I understand that others don’t want to criticize someone for how they spend their money. While I think this is a good principal in general, I don’t think it applies to Buffet for two reasons.
First, Buffet controls an extraordinary amount of money. More money than anyone could ever spend in a lifetime. This gives him an extraordinary responsibility to the world.
Second, Buffet has made a promise. He said “My pledge: More than 99% of my wealth will go to philanthropy during my lifetime or at death.… Were we [my family] to use more than 1% of my claim checks [stock shares] on ourselves, neither our happiness nor our well-being would be enhanced. In contrast, that remaining 99% can have a huge effect on the health and welfare of others. That reality sets an obvious course for me and my family: Keep all we can conceivably need and distribute the rest to society, for its needs.”
His promise was an extraordinarily important one—to distribute over a hundred billion dollars for the needs of society. Unless you want to argue that border militias, college scholarships, and Nebraskan politics are addressing the needs of society, he has broken his promise.
Immigration security, college education and early childhood development seem like they straightforwardly fall into ‘addressing the needs of society’ according to standard usage of the term. They’re not EA causes, but I’m not aware of Warren promising it would go to EA causes, or even things we would like at all. This is philanthropy (doing stuff to change society) as contrasted with personal consumption (boats, wine, parties etc.)
I understand that others don’t want to criticize someone for how they spend their money. While I think this is a good principal in general, I don’t think it applies to Buffet for two reasons.
First, Buffet controls an extraordinary amount of money. More money than anyone could ever spend in a lifetime. This gives him an extraordinary responsibility to the world.
Second, Buffet has made a promise. He said “My pledge: More than 99% of my wealth will go to philanthropy during my lifetime or at death.… Were we [my family] to use more than 1% of my claim checks [stock shares] on ourselves, neither our happiness nor our well-being would be enhanced. In contrast, that remaining 99% can have a huge effect on the health and welfare of others. That reality sets an obvious course for me and my family: Keep all we can conceivably need and distribute the rest to society, for its needs.”
His promise was an extraordinarily important one—to distribute over a hundred billion dollars for the needs of society. Unless you want to argue that border militias, college scholarships, and Nebraskan politics are addressing the needs of society, he has broken his promise.
Immigration security, college education and early childhood development seem like they straightforwardly fall into ‘addressing the needs of society’ according to standard usage of the term. They’re not EA causes, but I’m not aware of Warren promising it would go to EA causes, or even things we would like at all. This is philanthropy (doing stuff to change society) as contrasted with personal consumption (boats, wine, parties etc.)