I'm not sure if I want all 100 billion of Bill Gates money going to US taxes considering how big our military budget is. Would be cool for it to go to directly to something a bit more productive and bypass all the bullshit in the US
Ok, this point keeps coming up so let's break it down.
16% of the US' budget is allocated for defense spending. It sounds like we both agree that that is too high, so there's nothing else to argue about that particular point.
The point you, and several others in this thread, are making is that if his money went to the government instead of philanthropic causes, some of that would go towards bombs and tanks and whatnot. We can't really know how much of his money would go towards that, but for the sake of argument let's say it'd be that same 16%.
If he were forced to pay this hyperbolic 100 billion dollars that he "joked" about, 16 billion would go towards the military.
84 billion dollars would be allocated to everything else.
Does anyone know how much Bill gates spends on actual philanthropy? What I mean by that is charitable giving that does not act as a form of investment. Because I'm fairly certain that that amount is less than 84 billion dollars.
Even with a less extreme tax AND accounting for what would end up allocated to defense spending, we would all still be better off if his massive fortune was being spent by the government instead of hoarded while only pennies on the dollar go to charitable causes.
This isn't even getting into the weeds of what I'd personally like to see: His fortune heavily taxed, and the majority leftover after taxes should be redistributed to the people.