Barbara Gunnell

Barbara Gunnell

These absurdly rich people do not deserve admiration. They are spending half their fortunes buying themselves pleasure and influence. If the Gateses, von Furstenbergs and Bloombergs want top ranking in the pantheon of benefactors they have to give away something really important. How about giving the poor the chance to decide the fate of the wealthy? How about delegates from the poorest 100 countries deciding how much of the world's wealth they want to allocate to software developers, dress designers, film producers etc and how much to eradicating poverty?

•Barbara Gunnell is a writer and editor

Mary Warnock

10/06/05 Mary Warnock at her home in the village of Great Bedwyn, near Hungerford..Picture: John Lawrence 07850 429934 Photograph: John Lawrence

I can't but applaud this initiative. I don't a bit mind if it's publicity-seeking as well as charitable and I'm not going to fuss about how much of it is "new money". If, by the holding of delicious lunches for the billionaires to meet and show off once in a while, more people are encouraged to join the club, then all the better. If they become competitive, and give away more than half their wealth, that too will be all to the good. I wish the seriously rich aspired to join the great names of John Radcliffe, Lord Nuffield and others of the past.

• Mary Warnock is a philosopher and crossbench peer

Donald Macleod

donald macleod

The retained half would just about be enough for the poor billionaire to live on, while the given-away half is clearly more generous than the tithe on which evangelicals pride themselves. But the billionaire's half falls considerably short of the widow's mite. She gave all her substance: "Go, sell all that you have and give the proceeds to the poor." Yet the poor need more than relief. They need a solution to structural poverty and if the half-billions were used to grow jobs the benefits would be greater than those which come from simply launching social lifeboats.

• Donald Macleod is professor of theology at the Free Church College, Edinburgh