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For a billionaire who is slowly killing small business (because your margins are his opportunity), forcing people to earn less I find this ironic.
So you'd rather have him hoard his wealth and do nothing? Or somehow handicap Amazon so it doesn't compete? Your argument doesn't really hold up.
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No one's shaming him for not doing something better. They're shaming him for having a direct role in creating the problem this charity is supposed to resolve.
How is Amazon creating more homeless people?
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There's a good 2-part podcast about Benevolent Billionaires from the "Citations Needed" podcast that goes a bit over the history of billionaire benevolence and what the good deeds cover up.
Any chance you could braindump a tl;dl?
Here's part 1:
https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-45-the-not-so...
And here's part 2:
https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-46-the-not-so...
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No one's shaming him for not doing something better. They're shaming him for having a direct role in creating the problem this charity is supposed to resolve.
Isn’t this “problem created by” anyone who is rich then?
I would still much prefer to live in a culture in which obscene concentration of wealth–not least at the expense of meaningful government checking of the race to minimize employee count and wellbeing–does not mean we are beholden to gracious oligarchs to bestow basic services, thereby distinguishing themselves from the oligarchs who invest only in consolidation of their own power.
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Speaking as a Seattle resident, and despite my dislike for Bezos, this was a stupid tax - more connected to Seattle's dysfunctional politics than solving our bad homeless problem. Among other things, it was keyed to revenues not profits (specifically to target Amazon) but it ended up burning the likes of grocers who provide decent jobs but don't have a lot of margin even with large revenues. Good riddance to it and a…
As a Seattle resident, what do you think of the argument that Amazon greatly contributed to homelessness in Seattle? I read somewhere that Amazon's explosive growth raised the property values in Seattle, which in turn caused a surge in homelessness. Is that true?
What's up with the critical comments in here? How many of the judgemental and jaded posters here donated anything close to this to a charitable cause? Good deeds must be applauded, not shamed for not being better. Especially if the definition of "better" is made up randomly on the spot.
A second question is whether or not this makes up for how Bezos has gotten his money and the potential damages on society that has. If I burn down a house and then donate to the rebuilding it's still a net negative. The systems that allow people to amass this much wealth need to be looked at critically to see if they really are benefitting society or are just causing increased problems.
As a final note Bezos is getting a lot of negative attention because he's made comments before about how hard it is to get rid of his wealth while seemingly ignoring a lot of really good ways for him to do so. It took years of negative attention to get him moving on causes like this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one's shaming him for not doing something better. They're shaming him for having a direct role in creating the problem this charity is supposed to resolve.
How is Amazon creating more homeless people?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a Seattle resident, what do you think of the argument that Amazon greatly contributed to homelessness in Seattle? I read somewhere that Amazon's explosive growth raised the property values in Seattle, which in turn caused a surge in homelessness. Is that true?
My 2 cents is that Amazon isn't a major cause. There's a few things going on(1): - exploding drug addiction and related mental health issues - Seattle does a remarkably crappy job of assigning the low income housing we build and/or contract for. Too many people get it who shouldn't qualify. Too many non-profits cherry pick their clients. Etc, etc. - It's super hard to get coherent services out of the system. Which ma…
I think cause and effect are backwards here. Low wages and high housing prices seem like they'd naturally lead to homelessness and rates of drug addiction and mental illness among the homeless, although very high compared to the general population, are nowhere near as high as people would like to think.
What's up with the critical comments in here? How many of the judgemental and jaded posters here donated anything close to this to a charitable cause? Good deeds must be applauded, not shamed for not being better. Especially if the definition of "better" is made up randomly on the spot.
I mean it's much easier to donate to charitable causes when you have more than enough for yourself and your family so that's not an apples to apples comparison, but he's also donating less than 1.5% of his wealth. Have I donated that much? No but I think I'm close and I still don't even have enough for my own emergency fund.