Billionaires Balk at Buffett and Gates initiative?
EmailClarissa Ward reports from Beijing: "If charity cost nothing, the world would be full of philanthropists," Jewish proverb. A brouhaha has been brewing in China amid rampant speculation that Chinese billionaires are dodging invitations to a banquet hosted by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett later this month… because they are nervous about being hit up for donations. "Rich Chinese reluctant to meet with US barons. Guess suspect dinner invitations come with high price tag attached," one local headline blared. Gates and Buffett, two of the richest men in the world, are heading to China later this month in an attempt to get the country's mega rich involved with their Giving Pledge. The initiative, which specifies that donors give at least half of their fortunes to charity, has had great success back home, with some 40 billionaires signing off and an estimated $600 billion likely to be raised. According to this year's Forbes rich list, China has 117 billionaires, the second highest in the world after the U.S. Fifty of the country's super-rich were invited to the banquet. "After the invitations were sent out, a number of people called to query if they would be asked to donate at the function. So far, a small group has turned down the invitations," said Ye Lei, the head of the foundation in China was quoted as saying. Philanthropy is a relatively new concept to China, a country whose wealth is newly accumulated and whose social security system is stretched thin. "Compared to the U.S., some wealthy people in China seem more concerned about their personal and children's well-being, partly because people tend to worry more about their own education, pensions and medical care," Jin Jinping, director of the center for nonprofit organizations law at Peking University, told the China Daily. Among those who did accept the invitation, Zhang Zin, CEO and co-founder of real estate behemoth SOHO, Wang Chuanfu, the head of car and battery maker BYD and the richest man in China, and Chen Guangbiao, a Chinese entrepreneur well known for his generosity. On his website, Chen wrote an open letter to Gates and Buffett, saying that he was "greatly moved" by the duo's commitment to charity and that less than 1 percent of China's wealthy elite give part of their fortune away and that. He also pledged to donate his entire wealth, estimated at $735 million, to charity when he dies.
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Hey Bill and Warren,
Build economic justice into the system by design.
Real Profit Sharing Will Stimulate Economic Recovery
The National Bureau of Economic Research has defined the components of a healthy
economic recovery. They are:
1.Increased personal income
2.Increased employment
3.Increased industrial production
4.Increased business sales volume
5.Increased Gross Domestic Product statistics for 2 or more consecutive months.
What one economic strategy can accomplish all five of these at once?
Real profit sharing. Not profit sharing in its present puny form. If we want rapid results, there must be a generous cash-back, frequent, predetermined percentage of profits, shared with workers. And what would incentivize private interests to participate? A tax credit. Allow businesses a tax credit for their profit-sharing, up to 15-20% of net profits. A contingent tax cut, in essence.
1.Profitsharing would rapidly raise household incomes, causing increased supply and demand.
2.An increase in supply and demand creates more jobs.
3.Higher pay (linked to profits) incentivizes job seekers, and hard work.
- A motivated workforce increases industrial productivity.
4.Increased supply and demand also leads to increased sales volume.
5.A profitsharing tax credit is a built-in stimulus, which creates a sustained healthy GDP.
6.Additionally if this is practiced world-wide, it could revitalize the global economy as well, and perhaps restore our nation to a position of moral and economic leadership,
by demonstrating a more egalitarian model of free enterprise.
All of the above, of course, leads to a wider tax revenue base, and higher tax revenues.
More jobs, more people working, higher incomes lead to more paycheck with-holdings. It would therefore save the Medicare and social security coffers as well. It leads to a leaner government, that is more citizen and business friendly.
The profitsharing tax credit makes it easier for the unemployed “on-the-street” to attain financial stability. It helps families pay for mortgages and health care. It helps prevent the extremes of poverty and wealth by natural design.
Most importantly, it is politically neutral. It is the missing link of conservative supply-side economics and the missing link of liberal economic democracy. It dovetails liberal and conservative ideals. It is two opposite turning gears doing work for the betterment of the people.
Why not try it in one state first, like NC, and if it works, expand the program.
The profit-sharing tax credit can change the world. “Without vision, the people perish.”
Feedback welcome at profitsharing uprising.
Posted by: Darian L. Smith | September 7, 2010, 9:00 am 9:00 am
I’m spending my billion on booze and broads.
Posted by: stan | September 7, 2010, 9:15 am 9:15 am
How can China have lots of billionaires? Isn’t Communism supposed to distribute the wealth across all the masses so that everyone is equal? *snrx*
Posted by: JustMe | September 7, 2010, 9:21 am 9:21 am
Hi Darian – your profit sharing concept brushes marginally close to a communist system.
1.Increased personal income – only when one actually generate the value relative to the competitiveness globally in terms of wage (ie, if an Indian engineer yields the same quantum of intellectual work cost cheaper, the world will either has to elevate his salary equitable to the rest of the world and eventually everyone pays MORE for the same work, or lower the rest of the world’s engineers pay equitable to the Indian engineer, as an example) – does sound pretty communisism to me.
2.Increased employment – need to incentivise enterprenuers to open up shops, risking their life savings or giving up good paying jobs. To incentivise them, we have to make them take the lion share of the profit. Contradict to higher salary for employees.
3.Increased industrial production – To do that, we have to increase consumption. And pretend we can ignore over consumption for a while here, need to get people more jobs, but not more pay, why? Cause when people have more pay they might work less and consume more. all the stuff will be more expansive and will contradict with higher consumption? Does not tally up.
4.Increased business sales volume – Same argument as above. Just that, globally, more jobs will go to the East (China) because they are cheaper and thus making less job for the West who cant afford to buy stuff anymore. Only the people (Organisations) who are more competitive are able to increase business sales volume, and to the rest will be washed away in the current of Darwinian river of survival.
5.Increased Gross Domestic Product statistics for 2 or more consecutive months. – Agree, but how?
And yes, China is by name a Communist Country, however, never was a Communist Country at heart. The Chinese are too enterprising to remain a communist for mroe than 2 decades.
Posted by: Khong KT | September 8, 2010, 2:49 am 2:49 am
It is great to see this surge of money being donated by the richest people in the US. If they can get the world to come in on it with them then this could be a moment in our personal history that is written in the history books that future generations will want to ask us about.
Posted by: Hank | September 8, 2010, 11:10 am 11:10 am
The Chinese are smart to stay away from these two.
Posted by: Rick | September 8, 2010, 4:15 pm 4:15 pm
Some people are tightwads who think they are going to take it with them. Sorry, but you do leave it all behind.
Is being generous a “new concept” to the Chinese? I hope not.
Posted by: end results | September 9, 2010, 2:16 pm 2:16 pm