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Comment by hangonhn | Hacker News Reader

So Gates is not alone. Buffet and Ellison have both pledged the vast majority of their wealth to the Gates Foundation. Somewhat unique to the US, our billionaires tends to be fairly philanthropic.

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>Somewhat unique to the US, our billionaires tends to be fairly philanthropic.

slightly more philanthropic than the rest of the world which makes sense given how prosperous the US is, but overall US billionaires actually do not give much and Gates and Buffet are indeed outliers. The average billionaire donates barely more than the small fraction of a per cent annually. The average top 20 billionaire does in fact give less relatively speaking than the average American household.

https://twitter.com/gabriel_zucman/status/119842279460784537...

What do you call a billionaire who gives away their billions?

Survivorship bias.

Technically, the billionaires who don't give away their money would be the "survivors."

I think that's the point. The bias leans towards those who don't give

> What do you call a billionaire who gives away their billions?

A generous billionaire.

Those that don't are just greedy billionaires.

Also unique to the US. We have one of the highest infant mortality rates of any developed country. And our average life expectancy is one of the lowest for a developed country [0]. We could a lot less philanthropic billionaires and more economic policies that don't treat everyone as disposable cogs.

[0] http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/life-expectancy-b...

The high infant mortality is largely explained by the fact that the US counts premature birth related deaths as part of infant mortality and other countries don't.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161013103132.h...

Life expectancy loss is mostly drugs and obesity. Hard to see how philanthropic billionaires are a problem on either front.

Drug abuse and obesity are generally a response to chronic stress. America has a chronic stress epidemic due to our work culture and lack of social safety nets. Philanthropic billionaires are people (or progeny of those) who successfully exploited this system. Ergo, the existence of one is correlated with the other, and they share a common cause.

Has our work culture recently become more stressful or our safety nets diminished?

Both, but probably more of the latter. Since the 70s the entire economy and society has been built for consumption and price optimization. That has resulted in both higher life stresses (more two income working households, most Americans have no savings, etc.) and encouraged politicians to cut safety nets which might have diminished the negative effects.

The Sackler family is directly implicated in the 'drugs' part.

Life expectancy is a very complicated issue with many confounding factors: https://www.thebalance.com/the-racial-life-expectancy-gap-in...

Asian Americans have a life expectancy of almost 87 years, longer than in any Asian country. Hispanic Americans have a life expectancy of almost 83 years, exceeded only by the richest Asian countries (Japan, Singapore, Macau) and Monaco and Iceland.

As an outsider looking in, many in the US seem to value charity over taxation. I can see why, though personally I'd rather send my money to those who (presumably, and hopefully) have a broad enough view of society to know where it is really needed.

> I'd rather send my money to those who (presumably, and hopefully) have a broad enough view of society to know where it is really needed.

The difference is that do not trust the government to know what's best nor, do what's best.

I would probably feel the same in the US, but I don't believe it as a general rule. It depends very much on the government in question.

The government has many means tested requirements to determine if you really need it. Most charities only take action after the fact; after you are homeless, after you got severely ill. And they rely on a visual means test. They can feed the homeless on Thanksgiving but don’t have the resources for the other 364 days.

Larry Ellison? From Oracle? I though he did the opposite.

I thought he HATED Bill Gates too.

They've been spotted at sporting events together so I suspect the hatred doesn't extend beyond fierce business rivals.

Nah, those are charity superyachts. They help poor people by showing them how good it is to be rich.

And now imagine a society in which it would not be decided by self-proclaimed "philantropists" where societal progress is made and which basic human needs (like a roof over the head of every person, or kids having a lunch at school instead of being shamed for parents too poor to pay) are met, but instead the super rich pay their fair share in taxes and society decides democratically.

US billionaires are only philantropic because they don't want to end up either dead or stripped off of all their assets when there is any kind of revolution - no matter if a "real" revolution or an elected one, e.g. if Warren or Sanders win in 2020.

Sometimes I feel like (some, not all) billionaires are better stewards of money than the US government and people.

How much of his wealth does Bill Gates spend on the military industrial complex?

Same argument as letting Mark run Facebook instead of Wall Street quarterly reports. Decisive focus with longer term planning. Autocrats are often more efficient at achieving specific goals. Plus neither really need to campaign and gather votes to stay in power.

And here's the thing, the billionaires depend on the military-industrial complex and police to keep their investments safe and growing... but at the same time, they are not contributing their fair share in taxes towards that goal, which means that the lower classes have to pay for it.

It's the same problem that Europe has with its defense - we have over decades relied on the US to keep us safe, without contributing our fair share.

I completely agree with you. but then, I'm not from the usa and I have experienced the wonders of good social systems in Germany and in the UK.

As you put it, if there was some kind of "richness cap" (say, 1 billion) and all the rest was held as interest generator for social services and society, population wouldn't have to depend on the "goodwill" of people, but would have the basic necessities fulfilled.

Humanity will get there at some point. There is no other alternative, given population growth. But right now we humans are still quite underdeveloped as a society.

The latest Patriot Act episode did a great deep dive into why this is true, particularly in the US.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS9CFBlLOcg

Billionaires can't save us. But they could save me if they really wanted to.

Didn't Page and Brin pledge their fortunes to Musk?

I believe one of them said they were more likely to give their fortune to someone like Musk over a traditional charitable venture.

I feel that was expressing a desire for more transformative change over fixing the individual problems we have now. Change the world so much that the problems are no longer an issue.

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