Comment by epolanski
3 hours ago
He's donated, already, the equivalent of 200+ billions USD (give or take 420M class B shares).
Say what you want, but the list of billionaires who have donated such large amounts of money while still alive (or dead) is small.
Cherry picking events like layoffs, without truly knowing how much was he involved (Berkshire directors notoriously enjoy lots of autonomy) or if the layoffs made sense, etc, seems a stretch when we're drowned with sociopath world-ruling-ambitious CEOs, from Musk to Altman, through Thiele.
If somebody focuses on something negative, it's cherry-picking, but if you focus on something positive it isn't?
How much money has he saved dodging taxes over the years[1]?
[1]: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trov...
You really fighting on the wrong side of the hill, Buffett has advocated for higher taxes for ages. He's neve made it a secret and he's always said that he pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary.
In any case, what am I looking at here? There's no tax dodging. He gets paid 100Mish per year and pays taxes on those amounts.
You don't get taxes on your stock appreciation until you sell.
Benchmarking against a single person doesn't make sense. Consider how philanthropic someone is vs. how philanthropic they could be with their means. This list helps give perspective.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeswealthteam/2025/02/03/ame...
You lose by not playing the game, it doesn't mean you "like" it.
To whom? To "charities" owned by other billionaires such as Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and those owned by his children.
I don't want billionaires to donate anything, I don't want them to use their money to shape the world to their liking. I want them to pay their fair share of taxes and a functional government that properly allocates those extra funds instead of funding the bare minimum.
Your government is pretty dysfunctional the way it is. I'm not surprised billionaires don't want to waste their taxes on that crap.
No matter where you are on the political spectrum, you almost certainly believe that at least some billionaires carry a disproportionate responsibility for that dysfunction. Whatever they are, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, George Soros or indeed Warren Buffett aren't just passive observers of government.
Not surprised, but the best solution is not to let billionaires control, tax free, major parts of society instead. The best solution is building a more functional democracy which is in charge of redistribution.
The government already has way more money every year to spend. It wastes a lot of it. A world where all surpluses are distributed by a committee of politicians and their buddies would a be a terrible one.
We are saying different things.
You're saying that WB was not shy to give away money. I'm saying that he was not shy to make it.