Billie Eilish to billionaires: ‘give your money away’

Billie Eilish wants billionaires to donate more. As the Grammy and Oscar winner accepted the music award at this year’s WSJ. Magazine Innovator Awards on Wednesday night, she urged the ultra-wealthy to address more of the world’s issues. “We’re in a time right now where the world is really, really bad and really dark and people need empathy and help more than, kind of, ever, especially in our country,” Eilish said to an audience that included Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, as well as “Star Wars” creator George Lucas. “I’d say if you have money, it would be great to use it for good things, maybe give it to some people that need it.”

Late night host Stephen Colbert introduced Eilish on stage at New York’s Museum of Modern Art by announcing that she would donate $11.5 million of the proceeds from her Hit Me Hard and Soft tour to causes dedicated to food equity, climate justice and reducing carbon pollution. In accepting the award, the “Bad Guy” singer added a polite but direct call to others in the room, saying a lot of people, especially in the US, could use some help right now.

“Love you all, but there’s a few people in here who have a lot more money than me,” she said, to a smattering of applause. “And if you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? And no hate, but give your money away, shorties.” Through her Changemaker Program, Eilish has worked with the nonprofit Reverb for years on its Music Decarbonization Project and its Music Climate Revolution initiative, alongside artists ranging from Dead & Company to Harry Styles. Eilish’s comments come as the number of billionaires worldwide continues to grow, with 204 new billionaires added in 2024, according to a January report from Oxfam International titled “Takers Not Makers.”

The report, released right before the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland, found that the billionaires grew wealthier three times faster in 2024 than in 2023, pointing to an increased concentration of resources globally. Oxfam predicted at least five people will become trillionaires in the next decade, up from one person the year before. The group called for higher taxes on the rich and other measures to break up monopolies, cap CEO pay and require companies to pay living wages.

The wealthiest Americans have a long history of calling on each other to give away more of their money. In 1889, the steel magnate and industrialist Andrew Carnegie argued in the essay, “The Gospel of Wealth,” that the richest should give away their fortunes within their lifetimes, in part to lessen the sting of growing inequality. In 2010, Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett took up that call by creating the Giving Pledge, a commitment for billionaires to give away more than half their wealth in their lifetimes or when they die.

Fifteen years on, some 256 billionaires have taken the pledge with 110 of them coming from the US, according to a recent report by the Charity Reform Initiative of the Institute for Policy Studies. Those U.S. billionaires represent 13% of the total 876 billionaires in the US, according to the report, revealing the small portion of the wealthiest people who have even publicly committed to giving away significant parts of their fortune. The report found that of the 22 billionaires who have died since taking the pledge, only one gave away his fortune before he died. Meanwhile, only eight of the 22 deceased pledgers fulfilled the commitment by giving away half of their wealth or more at their death, though some of their estates are still being resolved.

Chuck Collins, one of the authors of the report and an expert at the Institute for Policy Studies, said Eilish’s comments are part of a growing realization that the rules of the economy favor those with assets over those who earn wages. He thinks the Giving Pledge has created an expectation and competition for the wealthiest to give away their money, but the fortunes of many of the pledgers have increased over time, meaning they will need to move even more aggressively if they are to fulfill the commitment. “In the end, philanthropy is not a substitute for a fair and effective tax system,” Collins said. “The level of extreme inequality will require some form of restoring progressivity to the tax system, a wealth tax as well as progressive income tax.”

Associated Press