I don't think this story is useful because it makes poverty imaginarily virtuous and downplays the very real benefit of philanthropy. In absolute and relative terms, Bill Gates is lightyears ahead of nearly everyone, since he both pledges billions of dollars to charity and also pledges (if I remember correctly) a majority of his money to charities. Would you mind explaining why you think it's better for the woman to donate what little she had than the rich to donate their surplus?

It's not depicting poverty as virtuous it's depicting sacrifice as virtuous.

Bill Gates is sacrificing basically nothing by giving away half (or even 90%) of his wealth. He lives the exact same life of supreme comfort that he did before.

Weirdly this is one of the few things the bible was actually abundantly clear about (and it's a pretty good point).

I’m saying “more generous”, not “better”. As CMCDragonkai wrote, the passage is a criticism of a system which says gift givers are more virtuous the more they give, when many others cannot give without harming themselves.

To put it another way, although one can give the Gates generosity-brownie-points for caring about other people, they don’t get fourty thousand times as many such points as a normal couple who “only” donates a million dollars to charity.

I've thought about this one before.

First, in terms of ends, it's not better, but you can say it is more virtuous, in the sacrificial sense of putting the needs of others before hers, even though probably pointless in practice.

Thus, in terms of practicality, I do think it's better for the poor to keep their money, and the rich to redistribute their surplus.

But, in this practical sense, I feel it would be even more efficient if our society could improve its systems so that the surplus simply never happened in the first place. What would be both virtuous and better in practice in my opinion is if Bill Gates simply had chosen to give himself a smaller share and a lower wage from the beginning.

Now, maybe if you take into account psychology and motivations, it might be that humans require our current system of winning it all and then giving it back. So its hard to say if it could be implemented at all.

The commentary is very interesting and observes that the passage is talking about something entirely different than generosity. It is intead rebuking the institution that receives such gifts.