Billionaire philanthropy is as old as robber barons, and has long been a tool of washing the blood off of the legacy of the immensely wealthy.
Cornelius Vanderbilt, often considered the first of the robber barons, built his fortune first with steamboats, using his money borrowed from his parents and vicious business tactics. He later became one of the wealthiest people ever by building a monopoly within the nascent US railroad industry link. He pioneered many of the tactics used by the wealthy to abuse the rest of society for their benefit. A notable instance is the 1877 railroad strike, which occurred in response to him cutting the wages of his rail workers by 20%. As should be utterly unsurprising, he blamed the economy being depressed and encouraged the workers to work harder to improve business. link The strikers were naturally faced by police, militia, and national guard opposition. Around 100 people were killed as a result.
Vanderbilt was not one for philanthropy, but later on life did make some donations to churches (at his wives’ behest), as well as to what is now Vanderbilt university. It’s not an accident that he is remembered as the most reviled of the robber barons, to us now, and during his day.
Andrew Carnegie really was the one who established the trend of the incredibly wealthy giving away money as a method to launder his abuses of his workers and smaller competitors. Carnegie wrote an essay “The Gospel of Wealth” which outlined his belief that it is the duty of the immensely wealthy to give their money away, famously writing “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced” link
However, when we focus on the libraries and schools Carnegie built, we lose sight of the abuses he committed. Andrew Carnegie built his steel empire by savagely undercutting his compittion. He achieved these prices by cutting wages aggressively, crushing unions and forcing workers to work long hours in incredibly unsafe conditions. The Homestead Strike occurred in 1892 in responses to back to back wage cuts. Violence broke out between steel workers and the private strike breaking firm, the Pinkertons, whom Carnegie hired. Seven workers and three Pinkertons were killed. Naturally, the National Guard was called in by Carnegie’s underling Frick to finish the job. link
Two years later, in 1894, McClure’s magazine published a piece by Hamlin Garland, which is fascinating and worth a read link. To quote Hamlin’s guide:
"Yes, the men call this the death-trap… they wipe a man out here every little while… (death comes) all kinds of ways. Sometimes a chain breaks, and a ladle tips over, and the iron explodes–like that… Sometimes the slag falls on the workmen from that roadway up there. Of course, if everything is working all smooth and a man watches out, why, all right ! But you take it after they’ve been on duty twelve hours without sleep, and running like hell, everybody tired and loggy, and it’s a different story".
Bezos, Gates, Buffet, and their ilk very much follow in this same tradition. They spend their lives abusing workers, and destroying the lives of rivals to amass unimaginable wealth, and use philanthropy in their later years to wash the dried blood off of their image. No amount of philanthropy justifies their actions. No human makes that amount of wealth without viciously abusing others.
I dislike Jeff a much as any other but… that’s not really a comeback, now is it?
Nah, it’s a reference
Where is he donating all his money to, you may ask?The Human Fund!
Money For People.
The optimistic take would be that he found a way to live a couple hundred years and is not stupid enough to ignore the fact that he’ll suffer the consequences of climate change at that point
Billionaire promises to do the thing that people want billionaires to do and often say they are evil for not doing
People react by dragging him
???
Man who has a history of forcing people to piss in bottles says he’ll start being nice
Like yeah, let me know when he actually delivers on that
So you really that is a policy penned by Bezos himself?
If so, why was it not widespread?
Promises mean fuckall, lets see him do it first. Its a little hard to believe coming from him specifically, whatwith the peebottles and such.
Let’s not start patting him on the back for promises he could very easily not keep.
Yeah, its an amber heard pledge
I hope he buys the Amazon Rainforest and names it the Amazon Amazon Rainforest, and I think there’s a reasonable chance of it happening if it becomes a big social media thing.
As a private owner of the land he can stop all deforestation, allow only scientists and other specialists in the land, and also make some sick branding opportunities.
Let’s push to get these promises out into action.
So, just another white savior, how original you guys are
My only concern is efficacy.
Efficacy from people who’s countries almost completely decimated their own original forest? Does not compute
“No one is allowed to learn from the mistakes of others” is quite the take. Guess I’ll just start burning trees down because the people in charge already made things worse.
Turns out I wasn’t in charge of the country. Shocking, I know.
Isn’t this the guy who wants to abandon earth and build a stupid sphere thing in space?
This is the same thing that other billionaire did with his fortune. Gave 3 billion “away” to his own charity so his kids could inherit without paying a penny in taxes.
I make under 200k and the highest bracket I hit is 51% of my salary. Warren buffet has paid less than 10% taxes on his entire fortune. They’re playing us, the new cool thing is just to say it’s for the climate.
Bezos pledged 40 billion (maybe 20, can’t remember) I believe in 2019.
To date he has actually donated less than $200 million of it IIRC to any climate-related funds.
It’s just a bold face lie, not even taking his own charity scams into account.
Edit: also side rant: I have gotten a lot of wallstreetbets armchair investors in the past saying “b-b-but muh liquid vs assets, he would crash amazon stock.”
Bezos has liquidated a minimum of $12 billion per year without even a slight blip in amazon stock. PLENTY to fulfil his pledge. People don’t understand the scale of sold shares. The stock market is completely speculative bs. If he liquidated every stock of amazon in a short time after an anouncement like this, investors would absolutely speculate that it would recover, the price would lower for a week or so while every hedge fund in existence rushes to buy every single stock that they have and voila, it would magically recover within a month and bozo would not be a complete lying scumbag. It would probably cause him to be audited though which is every bilionaire’s nightmare because they have all done such shady things and dodges so many taxes for so many years. At least if the IRS had any balls.
FYI it’s “bald-faced” lie
This is totally correct, but the incorrect usage is so common now that “bold face” has become arguably accepted.
Originally it was “barefaced”, I believe.
Hey, don’t attack the man based on his follicles!
I’m just envious that he doesn’t have to shave. It’s really tedious.
True a long time ago it was, but if we want to disregard language evolution, then it is actually “bare-faced lie” lol
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/is-that-lie-bald-faced-or-bold-faced-or-barefaced
Where do you live that you’re being taxed at 51%?
Might be Canada, I’m in a similar situation and GTFOing. No way am I going to continue paying this much in tax but still lack quality education and healthcare for our kids.
Yeah instead in the US you get to pay healthcare insurance premiums instead and have the companies try every trick to deny your healthcare claims. And pay who knows how much for your kids education, tens of thousands a year. All so your marginal (not effective) tax rate is what 40% instead? I think you need to recheck your math and your outrage. Don’t forget those expenses are after tax.
Are you/your children Quebec citizens? Education and healthcare are very cheap and accessible. If you’re a foreigner here then yeah it might not be as easy. Healthcare is still free and medicine is subsidized to a minimum of 80%. Also medicine potency is regulated, knock off brands of “advil” are guaranteed to be as potent as the brand name, which is a huge plus and keeps medicine costs very low.
I have a lot of experience with the medical system in canada; my parents both died of cancer, so did my mentor, and were in treatment in the public system the same week they got diagnosed. They didn’t wait months to see specialist like is often thrown around on reddit.
It’s tax “brackets”. So from say 20-30k you’re taxed ~21%, the following 30-50k you make is taxed at another amount like 30%, and so forth. The last 30k made from 160-190k is then taxed at 49% (51% because I’m taking a bit more money instead of dumping into my pension fund etc…)
And yeah it’s Canada, but in the province of Quebec, the most taxed province of all (where education is still heavily subsidized/ free for people born there etc…)…
I’ve done this whole exercise on /r/theydidthemath years ago on reddit comparing to the US, and with all the medical insurance garbage they have there like co-pays after deductibles, tax credits, dental, daycares, tolls/infrastructure etc… It amounts to roughly the same as the taxation + private insurance in the US. It just “looks worse” because it’s all mostly up front. I know ex-millionaires in the US who were basically homeless because they had a sick baby who needed to stay in the hospital for a year after birth. It cost them 5 million dollars to keep the baby alive without having to go to court with the insurer. This doesn’t happen in Canada.
I’m fine with it, I just want the rich assholes to pay the same. I live very comfortably, bought a home in February this year and have more than enough.
