
Bill Gates gave away $35B this year but his persona net worth didn't drop - jbernardo95
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/17/bill-gates-gave-away-35-billion-this-year-but-net-worth-didnt-drop.html
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thedailymail
Bill Gates is one of the better billionaire philanthropists, but it would be
great if he would invest some of that capital into a well-financed lobbying
campaign to increase taxes on superrich individuals and corporations,
significantly raise taxes on ultra-high income, estates and capital gains,
shut down offshore tax evasion schemes, and devise other measures to reduce
the oligarchic inequality that has emerged in the past few decades.

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rogerkirkness
That doesn't make sense, the US government probably isn't better than
billionaires are at capital allocation. It would just kneecap them in relation
to other countries that let things like that slide in favour of free flowing
capital. On the capital side of things the problem is so few investment
opportunities and so much capital seeking yield.

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digitaltrees
Capital allocation isn’t as important as capital distribution and velocity at
this point. It would be better for economic growth and general market demand
if money was spread out more evenly thus strengthening the consumer and small
business base. Government absolutely does this better than billionaires. The
same investors chase the same investments and prioritize only investments of
certain Scale all while the consumer base purchasing power continues to
shrink.

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IXxXI
Billionaires like Elon Musk have done far more to bring about mass adoption of
electric vehicles than governments ever could. Government funded agencies like
NASA don't design or build their own rockets anymore. Space X can do the same
job both better and cheaper. The best creators of jobs and economic value is
the private sector. Even state run pension plans like social security are
notorious for being poorly implemented and run. SS pays negative returns on
every dollar retirees invest in it. Far worse than private sector
alternatives. These trends hold true for governments attempting to achieve
wealth equality. Governments are typically the worst at achieving effective
cost per value as they operate as monopolies which lack competition and have
no incentive to produce value.

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digitaltrees
Most of the basic research was sponsored by governments well before
commercialization was even possible. Government can take a long horizon on
capital use specifically because it isn’t tied to profit. You may prefer the
short term, quarterly reporting mindset; my point is there is a role for both
governments and companies. Worship of one over the other loses the benefits of
both working together effectively.

Further, government actually does have competition. In a functional democracy,
leadership can be changed periodically based on results creating competition
over time. If you don’t like the way the system is functioning fix it.
Additionally, In governments that have divisions like federal, state, county
and local there is plenty of competition. Each state experiments with
different public policy and measures the results. Look at the history of the
LLC, It didn’t exist until one stare created it and the resulting competition
caused all states to adopt it.

