Bill Gates Rejects Donating to U.S. Treasury After Calling for Higher Taxes on Rich

PJ Media ^ | 01/04/2020 | Nicholas Ballasy

[samtheman]

not a scalable solution
—
How cute.

He gets to work a programming word into his sleaze-ball chicken-sh*t cop-out.

[minnesota_bound]

#32 Bill Gates had a rich dad. That helps too.

[Svartalfiar]

“The answer is that simply leaving it up to people to give more than the government asks for is not a scalable solution. People pay taxes as an obligation of law and citizenship, not out of charity. Additional voluntary giving will never raise enough money for everything the government needs to do.”

I thought he was a logical man. Maybe he is, but thinks we’re not. Is he saying that his money has no value to the government if it’s given voluntarily, and not coerced?

Maybe you and several other people on this thread are reading this differently than I, but what he said makes perfect sense to me. People only pay taxes because they have to. If taxes weren't mandatory, then no one would pay them. The government needs to raise taxes, because it wants to spend more and can't depend on people choosing to pay above and beyond what they already have to. And since it's not a solution since everyone else won't do it, then he's gonna talk a bunch of talk but not going to do it, until the gov makes him. He's still hypocritical about it (especially with how he's set up most of his wealth into non-taxable trusts that escape the taxes he wants to impose), but what he said is true. FedGov has to force people to pay more taxes if it wants more moolah.

[rightwingcrazy]

He was presenting a false dilemma, a classic rhetorical fallacy. Even if you argue (as he does) that taxes have to be mandatory to be effective, that doesn’t mean that the aims of government would not also be aided by his own voluntary donations. Of course they would. So, since he believes that the government deserves even more money, what’s stopping him? Not only would it have more to work with, but his good example might inspire other wealthy sorts who share his vision of bigger, more intrusive government.

More likely is that it’s cheaper for him to get in the good graces of angry Leftists by arguing for more taxes, than by actually paying them. Other people can do the paying, if it comes to that.