[telesilla]

Azim Premji donates every dollar he makes over 1 billion for the last 20 years.

Mckenzie Scott is working through donating her share. Same for Melinda Gates, Dustin Moskovitz & Cari Tuna.

Warren Buffet plans to donate the larger part to charity.

Let's keep building the good examples so the alternative (power consolidation across generations) is unthinkable for future generations.

[iamkeithmccoy]

Good examples are great. But it doesn't solve the problem. The only way to fix this busted economy where inequality is increasing and few, wealthy individuals are gaining insane amounts of political power through spending is systemic change in the structure of our tax base.

[nosioptar]

I feel like the first dude is a good argument for taxing billionaires. He's still doing alright at what would be a 100% tax over a billion.

[JKCalhoun]

Never mind that when we tax billionaires, we (the people) decide what to spend it on.

[tim-tday]

Do we though? I’ve never been consulted. I would like us to stop making Abram’s Tanks that the army doesn’t need and have repeatedly asked us to stop providing.

I think the high speed rail was a mistake, an illustration of all the reasons we can’t build infrastructure. I’d have preferred that we spent the money fixing those things rather than throwing it into the black hole.

The F35 is a mistake. Nobody asked me to weigh in a decade ago when it became obvious that.

Some people work to control costs. Those are not the same ones who get elected on that platform. The last famous attempt actually cost us more than it saved.

I would say that I’ve ever had the chance to decide what to spend it on.

[JKCalhoun]

Your only chance of course is when you elect people to represent you in our government.

[nobodywillobsrv]

Why not tax the gov though? "Nobody should have that much control" means you must first have limited government and some mechanism to stop unstable governance dynamics which allow for capture. Currently it seems like billionaires are one way to stop that.

[telesilla]

Agreed. We could posit that the biggest impact a billionaire could have to improve the world would be to lobby for increased taxes.

[canucker2016]

HN just had a post about the craigslist founder donating over half billion dollars to charity. see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48588216

[halJordan]

What do you mean "let's" like we're the billionaires? The ultra wealthy have had over a century (in only this country!) to read The Gospel of Wealth. They're not going to do it. And it's fine to admit that.

[telesilla]

>The Gospel of Wealth

The book from anti-union Carnegie, which recommended to his fellow wealthy that they uplift society while actively undermining the efforts of workers to improve their own lives?

By "let's" I mean us, as voters, as citizens.

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." (Edmund Burke)