A nice way to keep 10 billion out of reach from the tax man.
Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change
81–90 of 237 posts
Re: Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
He will definitely save a bit of money on taxes. I suspect his marginal tax rate is ~24% (20% Cap Gains + 4% Medicare). So this donation will lower his net worth by ~7.6B. In any case, this is a giant amount of money by philanthropic standards. I doubt more than 4-5 people have ever given as much for all of the things they support.
Normally I'd resent the $2.4 billion tax dodge, but given who receives the money right now, I'm okay with.
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Re: Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change
#83Related: “Against Against Billionaire Philanthropy” (https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/29/against-against-billio...)
Re: Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you think actually makes the most difference: a) Donating $10B b) Reducing his personal environmental impact to zero You are literally more interested in virtue signalling than making actual change.
I dislike gross displays of privilege. Being rich and advocating for everyone else to reduce consumption while maintaining your own lavish, polluting lifestyle simply because you have the money to “offset” it is obscene.
I don't see any mention of Bezos agitating for consumption reduction in that article. I don't see any mention of his personal consumption habits so I'm curious where you got the data on which you are basing your claims (for all your know he has made personal sacrifices). Your entire argument appears unsound as a single individual's consumption has basically negligible impact on the environment (so it is trivial to "offset" it and massively reducing quality of life is basically just virtue signaling) whereas a cash grant of this magnitude could actually have an outsized impact.
> I dislike gross displays of privilege.
You appear to simply dislike people who have much more money than you.
Re: Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change
#85Is this just another Gates-foundation style tax swindle?
Step 1: Cure polio
Step 2: Donate 99% of your remaining money before death
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit, when the world is a less shitty place
It's really the most devious tax swindle of all time.
Re: Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does the gross revenue of a public company he owns some of have to do with it?
Just for your sake I included the market cap as well. Edit: Seriously: this topic seems really hot. So many people seem to care about it when it's spoken about in a negative way. Maybe calm down a bit? Am I experiencing outright bullying right now? That's not a great visual for anyone, just saying.
Market cap is equally irrelevant. $10B is ~8% of his net worth. His biggest gain in net worth was 2017-2018 where it grew ~$80B, which would make $10B = 12.5% of his 'pre-tax income'. Donating 1/8th of your pre-tax income to charity would typically qualify as reasonably generous, no?
Re: Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change
#87These comments do surprise me yes. The amount of conflict in the remarks is because both parties are right. It's very wonderful for Jeff Bezos to donate $10B dollars. But also it's right about private jets, which generate much carbon pollution. It's fair to say that everyone has to do their part against climate problems. I for one make personal sacrifices yes. Less meat, less consuming, trying for local purchases as…
I recently did some calculations on car vs plane travel. For commuter flights, it surprised me to find out that for gasoline cars, car travel isn't better than a flight until you get to a carpool of four passengers. For electric cars, a solo driver is about the same as air travel (in an average airport flight) - a second passenger makes it better than air travel. (This was for a flight halfway across the country.) So…
Yes I limited all my travel, which means not replacing flights with travel by car. For flights home there is not option for driving anyway.
Re: Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change
#88$10b is an insane initial endowment. That's about a quarter of what the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have after 20 years. It would be nice to have more details about the goals or objectives.
It's a huge initial endowment for sure. It would be a little more fair to include the other $50 billion the Gates Foundation has already given (ie they're up around $100 billion so far, with perhaps another $250 billion yet to come).
The Gates Foundation has ~$45-$50 billion in assets currently and has given away more than $50 billion thus far (~$23 billion of that giving is from Warren Buffett's contributions; Buffett's donations have to be used rapidly after they're given to the foundation (within the year or such if I recall), that money isn't allowed to pile up). The foundation as it's known today - The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - got started with $16 billion in 1999/2000.
Gates + Buffett = $210 billion currently. Due to the Buffett money pouring in, they basically can't give it all away as fast as Bill & Melinda had originally planned, so they're likely going to miss their timeline for giving the Gates fortune away (in their lifetimes was the first goal; that shifted to now being within 20 years after their passing).
Re: Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change
#89After reading Winners Take All my level of cynicism is through the roof with headlines like this. $10b of his own personal fortune? That won't results in tax breaks / deduction because can be considered a donation? Or does that include money Amazon-the-company is spending on "climate change" efforts, such as buying electric delivery trucks instead of gas ones? Investments in "green datacenters"? Is any of this new in…
don't forget the necessity for major public relations efforts when your company is under fire for tax evasion, dangerous (sometimes lethal) work environments, not properly governing its platform leading to rampant fraud, and on and on. But hey. Always two ways to look at any situation.
Re: Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of the worst polluters are state owned coal plants. There are some private energy producers, but from what I understand, most energy companies just act as interstate brokers between local agencies.
Then, buy the biggest coal mining companies and shut them down (or convert to renewables). In 2016, Australia was the world's biggest net coal exporter[1] with 32% of global exports and the fourth highest producer. As far as I know, all coal mining in Australia is undertaken by private companies who hold a mining lease. The $10billion could be used to buy controlling interests in some of the 10 biggest listed coal mi…
It's an interesting idea. Buy up any lease you can and sit on it. Probably a risky way to burn through a few billion, and at the risk that new companies pop up anyway and undo all your work.
I would rather they focus on drowning out coal on the supply side, or furthering carbon capture technology.