Posted on 08/04/2010 8:12:34 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Thirty-four U.S. billionaires pledged Wednesday to give away at least 50 percent of their wealth to charity as part of a campaign by investor Warren Buffett and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Among the billionaires joining the campaign are New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, entertainment executive Barry Diller, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens, media mogul Ted Turner, David Rockefeller and investor Ronald Perelman.
Gates and Buffett launched "The Giving Pledge" in June to convince hundreds of U.S. billionaires to give away most of their fortune during their lifetime or after their death
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
I promise to give away 100% to someone or something upon my death.
See, it’s not that hard.
It’s not like most kids don’t piss it away within a generation or so anyway.
Every working person in the USA “gives away” half their income every payday, thus ensuring that they will never accumulate any significant amount of wealth.
Nice gesture for sure but I think their efforts are a bit misplaced.
Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish you feed him for life.
Charity usually falls into the “giving a man a fish” category.
Eli Broad is very liberal, but he did fund my business school at Michigan State University (The Eli Broad School of Business).
LOL I love how the “rich” are so generous. There are all kinds of tax dodges for these benevolent souls. For instance, the biggest ones are the charitable foundations they establish. They employ their kids and family and pay them a salary from the foundation and the “charity” only has to donate 10% a year and the rest can be held in reserves.
Bernie Madoff was managing a lot of these foundations that had all kinds of sheltered cash in them while only having to give up 10% a year.
I salute the Gates Foundation for giving hundreds of millions to The Rotary Foundation to help eradicate polio in the world.
I might not like it when he makes my computer crash, and probably don’t like some of his other charitable donations, but he deserves to be honored for his choice on this one.
Using Bill gates as an example, let us say he is worth $50B (Holy crapola, that's a big number). Know that his wealth is primarily due to the amount of shares of his company that he owns or controls times the stock price. Well, if Bill wanted to simply liquidate his holdings, so that he could have the money for his own use, by the time he sold even 1% of his stock, the stock price would plummet so rapidly that the remaining 99% of his shares would be worth a fraction of the value it had.
Think about it. If you owned 100 shares of Microsoft, and Bill Gates started selling all his, you'd want to own zero too. But there wouldn't be any buyers at the price it was yesterday. The laws of supply and demand would dictate that the price be much, much lower after his shares hit the trading floor.
RE: I might not like it when he makes my computer crash
Bill Gates hasn’t been active with Microsoft for years. For that, you can now blame Steve Ballmer.
Don’t forget The Broad School of Business at Michigan State University. He’s also funded an art museum on the MSU campus.
“I wish they would put it towards the government debt. That would help future generations more than anything.”
Not really. Our government would just run up more debt.
Money down a rathole.
Cut up the government’s credit cards. Term limits. Then working to pay off the debt might help.
“...A fool and his money are soon parted...”
What’s that saying from the Bible? Those who do charity for all to see already have their reward. Something like that.
Yep, except I didn't see king daddy Soros on the list.
Why only 50%? They could probably afford to give away something like 99% and still live more comfortably than most.
A very good observation, kind of like Hank Rearden and his brother Phil's request for $10,000. A request to go the "Friends of Global Progress." You know the kind of groups. The kind that raise the social conscience. Chapter 2, Atlas Shrugged, pages 38-43. It offers an interesting consideration of this type of socially moral endeavor.
"A chain," she said. "Appropriate isn't it? It is a chain by which he holds us all in bondage."
RE: Mostly left wing causes from Gates & Buffett , so far.
I notice the Waltons ( of Wal-Mart ) did not sign up for this at all.
It is in trusts as a means of a tax shelter.
Instead of giving the same old way, they give through the trusts and just avoid the taxes.
So now their yatch regada party turns into a CHARITY yatch regada party...
Thr Waltons are conservative capitalists. Their father taught them well.
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