Bill Gates Applies Peer Pressure on the Super Rich to Nudge Them to Give Away 50% of Their Wealth

For people worth more than a billion dollars, is there a declining marginal utility from income? Bill Gates is trying to start a virtuous collusive cycle. He wants the world's richest people to give 50% of their income to some big pot of $. The details are here . Suppose that he achieves high goal and the $600 billion dollars is collected. What would he do with this money? What cause merits this type of investment?

Now, I would give it all to the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health and allow them to decide what basic research to fund with the understanding that any new intellectual property would be open source and distributed around the world (so no patented drugs would come from this work).

Will other Billionaires follow Warren and Bill and give away big chunks of their hard earned $? The Carnegie Conjecture says that they will do so to not spoil their kids but many of these rich people have very large families so per-kid the fortune doesn't look so big.

Does peer pressure work with this group? Is this group different from you and me?

I respond to peer pressure. My Institute is trying to raise more $ for our day to day activities. I could have gone and asked Bill Gates to fundraise for us but instead I start to teach summer school next week. It still isn't too late for you to sign up and be my student. I'm a good teacher. There have been thousands of students at Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, Stanford, Tufts and UCLA who I've taught some pretty good stuff to.

Here is the class!