Should someone who makes more than a billion dollars have a limit on how much can be kept and the rest of the money be redistributed to help the poor?

Answer 1

I only feel that way when rich capitalistic Hollywood play actors push their socialist agenda on us. I say okay if you will sell your mansions to be homeless shelters, and start working for the minimum wage. Ha!

The truth is, of course, that nobody needs a billion dollars, nor a hundred million, but the point is that they have it and it is theirs to do with what they will. But, when you start looking, you will find that there are some people who do in fact give away large chunks of their money, but instead of writing checks for homeless shelters they do things the way ultra-rich people do things: with attorneys and Accountants. That way, their money actually lasts charities longer, and works to attract more donations. You might want to look up Bill Gates. One of the world's richest men, of course, his Microsoft billions founded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and if you look that foundation up online you will see who it benefits. There are also many, many ultra-rich whose names you have never heard of who are heavily into philanthropy. You might look up the name of George Souros.

Now, I don't know what motivates people to form charities or foundations. The widow of Ray Kroc, billionaire founder of McDonalds, left 200-million dollars to National Public Radio. There was Andrew Carnegie who pretty much owned US Steel in the early part of the last century. He forced everyone who worked14-hour days in his hellacious mills (where they were often splashed with molten steel and had no health insurance) to live in rat-infested tumbledown apartments from whom he collected rent. He also forced them to shop in his store, at whatever prices he set, and believe me, they were not walmart prices. He was also a billionaire, and as he got older got more and more panic-stricken that he was going straight to hell that he couldn't give his money away fast enough before the reaper came for him. The fact that he thought poor people would like a nice library instead of a nice apartment, well, maybe he never thought of that. Maybe he was thinking that the guys who had their arms or legs burned off and were released from the plant because they were no longer able to work 14 hour days stirring steel with a big ladle might need somewhere to go during the day to keep warm. Of course, a lot of people who are ordinary-rich do things, and often they do it quietly because they do not want publicity.