Jane Mayer's excellent piece in this past week's New Yorker about the brothers Koch, oil billionaires who've donated hundreds of millions to nonprofits promoting right-wing causes, finally clarified my unease at Bill Gates's campaign to persuade billionaires to donate half their estates to charity.
It's not a question of who has or hasn't taken the pledge, though that's an entertaining parlor game. Nor is it the fact that the generosity of extremely wealthy people may not be what the rest of us have in mind when we hear the word "charity." (The Kochs' "charity," for instance, is a term of art encompassing donations to all kinds of institutions, predominantly think-tanks churning out rationales for the economic interests of wealthy people and front groups to make it appear that defending those economic interests is the political will of the non-wealthy majority.)
What's troubling about the billionaires' pledge remains so even when the receiving causes are unexceptionable. Gates, for instance, has very generously underwritten substantial efforts by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Good for him, and for the world.
But.
Even the best-intentioned best-directed private donations are a way for moneyed people to work their will on the public, while the rest of us have nothing but the vote. And when the level of contributions is discussed in fractions of $1B, it's no longer charity within a democracy: it's benevolent dictatorship.
Maybe our country should be giving less to treat AIDS et al and more to eradicate infant and maternal mortality through the UN Population Fund; maybe not. That's a decision to be made by the people of the United States, through our government. It's really not a decision for a single person.
Why not? Well, for starters, the "single person" in question is a billionaire, and thus always a man. That means almost by definition that the highest levels of charitable giving will overlook women, though we constitute more than a majority of the population. And if that's the case--if society's needs are met by individual whim instead of collective decisions about the greatest good for the greatest number--then what, actually, is left of self-government?
Of course, billionaires have plenty of assistance in the task of allowing economic power to trump political will. The Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United, holding that corporations are "persons" with First Amendment rights violated by limits on their campaign spending, already put the nation quite a way down that road. But somehow it's worse when something that sounds so benign--"half my estate to charity, because I've been so fortunate"--actually translates as "I set the agenda for the future of this country, because I've been so fortunate."
What we really want from billionaires is for them to pay a lot more in income taxes: say, the 87% of taxable income paid in 1954, or even the 70% paid at the start of the 1980s. And then we as a group can decide where our group's money goes. All contribute, all decide.
And what we really want from billionaires' heirs is for them to pay the 77% estate tax rate in effect in 1941, or even the 70% estate tax rate in effect in 1976. (And let's not hear any nonsense about "death taxes." The dead aren't the ones paying.) Why shouldn't people who get money by inheritance have to pay taxes on it, just like people who get it by working?
Merely to ask that question is to answer it: no democratic society decides that people who don't work should be privileged over those who do. Societies like that are called "aristocracies," and all those so-called Constitutional Originalists running around hijacking elections by screaming about excessive taxation should take a moment to remember that our Constitution was designed precisely to interfere with the establishment of a government by inheritance.
The Constitution prohibits not once but twice the granting of any title of nobility; but the Framers didn't rest there. They fought to cripple and ultimately abolish entail and primogeniture, the primary devices by which English law kept family fortunes together. Why? Because they realized that, if you're founding a republic, it's really not a good idea to let money keep piling up generation after generation in the same few pairs of hands.
Self-governing societies can't operate on noblesse oblige, and societies that do aren't truly self-governing. As Dr. Franklin said, "A republic--if you can keep it."
Fundamentally, I have a problem with the point of this article because it presumes that a person may not do as they please with their wealth and that having great wealth must be bad.
Take the richest people in the US. They got rich by:
Creating the operating system on relatively low cost computer and making the most widely used office software.
Investing in successful American businesses better than anyone else.
Pioneering computer databases which are fundamental to almost all websites.
Creating a retail chain that significantly lowered the price of goods for low-income families.
Creating software tools that allow people to monitor corporations more closely
Figuring out how reduce the cost of energy.
Reducing the cost of computers and making them more reliable.
Helping people invest so that they can retire, put their kids through college, or buy a house (BTW a WOMAN).
