Dylan Matthews just posted a Vox article "If you’re such an effective altruist, how come you’re so rich?" which addresses critics of effective altruism's billionaires.
My TL;DR
- A lot of recent criticism of EA seems to come from the fact that it has a couple of billionaires now as supporters
- These billionaires however are some of the biggest donors to US candidates that would increase taxes on them
- Open support for raising taxes, e.g. Moskovitz tweeted the other day: "I’m for raising taxes and help elect Dems to do it"
- The broader EA community skews heavily left-of-center (typically supportive of higher taxes and social welfare)
- Effective altruism was founded explicitly on voluntary redistribution of income from people in high-income countries to low-income countries (e.g. Giving What We Can) and most of the communities founders give a significant portion of their incomes
- Given that the billionaires do exist, what else would you rather they spend money on?
That's just my TL;DR – feel free to put in your own summaries, comments and critiques below.
Congress sets the budget, not the president. If you look at proposed white house budgets for the last few decades or so compared to what is enacted by congress, the final budget hews closer to congressional priorities. The exception to this is funding for military endeavors which constitute a significant portion of the discretionary budget. A chunk of military spending is determined by the president and their propensity for wars (see: Bush and the Iraq war, Obama and drone strikes).
The reasoning behind EAs not wanting to tax billionaires seems to be:
I think this is too narrowly focused. Some other considerations:
My take on this is: