Even when they know money is an ineffective tool to solve the problem. Take education. Someone who lives and breathes politics like Sam Harris absolutely must know we're 4th in per pupil education and that our University system is absolutely broken. Yet what does he suggest as a solution...
"there is no question that a true breakthrough in education will require an immense investment of further resources. Here's an expensive place to start: make college free for anyone who can't afford it."
Also his obsession with the rich blinds him to the contradictions in his own arguments. For example he says...
"Some readers will point out that I am free to donate to the treasury even now. But such solitary sacrifice would be utterly ineffectual, and I am no more eager than anyone else is to fill the pork barrels of corrupt politicians. However, if Gates and Buffett created a mechanism that bypassed the current dysfunction of government, earmarking the money for unambiguously worthy projects, I suspect that there are millions of people like myself who would not hesitate to invest in the future of America."
But then ends the article like this...
"Let Gates and Buffett convene a team of brilliant people to lay out the priorities. But again, we should remember that they could scarcely fail to improve our situation. Simply repaving our roads, the dilapidation of which causes $54 billion in damage to our cars every year, would be better than doing nothing."
Well...if that's the case why doesn't he go out and hire someone to repair his local roads and donate their labor to the city? It's not that expensive to fix a pot hole or two