Wednesday, August 04, 2010

40 billionaires pledge to give away half of wealth

A little over a year after Bill Gates and Warren Buffett began hatching a plan over dinner to persuade America's wealthiest people to give most of their fortunes to charity, more than three-dozen individuals and families have agreed to take part, campaign organizers announced Wednesday.

In addition to Buffett and Gates — America's two wealthiest individuals, with a combined net worth of $90 billion, according to Forbes — 38 other billionaires have signed The Giving Pledge. They include New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, entertainment executive Barry Diller, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens, media mogul Ted Turner, David Rockefeller, film director George Lucas and investor Ronald Perelman.

"We're off to a terrific start," Buffett, co-founder and chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, said in a conference call also attended by Bloomberg and San Francisco hedge-fund manager Tom Steyer and his wife Kat Taylor, founder of OneCalifornia Bank.
Read the rest here.

2 comments:

Alice C. Linsley said...

How much of these charitable donations will go to support politically correct charities? Will they be providing for privately funded abortion on demand? Fill they fill the coffers of gay activists and feminists? Will any go to Christ-centered ministries?

John (Ad Orientem) said...

I honestly don't know who/what they are all giving their money to. I gather that the details were left up to the donors. But the ones who have gone on record with their plans sound like they are generally giving to worthy causes. I for one am just pleasantly surprised to see this many persons of great wealth voluntarily parting with so much of it.