Gates-Buffett Peer Pressure Shames More Billionaires Into Giving Pledge

A pessimist (or realist) will argue that the billionaires who participate in this charade are looking for "good" publicity. Anything they can do to improve their image is worth participating in. However, when you consider how much money these people are worth, giving away half their fortunes means absolutely nothing. They will still be billionaires after they purge their bank accounts of half their heft. A pessimist would also take pains to ask a simple question, "why did it take arm-twisting by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to get most of these people to become such overly generous philanthropists in the first place?"  

An optimist (or apologist or right-wing douchebag) will make an effort to explain that many of the people who signed on to the Giving Pledge have been giving away millions locally each year. They will also describe with circular logic how such generous philanthropy will pressure their wealthy peers into seeing the light of philanthropy and a magical trend will emerge where rich people everywhere all-of-the-sudden begin to give a shit about commoners. Everyone will see double rainbows. "Heck", they will argue, "if you give enough money to a hospital or a college, you can get a building named after you", because that's what giving is all about!

Let's talk about the billionaires for a moment. Did any of them generate their unimaginable fortunes without bending rules, manipulating legal loopholes or taking gross advantage of their customers? The odds that any of them are saints is virtually nil. Take, for example, Sandy Weill, former CEO of Citigroup. He defrauded millions of people out of billions of dollars and still lives like a king. Around the time he was being investigated by the SEC, he had a publicity epiphany, became a philanthropist and donated $250 million to Cornell University to fund the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology.  The Giving Pledge list of billionaire philanthropists reads like a potential who's who of graft and corruption.

Gates and Buffet have estimated that their giving pledge campaign could generate $600 billion in charitable giving. 

What do they plan to do with the donations? Will it be sent overseas or will it be spent at home? Will teachers and nurses get pay raises? Will our educational system get overhauled? Will it be used to create jobs? 

Why don't they pay off a big chunk of the national debt? Or, pay for a universal health care system? It seems to me that the biggest problem this country faces is a middle class whose lives are being squeezed to death by runaway cost-of-living expenses and taxation. 300 million Americans could benefit. You may as well laugh about it because you, Joe American, won't see any benefit from our "generous" overlords. [wink]

The more likely outcome is that the funds will be divvied up among thousands of questionable charities and ineffectual non-profits, who will all be standing in puddles of drool waiting in line for their piece of the pie.

Look into the lens and smile please. [snap] Thank you! Next billionaire ...