It’s hard to believe that anybody would classify the Germans as a master race after reading this Spiegel article. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett plan have a nutty (but at least non-coercive) plan for rich people to give away big share of their fortunes. The German billionaires are rejecting this plan. But not because they are sensible and want capital in the hands of those who know how to create wealth. Instead, they think private charity intrudes upon the government’s responsibility.
Germany’s super-rich have rejected an invitation by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to join their ‘Giving Pledge’ to give away most of their fortune. The pledge has been criticized in Germany, with millionaires saying donations shouldn’t replace duties that would be better carried out by the state. Last week, Microsoft founder Bill Gates attempted to convince billionaires around the world to agree to give away half their money to charity. But in Germany, the “Giving Pledge,” backed by 40 of the world’s wealthiest people, including Gates and Warren Buffet, has met with skepticism, SPIEGEL has learned.
Here’s an actual section of an interview with a rich German. The most astounding comment is when he basically says that private charity is bad because the state should decide how resources are allocated.
SPIEGEL: But doesn’t the money that is donated serve the common good?
Krämer: It is all just a bad transfer of power from the state to billionaires. So it’s not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide. That’s a development that I find really bad. What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow?
SPIEGEL: It is their money at the end of the day.
Krämer: In this case, 40 superwealthy people want to decide what their money will be used for. That runs counter to the democratically legitimate state. In the end the billionaires are indulging in hobbies that might be in the common good, but are very personal.
“In the end the billionaires are indulging in hobbies that might be in the common good, but are very personal.”
Cross out billionaires, put in the word politicians and the statement is just as true.
This echoes Bismarck’s top-down social democracy, from which American progressivism took so much inspiration. The billionaire’s words would be music to Pelosi and Obama’s ears.
What they are really talking about is a limit on how much someone can spend. Should it be illegal to spend more than, say, one million dollars on any one thing? Are only billionaires subject to this limit? How would it be enforced? Maybe we should just abolish billionaires. If you have $999,999,999, you’re fine, but once you make another dollar, they shoot you in the head and charge your family for the bullets. (Of course, in the case of such state executions, the estate tax would be 100%).
Debate is so overrated as is cleverness and the importance of the dm and usd.