Bill Gates wants ultra-wealthy individuals to pay more tax — and now a growing chorus of billionaires agree.
In his annual “Ask Me Anything” forum on Reddit last year, the Microsoft cofounder said he was “surprised” that taxes for the rich haven’t been increased more.
Gates doubled down on his calls to tax the rich in a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. He said the wealthiest nations should donate more money to developing countries to help redress inequality.
“Those who have the most — whether it’s countries, companies, or individuals — should be pushed to be more generous,” he said.
It seems others agree, as more than 250 ultra-wealthy people signed an open letter calling for global leaders to impose a wealth tax.
Literally nothing is stopping any of them from cutting a massive check to the government. This is lip service to stop people from hating on the billionaire class.
Except the issue is systemic. You have a percentage of mega wealthy who simply don’t even pay their share. A few billionaires sending a large check to the government doesn’t fix anything. They could but until we change the way we handle taxes for the wealthy, we have a systemic problem we need to fix.
Speaking out that all the rich should pay more helps (maybe) make the case that those making hella bank should pay more.
Your statement is a bit of a straw man which doesn’t actually address the fact that the mega rich aren’t paying their fair share.
Except I wholeheartedly agree with you. There is a huge issue here, but at the same time if these billionaires truly believe that they should be paying more, they should just… do it. There is literally nothing stopping them. They should be forced to, yes, and that’s what they’re saying. But they should be putting their money where their mouths are in the meantime.
The man is covering like 11% of the WHO budget. On the one hand I want to say that that’s too much power, OTOH he doesn’t do too terribly a job at allocating money (compared to, say, the IMF) and every man deserves a hobby.
The billionaires complaining about wealth taxes, should lead by example by paying them at the same time lobbying governments to fix the issue.
They buy politicians left and right, but THIS issue is completely out of their hands.
Hang on, my eyes rolled so far back I need to cough them up now
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They signed a letter?!?!?!?
Damn, if only there was literally anything more they could do 😥
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I mean, it’s not like they’re going to bribe the government into forcing them to pay greater taxes.
Why not? Gates sounds like he wants to
If you are cutting massive checks for the social good, private charitable organizations are typically better stewards of the money than the government. Unless you want the military to have more fighter jets, I suppose
Cutting massive checks into charities THEY own to hide it from being taxed…
FTFY…
You aren’t wrong
Except you think they’re actually using the money for charity, when it is actually a way to pass the money to children/heirs without paying inheritance tax…
These philanthropy projects are definitely tax shields but they actually do have to do charitable work to keep their tax-exempt status.
In theory, reality is not so much. Many of them do very very little.
If you think billionaires paying more taxes to governments will mean better lives for the poor then oh boy do I have a bridge to sell you.
No, obviously it takes those in government to have good intentions as well.
It means better lives for those poor executives of military contractors. Think of Lockheed-Martin’s children!