Creating by far the best search engine allowing the internet to grow into what it is today.
(yes, I know someone can come up with a negatively biased description of these people too)
I don't think that, categorically, because someone is successful that we should get to vote on what to do with their money.
And we vote on what to do with everyone's money; that's called "taxation," and it's completely legitimate.
Bill Gates:
The first program that Microsoft wrote was a BASIC interpreter (programming language) on MITS's (a private company) Altair 8800. The Altair 8800 was one of the first PC's which used Intel's (a private company) 8080 processor. Intel was founded by former employees of Fairchild Semiconductor (a private company).
Microsoft really started to make money when they converted the BASIC interpreter to work on Apple (a private company) computers.
IBM (a private company) paid Microsoft to create a operating system for their computers. Microsoft started by purchasing 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products (a private company) and made improvements to it.
However, at some point, schools began using Apple computers in their classroom. But, by that time Apple owned the version of BASIC on its computers. Further, these schools were not run or significantly funded by the federal government (except in DC). There actions were no different than anyone else purchasing an Apple computer from a store.
You are saying that billionaires should pay 70-90% of there wealth in taxes. While everyone else pays 30-40%. What did the government give them that they didn't give everyone else? Wouldn't it make more sense for the government to not give more to one person instead?
The bizarre notion that government is always best placed to make decisions on how money that people earn should be spent - is outrageous.
How about this. Ms. Kleiman can give all the money SHE earns to government so it can spend it for her.
"Well, for starters, the 'single person' in question is a billionaire, and thus always a man."
especially in the case of Bill Gates, since his wife runs the philanthropic foundation with his name on it, I believe. But I may have missed your point somehow. Anyway, thanks for "going there", to talk common sense about taxes and their effects on our republic. I very much agree.
It is also selfish for states to collect tax and use them for their own programs when that money could be used by the federal government to serve a greater good. In fact, the world's money should be pooled together. The autonomy of the US and its perverse wealth is preventing poorer nations like Russia from becoming what they rightfully could be. One nation should not become so wealthy and choose what to do with their wealth simply because they made good decisions, worked hard, and created something that others want.
Hate to tell you it won't be the US unless it's a very low value high bulk commodity that simply can't be economically shipped. Which means we export wealth or change to a less supply side economic theory consumption pattern.
What we purchase determines whom our dollars benefit changing the higher level economic power structure. Their goal is to make money our behaviors determine how they best do that. Which means we can control our well being, but not based on our current consumption behaviors.
As for abandoning supply-side economics: couldn't happen soon enough for me. The entire notion that individual consumers (whose jobs, homes and retirement funds have all been threatened or destroyed by the Great Recession) are supposed to power the nation out of the said Recession is sheer nonsense. The only organization with sufficient buying power is the United States government, and it should exercise that power more vigorously. People concerned about the deficit should be willing to let the Bush tax cuts expire, and/or reduce the amount of money we're spending on war, rather than announce that we can't afford to rescue the domestic economy.
If to access our consumer power you needed domestic manufacturing and distribution your ability to increase profits domestically would have alot to do with creating internal efficiencies you can translate directly to the bottom line or costs you can remove from the bottom line. Logistics is a huge cost so you would want good infrastructure, efficient infrastructure, infrastructure that reduced costs. Those companies would want investment in that infrastructure and push for it aka smart growth and goods movement.
To compete abroad they would need to extrnalize costs from their balance sheet to the tax rolls and that can make efficient national healthcare policy highly desirable. As you have to have US employee's and those costs are eating you up. If you can offshore the drone ant jobs your overall exposure to profit benefits more from the status quo as higher skilled employees are going to require higher benefits than the base governemnt system would dictate anyways.
Humans have created an economic ecosystem. That ecosystem is the primary driver of alpha predator (Corporate) behavior and desires. Change our behaviors and they have to adapt to remain at the top of the pyramid. Great example being forcing Japan to invest in american manufacturing at the end of the 80's.