European Reaction to the Buffett/Gates Challenge

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates gestures during a news conference at the 18th World Aids Conference in Vienna July 19, 2010.  REUTERS/Herwig Prammer (AUSTRIA - Tags: BUSINESS)

We all know Europe has a wide publicly-provided social and cultural net delivering much of what U.S. nonprofits offer. For that reason, charitable giving is regarded differently there.

A Der Spiegel interview with German multimillionaire Peter Krämer sums up the European sentiment pretty nicely, in a response to the Buffett/Gates $600 billion challenge.

Here’s an excerpt from the short interview:

Krämer: It is all just a bad transfer of power from the state to billionaires. So it’s not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide. That’s a development that I find really bad. What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow?

3 thoughts on “European Reaction to the Buffett/Gates Challenge

  1. For a more long-winded version of the same point of view–by an American–please see my most recent piece on Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-kleiman/billions-for-charity-but-_b_699289.html

    So it’s not actually an issue of the European expectation that there will be a state-provided social safety net–more like the European sensitivity to things that might threaten democracy, which they haven’t enjoyed quite as uninterruptedly as Americans have.

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