We now know a lot more about that mysterious meeting in New York last year as billionaires from around the nation, including Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, gathered for a quiet dinner in New York.
The topic was not, as some suspicious people half-jokingly suggested, world domination.
Fortune Magazines Carol Loomis reports in a cover story today that it was the beginning of what has turned into a $600 Billion Challenge.
Buffett, along with Bill and Melinda Gates, want Americans to give away more of their wealth to charities, and they’re starting with their fellow billionaires.
Loomis writes, "They are driving to get the super-rich, starting with the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, to pledge - literally pledge - at least 50% of their net worth to charity during their lifetimes or at death."
She calls that dinner in Manhattan the start of "what can be called the biggest fundraising drive in history."
While the Forbes list is not entirely accurate, it is the best look we have at just how much money the super-rich have accumulated. Fifty percent of the $1.2 trillion in estimated net worth of the Forbes 400 would be $600 billion.
