Billionaires give away money all the time. When Bill Gates and Warren Buffet give away money, it's old new. But when billionaires Gates and Buffett call out their fellow billionaires to pledge 50 percent of their fortunes to charity, people tend to notice. The billionaire philanthropists announced a campaign Wednesday that is here to persuade America’s billionaires to sign a “Giving Pledge” to donate most of their wealth to the causes of their choice.
Source for this article: Gates and Buffett urge billionaires to give away half their money
The charity pledge for Gates and Buffet
The latest Gates Buffett charity drive is called “The Giving Pledge.” The Associated Press reports the two men are asking the super-rich to sign a pledge making a public statement that they’ll donate either during their lifetime or at the time of their death to the charities of their choice. Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said in a letter introducing The Giving Pledge that he could not be happier with the decision he made in 2006, when he gave 99 percent of his roughly $ 47 billion fortune to charity.
Some billionaire philanthropists
Buffett will eventually split most of his shares of his business between five charitable foundations, with the largest sum going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Reuters reports that Bill and Melinda Gates have given more than $ 28 billion of their money to their foundation. Given that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation began in 1994, it has given away a lot more than $ 22 billion for health improvements in poor countries and to improve access to education and career opportunities for many different Americans.
The real billionaire list
On the billionaire list, Bill Gates actually held the title of world’s richest 14 of the past 15 years. He was beat out for number one on the billionaire list in 2010 by Mexican tycoon Slim Helu, whose fortune swelled by $ 18.5 billion in 12 months to an estimated $ 53.5 billion. Gates is now sadly ranked as the second richest man in the world with $ 53 billion, while Buffett came in at No. 3 with $ 47 billion.
Will billionaires give money away?
The U.S. has around 400 billionaires — the most in the world — with a net worth Forbes estimates at $ 1.2 trillion. If Buffett and Gates could convince America’s billionaires to give half their fortunes to charity it would completely transform the nature of philanthropy. Fortune, which broke the story, reports that IRS facts for 2007 show the 400 biggest taxpayers had a total adjusted income of $ 138 billion, and just more than $ 11 billion was taken as a charitable deduction – that is about 8 percent. If all the billionaires give money away, however unlikely, there would be about $ 69 billion to flood the coffers for the common good.
Gates Buffet charity goals
The campaign began just over a year ago, when Gates and Buffett — who represent a combined net worth of $ 90 billion, according to Forbes — invited several billionaires to a secret dinner meeting in New York. MSNBC reports the group settled on a goal of only 50 percent of their net worth. Givinpledge.org is the website they set up to promote the campaign. If the individuals on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans pledged half their net worth to charity, that would amount to $ 600 billion.
Citations
Associated Press
google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h23rkKsJ_qiBk01fiixWfsYsj_rgD9GCG4700
Reuters
reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65F5CC20100616
Fortune
features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2010/06/16/gates-buffett-600-billion-dollar-philanthropy-challenge/
MSNBC
msnbc.msn.com/id/37731478/ns/us_news-giving/
No comments:
Post a Comment