The combined $16.1 trillion could run the US government for almost three years!

3,028 known billionaires* There's no legal or often practical requirement to publicly disclose the 9-figure status.

According to the audit you linked, the foundation had 1.5b in revenue and made 1.3b in contributions, with management under 1%.

This looks like a well run, standard charitable organization. Of course charitable giving has tax breaks. As a society we decided to align our taxation system to incentivize charitable giving.

Tax breaks are not given for a promise, they are given for a hard transfer of assets to a charity. If one makes 100 million and gives away 100 million to charity, they net out to a zero tax bill. That doesn't magically enrich the donor by way of some conspiracy which you seem to be insinuating - the donor is still out 100 million plus the opportunity cost of the compounding (say, 5-10 million per year, growing over time via compounding), which the tax breaks don't come close to competing with on a net financial basis.

I don't disagree with your view on wealth accumulation in the least, but the vilification of charities giving, literally over a billion to charity over a year in this case, and then hand-waving "the tax breaks make them net beneficial financially for the donors and just another evil for society" I have never understood.

The thing is the government doesn't need that money as much as the people do. The government can just manufacture as much money as it needs to do whatever it wants. So if you're a billionaire and you decide to give all your money to the government thinking that'll do any good, that's a huge skill issue. You could've done a lot more good with that money than to just throw it in the money hole Onion-style.

> America has a massive overspending problem

What is the right amount of spending? And if the answer is “less than current tax/other revenue” then how should the budget cuts be allocated with goals and implementation plans that are sustained enough to produce real effect? You mention that government spending is not a party-specific issue; and this is certainly true. But I don’t see how forward progress can be made in a winner-take-all environment that shifts polarity every 4-8 years. And when the utilitarian value of compromise and shared long-term goals is treated as nil. And it definitely doesn’t seem to be improving…

In any case, possibly taxing the incomprehensibly wealthy in our midst wouldn’t produce a significant effect relative to other measures; but we do all sorts of things in civic life that are valueless in an economic sense, but serve something else. People stand at attention, remove their caps and lay their right hand on their precordium when the national anthem is played. It symbolizes respect for some (supposedly) shared ideals. Similarly, fairly taxing all citizens symbolizes something ethically important even if it results in just as much economic value as doffing your cap at a ballgame.

> If every billionaire gave away every cent of their wealth it would fund the federal government for 1 year. do a web search!!

I think you and I see "less than 1,000 people have enough wealth to run the common good for a very rich country of 340,000,000 people for a full year" as having vastly different meaning in terms of what's reasonable. Why should the yearly common good spending of 340,000,000 people inherently be a lot less than the amount the top 1000 are worth?

Many of those billionaires became so through their government contacts/contracts.

The Fed has a massive problem, and that probleem snowballs down to us, and the reason we have a massive overspending problem is because the Fed has chosen winners and losers to create captive government.

Currency for the past 5 years has been devalued on average across all 5 years, about 25% in aggregate according to government numbers. If you revert to more accurate calculation numbers (ShadowStats), then its almost 40%.

Taxing the rich won't fix this, it comes down to a selection process that only selects for candidates that will make this problem worse through mathematical capture of first-passed-the-post voting. If you have two groups that each exceed 33% of the vote in aggregate, no other group can win.

German heiress Marlene Engelhorn [1] faced the same question when trying to give away her comparably small inheritance of 25 million euros. She resolved to assembling a committee of volunteers who decided how to distribute the money.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlene_Engelhorn