CNNMoney.com reports that “Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett are asking the nation’s billionaires to pledge to give at least half their net worth to charity, in their lifetimes or at death. If their campaign succeeds, it could change the face of philanthropy.” The headline of the piece is “The $600 billion challenge.”

I realize that $600 billion is a lot of money, and if that much were given to charities, it would help some people. Maybe many people. But I thought of something better those billionaires could do with their money, something that would help the nation even more than giving the money to charity.

As I understand it, the main cause of inflation is monetary policy — specifically, when the government prints too much money, the value of each dollar decreases. With all the bailouts and increases in government spending that we have seen for many years but especially during the past two administrations, escalating in the current one, there are concerns about the value of the dollar, in the long term especially. If the government just starts printing money to pay for all of its newly established commitments, those dollars won’t be worth very much. Neither will the ones the rest of us have. This has unpleasant ramifications for our standard of living.

So what if, in the spirit of philanthropy, instead of billionaires pledging to give half their net worth to charity, they instead pledged to cash out that amount and make a big pile in an open parking lot somewhere, and burn it? In some environmentally friendly way, of course. Or shred it, if burning will cause too much pollution. Destroying the money is the point, removing from circulation $600 billion, or more if more billionaires would get behind the cause. Wouldn’t that help counteract the overprinting of money by the federal government and keep inflation in check? If it would and would significantly, maybe there is a case to be made that by burning their money, these billionaires would do more good for more people, for economic stability and maintaining the value of what people have, with its ramifications for employment and the future of the nation, than any amount of philanthropic giving.

Now is probably a good time to point out that my advanced degree is in creative writing, not economics. So I forwarded this idea to someone I know who works in finance and actually understands this stuff, and he said that in principle the idea made sense — as the government uses the printing press to pay its obligations and causes inflation, reducing the amount of money in circulation would be good for the country.

But in practice, he said, my idea wouldn’t help at all for two reasons.

First, he said, $600 billion is “a drop in the bucket.” It isn’t enough. I guess we would need all the billionaires and all the millionaires and maybe everybody else to burn some or most of their money to make up for all the paper the government is and will be printing. Still, I was undeterred and thought maybe Gates and Buffett could make this lofty goal their top priority, since I had developed a viable solution to our future economic troubles. They could try to convince most people to burn a lot of their money.

But then my finance friend noted that the government could just print more money. As much money as people might burn, the government could always print that much more on top of what they’re already printing. So rich people burning their money is no solution at all. Which is disappointing, because I thought I was really onto something there and might be able to help Gates and Buffett help their country. But apparently, whatever genius solution I come up with next, the government can always just print more money.

I tried, America.

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