I don’t even think it’s about controlling money, I think it’s about power over others.
Taxes don’t come with accolades or positive PR. Taxes don’t get you a wing of a hospital named after you. Taxes don’t let you let you host “fundraising” dinners where you can network with other obcenely rich people.
For a lot of these billionaires, donations are seen as a way to buy things without actually buying them. That’s what happened with the Notre Dame fire. All those billionaires that said they were giving millions to fix it? Not a single one paid unless they could completely control Notre Dame. Philanthropy is just another form of acquisition for these people.
If a billionaire was willing to save the world then one of them would have done it already. The truth is you only get to a billion dollars because you’re a greedy asshole who doesn’t give a shit about anyone other than yourself.
In the short term (next couple years), tax them to hell and back. In the long term (next couple decades), expropriate the economic engines that generate their wealth in the first place and communalize/democratize those engines to benefit people as a whole. We need an ecosocialist world built on economic democracy, production for use (rather than for exchange/profit), and sustainable ecological practices. Capitalism will not cut it. These b/millionaire sociopaths will always value their own wealth and power over the tangible reality of social wellbeing for a human population. A new system is desperately needed.
On this day, 23 October 1850 the first National Women’s Rights Convention in the US took place in Massachusetts. The first motion defined their mission statement to “to secure for [woman] political, legal, and social equality with man”. The speakers included women’s rights and anti-slavery activists like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth (pictured). https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1243497262502088/?type=3