Comment by wombatmobile | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wombatmobile | Hacker News Reader

In May 2019, Mackenzie Scott signed the Giving Pledge [0], a charitable giving campaign launched in 2010 with the announcement of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett as members and evangelistic founders [1].

Almost none of the signees have as of yet made significant progress towards upholding their pledge to give away half of their wealth, instead only accumulating more of it. Since the pledge was created in 2010, the wealth of the donors has not decreased but has instead increased from a combined $376 billion in 2010 to a combined $734 billion in 2020 [2]. Many who have made significant donations, have done so to private foundations, which often pay salaries to their family members and have no obligation by law to actually spend the wealth on active charity organisations.[citation needed]

Donations in general are a topic of public debate, in part, because in many countries they are tax-deductible, which means donations reduce tax obligations for individuals, and tax revenue for government.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacKenzie_Scott

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge

[2] https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#5f078cfc3d78

Excellent points ... I would also point out though that a lot of the money donated represents wealth that they "earned" through fancy international corporate tax avoidance schemes that are taught to students at business schools like the MIT Sloan School of Management, among others, which famously produced this crook:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-08-14/mit-sloan...

The best steelman I can come up with is that it's very difficult to give away that many billions effectively.

Give one billion to every charity on givewell's list, and now those have more money than can effectively spend in the foreseeable future. Yet you wil have spent nowhere close to your entire fortune.

While I don't understand why billionaires haven't done so yet, I can understand why it may make sense to be patient and search for great charitable opportunities.

> Donations in general are a topic of public debate, in part, because in many countries they are tax-deductible, which means donations reduce tax obligations for individuals, and tax revenue for government.

Really? Let’s say your top marginal tax rate is 40%. That means when you donate a dollar, you get 40 cents back in taxes. When given the choice between 40 cents going to the government or one dollar going to a billionaire-chosen charity, I’d pick the charity every time.

If you agree with that, then it doesn’t make sense to criticize donations on the basis that they reduce tax revenue. (it may still make sense to change the law regarding deductions, however)

If you disagree with that, I would be interested to hear your reasoning. It seems to me that people like Bill Gates have actually donated a pretty large chunk of their wealth to truly good causes. Would you have preferred 40% of this money go to the government instead and Gates to have kept the rest? Or is the average billionaire donation much less effective than Gates’?

The context here is that these people have publicly made the "Giving Pledge" to reduce their assets by half to improve society, and yet their assets have doubled in a short time. That means they are underperforming based on their own intent, and casts doubt on the selfless virtue component of the Giving Pledge.

You can give away a lot of money while still making more, particularly in a year like 2020.

I don't think they thought they were agreeing to give away half of every future dollar.

They are giving billions away, and trying to look for ways to condemn what they're doing is only punishing a good thing. Never punish a behaviour you want more of.

PS the tax deduction thing is envious garbage - you can only deduct the amount of tax on the dollars you donate (ie your top marginal tax rate). So you have to lose a LOT more than you "gain" through deduction. You don't come out ahead.

And you should never have been taxed because you didn't keep the dollar.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com