Salon.com > Warren Buffett

Major charitable gifts dropped by 30 percent last year

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 19:45:00 +0000

Britain's conservative Prime Minister David Cameron couches his current austerity government policy in the rhetoric of "The Big Society." The idea is that as the government hacks away at the welfare state, notions of civic society will be invoked to replace Britain's benefits safety net. Volunteerism and charitable giving will patch up the gaping wounds left by budget cuts, or so the proponents of Cameron's Big Society would suggest.

Tomes can and have been filled about the problems underpinning Cameron's Big Society. One issue among many is that the charitable giving of the very wealthy is an inconsistent resource. As new findings by the Chronicle of Philanthropy show, major charitable gifts in the U.S. dropped by 30 percent in 2012:

The largest gifts announced by American philanthropists in 2012 totaled nearly $5.1 billion, but $3 billion of that was from Warren Buffett’s promise in August to give stock valued at $1 billion to each of three foundations run by his children.

Without Mr. Buffett’s pledges, the biggest gifts announced in 2012 would have totaled only $2 billion — far less than 2011’s $2.6 billion.

Obama’s humblebrag: How to tell everyone you’re rich

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 17:04:00 +0000

Mitt Romney was never able to find the right way to talk about his money, but Barack Obama is happy to tell you that he's rich, again and again. That is, if he's asking for higher marginal taxes on the rich, whose ranks Obama first joined with book-related earnings and then with his $400,000 White House salary.

Obama said it again this week: "What the country needs … is an acknowledgment that folks like me can afford to pay a little bit higher rate," he told Bloomberg News. He's been saying it at least since April 2011, when he was pushing the "Buffett rule": "I don't need another tax cut," he said. "Warren Buffett doesn't need another tax cut."

The Simpson-Bowles consensus makes no sense

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 23:51:00 +0000

The Simpson-Bowles budget balancing plan seems to have become the common-sense standard for dealing with America’s future budget deficits. I’d say this move toward the right is dangerous to the future of the nation and essentially cruel—far more dangerous than the level of the deficit over the next 15 years. The commission, formally known as the Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, appointed by President Obama, achieves its deficit reduction by reducing government spending to do two-thirds of the job and raising taxes to do only one-third of the job. Even 50-50 would not be fair in such a low-tax nation. The commission proposed cuts in Social Security benefits of 15 percent for medium earners, for example.

But easily the most short-sighted objective is to hold federal spending to 21 percent of Gross Domestic Product into the future. How did they get this number? It is roughly the average level of federal spending since 1970. This is not a reasonable standard—it is not even a way to think about the issue. So where did the idea originally come from? The answer: the right-wing Heritage Foundation.

Charity isn’t always praiseworthy

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 21:20:00 +0000

As Salon noted earlier this week, 11 more billionaires joined Warren Buffett and Bill Gates' Giving Pledge, making a promise to donate half or more of their fortunes to charity.

The initiative has received broad praise in the media, but little focus has gone into the pledge's consequences. Light digging into the details, however, shows the pledge to be a very open-ended promise indeed.

First, there is nothing binding in the pledge, described on its website as a "moral commitment to give, not a legal contract." No doubt the public and social pressure could shame someone with a spare half-billion to follow through, but where this money goes is another question entirely. Giving Pledge guidelines note:

The pledge asks only that the individual give the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes or charitable organizations after their death … Each person who takes the Giving Pledge makes an individual decision about which particular causes or organizations they wish to support.

More billionaires pledge fortunes to charity

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 16:08:00 +0000

In 2010, investment leviathan Warren Buffett joined computer mogul Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, in launching the Giving Pledge to convince similarly rich people to give 50 percent or more of their fortunes to charity. On Tuesday 11 new multimillionaires and billionaires joined the initiative. New pledges, including Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and the guy behind those little five-hour energy drinks, join illustrious philanthropists like Mark Zuckerburg, Ted Turner and Michael Bloomberg in agreeing that they can probably do without at least half of their fortunes.

Check out our slide show introducing some the Buffett-Gates pledges.

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CainTV: Wackier than Palin

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 13:45:00 +0000

Remember last year when Herman Cain unleashed the world's most amazing campaign ad? Remember how, right after you talked yourself down from the dark fear that the creepy smiling man could ever occupy the White House, you started wishing for an entire network exactly like that catchy "I am! Americaaaaaa!" clip? Well, the Fourth of July isn't American Christmas for nothing, folks.

On Wednesday, our greatest foe in the war on "sissy pizza" answered your prayers and launched "a bold solution to the rampant ignorance being thrust upon the people of this nation by lazy and blatantly biased news media outlets." Welcome to CainTV, the Web network whose motto brags, "We are not stupid." And nothing says "We are not stupid" like a rant against billionaire "Warren Buffet" [sic]. I remember him. He's the guy who made his fortune in Sizzler sneeze guards, right?

Congressional study: Warren Buffett is right

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 19:30:00 +0000

When Warren Buffett argued in the New York Times in August that America's richest weren't paying their fair share, many on the right lambasted the Oracle as a clandestine class warrior working on incorrect assumptions. Likewise, when President Obama rolled out his new tax plan last month -- based on the "The Buffett Rule," that the country's millionaires and billionaires shouldn't pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than ordinary Americans -- Republicans in Congress denounced it as a job killer.

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service set out to test both of those assertions, and found each of them wanting. The rich? Many actually do pay less than average Americans. And that tax plan? Unlikely to hurt those small businesses that Republicans say drive our economy.

From the report: