The money he is giving away is going to foundations managed by his children (last I read).

nostrademons a day ago | parent | next [-]

That's recent, just as of the last couple months. Historically the children's foundations have been a sideshow and he's given the bulk of his wealth away to the Gates Foundation. You can see that from the dollar amounts: this year's gift to the children's foundations was 1M BRK-B shares (the equivalent of about $500M) to each, while he's given away a total of $66B, over 120x as much.

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bluGill a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Though unlikely the case here, family foundations should always be looked at as a likely source of corruption.

You cannot bribe me directly - that would be caught. However you can donate money to my family foundation and my kids (or spouse) will draw a large salary from it while doing almost nothing and they do some good for the world so it looks like a charity. Of course the kids/spouse will support me in various ways that all rich kids will.

Again, probably not what is happening here, but every time you hear of a family foundation you should ask who they are using it to corruption in some form. Even when it doesn't seem to be you should still look.

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aetherson a day ago | parent | next [-]

Even very large salaries are probably not a very significant amount of wealth for these people. I think this is a case where "all large numbers look the same."

If Warren just directly gave his money to his three children equally, and paid 40% inheritance tax on that money, and then the children each just used 1% of that wealth per year, then they'd each get:

144000000000 * 0.6 / 3 / 100 = $288 million each year.

No foundation pays its CEO 10% of that much money. I think we may have to accept that in fact this is a way to give money to charitable causes, not just horde it.

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paleotrope a day ago | parent | next [-]

I wonder if they could even unwind the fortune to pay 40% in cash.

	▲	aetherson 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I believe they wouldn't have to because of the stepped-up-basis, but my point is that even if somehow they were paying the full 40%, it's still an inconceivably large amount of money.

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bluGill a day ago | parent | prev [-]

In this case yes. However that is not the case for all charities and so you need to look.

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mcdonje 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Even if that kind of corruption isn't there, these charities are still a net negative for society. Why do the super rich rail against taxes but then donate all of their money to family foundations? There are multiple reasons. Pull on that thread.