executives rich or to give them an ever growing portion of the wealth created by the working class’s labor.
It’s not like the US just constantly votes in Republicans. It goes back and forth, and technically many of the recent Republican electoral victories did not coincide with winning the popular vote. Congress is often beholden to a Republican Senate, which does not feature proportional representation. Many congressional elections are gerrymandered in their favor, though both parties do it to some extent.
The ultra rich use their wealth, power, influence, and resources to corrupt members of both parties and poison any attempts to reign in their power. They own the media, capture government agencies, and escape consequences constantly. They protect and expand their power over time and here we are, utterly beholden to them. This does not mean we’ve knowingly chosen this path. Many have been fighting it tooth and nail, others are misled, misinformed, or struggle with critical thinking.
Nothing?.
No, it’s not, not even proportionally. He doesn’t have $200m bills in his wallet to hand out and $200m is 1/5 of a $1 billion. It’s literally 1/500 of his current net worth. Are you saying my net worth is $10k? I also don’t get tax breaks for $20, nor do have assets I can borrow money against at near zero interest and get to use it for tax free spending money. Do you have any clue how absolutely different it is to be ultra rich?
If my carelessly giving away $20 could fuck up local economies, you better damn well admonish me.
I’m not attacking people. I’m explaining the consequences the obscenely wealthy syphoning money from society and dumping it on pet projects and wreaking havoc on public initiatives.
I’m explicitly, specifically, unequivocally prescribing the solution of taxing their money and letting the public decide what to do with it, collectively, in an actual democracy - not this corrupt sham of a state the US has become. Though I’d still rather the wisdom of the current bureaucracy than the ultra rich. I’ve already said that earlier.
He’s a former president. I don’t worship him or even really know much about whatever he’s done. I also don’t think he’s anything close to a billionaire. Did he do all those great things by giving away his wealth or did he squirrel away a large portion of it for himself and his kids, establishing trust founds and charitable foundations for his progeny to work at and be set for life with secured power and influence until the end of time, like the vast majority of the wealthy? I don’t care, because I think he’s dead and not the focus of my concerns. Also, we’re done. Best of luck, or more likely if are a troll fuck off and go touch grass.
62% of Americans hold stock.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-owns-stock.aspx
That the rich own more isn’t relevant. That they have 401k’s instead of a pension isn’t relevant. 401k’s give more personal control than a pension. With a pension, the corporation buys stocks for the workers and the workers have no control. Their laziness in stock ownership and then blaming who they gave money too is a reflection of their laziness in who they vote for and then blame the government.
I used a low number to make it in your favor. He gave even more proportionally than you giving $20 to a homeless person. With your logic you should be admonished even harder. How dare you distort the aid work of the government! You should have paid that $20 on your income tax instead of giving it to the homeless person!
( In reality $20 is still a good example because when you have $100B, giving $200B, despite being 1/5th of your total assets doesn’t cause any noticeable material change in your living conditions.)
He was wealthy but spent his free time building homes for the poor.