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?