Sam Bankman-Fried pledged to give away 99% of his money. In that Bankman-Fried, who's only 30, owns cryto company FTX, that was a lot of money. Until FTX crashed (because, in my opinion, crytocurrency is a baseless and meaningless scam, and operates in many ways like a Ponzi scheme), at which point Bankman-Fried's fortune wasn't so impressive any more.
But it's not just Bankman-Fried. Bill and ex-wife Melinda Gates have pledged to give away much of their considerable fortune, have formed a trust, and even hire people to help them figure out how to get rid of the money.
Warren Buffett is a donor to the Gates Foundation, and he, too, is devoted to giving away much of his money, which he appears to have no interest in spending, at least on himself and his family. The story I heard about the Buffett family is that all family members understand clearly that you form your own ambitions, and make your own way, and no one is allowed to ask dad/grandpa for money.
What's also interesting is the ways these people get their money. Years ago, I got a Mac laptop computer, because everyone I knew said they were the best. I don't know at what they were supposedly the best, but to me, it was just a laptop computer. And an unusually expensive one, too. But I needed certain Microsoft applications to get the computer to do what I needed it to do. So I had to buy something called "Windows for Mac." I went to Best Buy, and they had Windows for Mac. But it came in a package of three "licenses." I only had one Mac computer, but I had to buy three licenses, two of which I never used. Why did Bill Gates and Microsoft make me buy three of something when I only needed, or could use, one of them? Warren Buffett, who charges a high fee to be an investor with Berkshire Hathaway, has famously said his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does. He considers this a problem of the US tax code, which allows people like him (hundreds of billions of dollars) to pay a lower rate than does his secretary. But even though he complains about it, he doesn't voluntarily pay more, or take fewer deductions. Anyone who is a member of (Sc)Amazon Prime pays what I think is now about $139 a year (plus the profit on whatever they buy) to one of the richest people on earth. And the absolute richest person on earth charges too much for Tesla cars. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who have no possible use for the huge mountains of money they have, haven't even pledged to give it away.
So, if it is in some way nice that at least some of these people plan to give, or are in the process of giving, back/away the money, the question that's raised is why they bothered to amass it in the first place. They don't need it, can't use it, and essentially don't want it. They could leave it with consumers. Or, since they're all Americans (is Musk an American?), they could pay a proper tax, and support their country.
No one has use for hundreds of billions of dollars, or tens of billions of dollars, or billions of dollars, or hundreds of millions of dollars, or tens of millions of dollars, and few people have meaningful use for more than a couple million dollars, for their normal lifestyles and their retirements. There are people who insist upon getting large amounts of money, and many of those people (the most notorious ones are athletes and lottery winners) either just blow the money, or they go bankrupt. They have no use for the money, and they don't know how to handle amounts like that. Some actors are like that, too. So, if you can't handle the money, and have no use for it, why take it? One of the things I always say is that the vast, vast, vast majority of people who get money are not counterfeiters. That is, they don't create their own money. The money they get they take from someone else. And they ought to think about that.
Another thing I always say is that we ask the wrong question about "health care." The question we ask is how to pay for it. The question we should ask is why it's so expensive (uniquely in this country). And in the context of the recent discussion of the matter of student loans, I heard someone on the radio say the same thing about the cost of education.
I had an interesting experience this summer. I was in Massachusetts, and I noticed a small lesion on my scalp. I'm not a dermatologist, and I generally don't know how to evaluate skin lesions. Dermatologists love to biopsy everything that crosses their paths, so I mostly stay away from them. But my daughter sent me to a dermatologist she likes a lot, so I went there. The dermatologist took one instantaneous peek at the lesion, told me what it was, and declared it nothing to worry about. But she said she'd drain it for me if I wanted. If I don't have to worry about it, then I don't need to do anything about it, and I declined. But she found two other lesions I couldn't see, and she offered to freeze them off. I told her I didn't care, and she could do whatever she wanted. So it was two quick spritzes of liquid nitrogen, and we were done. I later got the bill, which was for my Medicare deductible of $233. The new patient visit charge was $370, the first quick spritz was $220, and the second quick spritz was $100. (Apparently, you get a volume discount.) And this was all for an interaction that took less than five minutes. So I called. They tried at first to block me from talking to the dermatologist, but after they decided I was "rude," she called me back. (I call the office of a doctor who treated me, I ask to speak to the doctor, they run endless interference, and I'm rude? During one call, I was routed to the voicemail of a nurse practitioner, who never returned my call. I gave my name and phone number, and said I wanted to talk to Dr So-and-so. I never even said what it was about.) The doctor dismissed my recollection that the two spritzes were discretionary, and now, she asserted that they were to address possibly precancerous lesions. (Now, we're in "hmm, we should biopsy that" territory.) And as for the (insane and outrageous) charges? She said her office charges based on what each insurance company authorizes. (It was as if she was blaming the charge on the insurance company.) I don't know why so many doctors' offices make you fill out pages of new patient forms, then don't bother to look at them, but I told her what she should already have known: I'm a medical doctor, too. I told her I doubted she needed me to explain to her that her office does not charge a fee dictated by the insurance company. They charge as much as the insurance company will pay them. I pointed out, for example, that if her office had charged $100, I would not have been billed a $233 deductible. But she had her own way of explaining this to herself, and its unspoken foundation was her office's intention to take a lot of money, from insurance companies, from insured people, or from uninsured people. A lot of people are like that. They just want as much as they can get, even though they don't need it, have no use for it, and compromise other people to get it. And this dermatology office is not planning to give away any of the money it takes.
One of my friends has a very remote history of substance abuse. She still, 40 years later, attends AA meetings. She told me the goal of substance abusers is "more." That seems to be the goal of many people regarding money, too. And the "more" is an end in itself. It has no meaning. And they want credit because at some point, they have to unburden themselves by giving it away? What else would anyone do with it? "You can't take it with you."
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