I think how well it works out or doesn’t really depends on lifestyle. It also assume the government is going to be semi-competent when it comes to using the money effectively. I don’t really just the current US government with any amount of money. They can’t stick to a budget to save their soul and can’t agree on a single thing when it comes to how to use funds effectively.
One of the reasons someone like Warren Buffett isn’t paying a ton of taxes, relative to his net worth, is that his entire thing is buying stock and then holding it basically forever. The net worth goes up with the stock, but that’s basically meaningless since the money can’t be used unless he sells the stock…. At which point it is taxed.
This is how it should work, as stocks can also go down, so people would end up getting taxed on money they never even saw. It was all theoretical. It would also lead to an issues taxing the same money every year. It would also kill compound interest, which is the best way for the average Joe to build some wealth and save for retirement.
Eeee. Youre completing forgetting that he can BORROW against those stocks, and pay a measly interest rate, paying out when it’s convenient through various loops of the tax system. Warren Buffet, even if his worth in billions is not in his pocket, has contributed less than most relative to his income.
He could, but is that actually what’s happening? If not, you’re making up things to be upset about.
He speaks out against using leverage and debt.
“You really don’t need leverage in this world much. If you’re smart, you’re going to make a lot of money without borrowing,” he said. “I’ve never borrowed a significant amount of money in my life. Never. Never will. I’ve got no interest in it.”
He’s notoriously frugal. I’m sure some of his investments provide cash flow, which would be taxed, and more than enough for him to live on, while still being a small part of his overall portfolio.
Elon borrowed money to close the Twitter deal and take it private. He’s no longer beholden to the shareholders, but he is still at the mercy of the ones holding his debt, which puts him in a very vulnerable and seemingly desperate position. Warrens seems to have grown up enough to see the trap.
The thing you drug up about the US hasn’t been a thing for more than a decade. The individual out of pocket limit is $9,450 this year for an individual, and Pregnancy, maternity, and newborn care are considered “essential health benefits” so as long as it was an actual factual real health plan and not something like a health care sharing ministry, there’s no way you’re going in a millionaire and coming out destitute unless you did something phenomenally dumb like demand an NICU be built into your house. Out healthcare is broken in so many ways, but the bandaids do exist on the system.
I have no idea what his situation was, he had full healthcare. There’s the law, and then there’s bringing insurance companies to court over the law. This might have been about a decade ago.
An out-of-pocket maximum is a cap, or limit, on the amount of money you have to pay for covered health care services in a plan year.
The key word being “covered health care services”. This also does not cover their own expenses, loss of salary etc… These laws are intentionally complicated so it’s theoretically possible to be covered, but good fucking luck going through the loops.
You can still find studies that claim that over 500k people file for bankruptcy every year due to accumulating medical costs I’m sure all these people are stupid and had NICUs built in their homes…
Unify humanity you mean like belt and road?
No, that’s authoritarian. He means unify humanity like company towns and corporate news do.
lol, “Pledge” just means, I might do it, so you can write a nice fluff peace on me and then I just conveniently forget to “Pledge” x amount.
Ah, philanthropy. When you really want to fuck shit up, while keeping a clean facade.
Someone make Gates explain all his trips to Eppstein’s island already!
Not possible, they, ones that know, all been killed, others blackmailed.
It’s all fucking BS and theatrics, it’s easy to promise shit AFTER YOU DIE.
Yea, unless he liqidates his assets and donates it right now, get t he e fuck outta here
lol you are a silly person. You must think if he liquidated his asset he will walk away with $124 billion dollar, don’t you? So silly… lol Once he is caught selling his stocks, so will the market sell theirs, and his stock will become worth pennies in no time, before he even clears his first stock-block sale. None of these billionaires are worth the tag assigned to them, that is a market value so long they stay in the game lol
Way to make people root for your death
Yeah, let’s go! We should start posting: Jeff, die already, we need that funding.
It’s as simple as his new wife wanted a foundation, just like his old wife had.
Cool start by “donating” it to Amazon employees.
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He should divide all the money on all the people that ever worked for him and give them each a piece.
“Billionaire pledges” is the same vibe as “hopes and prayers” .
Except prayers have a higher chance of changing anything.
