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Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

forbes.com

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Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#481

Post by woobar »

jacquesm wrote: post #444
maximente wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's really hard to imagine someone at age 89, with 2 social security incomes and $2M, who is apparently more frugal than most technology workers, being one "wrong accident" away from "the far side of the line easily enough". an 80% loss of that $2M cash leaves him with a paltry $400K which, assuming a rate of return == inflation, is 10 years of $40K/yr spending, to say nothing of 2x SS income. people's idea of "bein…

Healthcare in the United States is perfectly designed to take your every last penny in the last 6 months of your life. If Chuck Feeney isn't actually broke today, there is a fair chance that he will be on his death bed.

At his age healthcare is covered by taxpayers, just like in most other countries.

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#482

Post by sjwright »

settrans wrote: post #261
bedhead wrote: post #240

I’ve long argued for massive estate tax rates on large estates in order to incentivize behavior like this. I have no problem at all with Bezos being worth $200 billion (or whatever it is now), but it’s this dynastic wealth that I find borderline sickening. Why in the hell should the Rockefeller’s of today be billionaires??? Also, these giant charitable foundations/family offices are similarly off-putting, as they are…

An Open Letter from Economists on the Estate Tax To whom it may concern: Spend your money on riotous living – no tax; leave your money to your children – the tax collector gets paid first. That is the message sent by the estate tax. It is a bad message and the estate tax is a bad tax. The basic argument against the estate tax is moral. It taxes virtue – living frugally and accumulating wealth. It discourages saving a…

> The basic argument against the estate tax is moral. It taxes virtue – living frugally and accumulating wealth

If you have the means, there’s nothing moral about living frugally. Spending money creates jobs and strengthens the economy.

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#483

Post by gringoDan »

andrepd wrote: post #410
teruakohatu wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gates' wealth keeps increasing. Sure he gives a lot away but, but he is making 1+ billion per year above what he gives away. It is great that money is going to charity, it is great that money previously belonging to Gates' is going to charity, but I would be far more impressed by you if you donated $100/year to the Internet Archive than I am if Bill Gates donated $100 million. In other words, I don't think anyone cla…

Of course one could argue that we should not be dependent on the goodwill and grace of billionaires to choose to donate their wealth to good causes, but rather should tax fortunes at an onerous rate and put that money in public, democratic control, regardless. For each Chuck Feeny and Bill Gates how many Waltons OR Kochs do we have?

You could make that argument, and in doing so you are implicitly stating either:

(a) I believe that the government will use its money to impact the world in a better way than billionaires do, or

(b) I concede that (a) is false, but I don't care. It's not about the impact we make with the money, it's about dragging billionaires down.

Personally, I'm interested in impact. I have little faith that paying taxes to the US Government is a more effective way to generate positive impact in the world than personal charitable donations.

If I could pay my taxes to Bill Gates I would – my tax dollars would be used to eradicate polio or malaria, rather than on bureaucracy and starting wars.

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#484

Post by somethoughts »

davinic wrote: post #438
lordnacho wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the reduce the amount of donations greatly? Gotta think most people do it at least partly for recognition, otherwise there'd be nothing noteworthy about the article we're discussing.

We could also just tax the income used to make the donations at similar levels to prior top brackets and not depend on philanthropy as a means to fund public institutions or social safety nets.

Perhaps a slight twist on that would be to be if society as a whole considered paying taxes as if it were "pay it forward" philanthropy.

In fact if the government recognized honest taxpayers as if they were forward thinking "philanthropic donors" (replete with award dinners for the million dollar donors) - perhaps there'd be more excitement for April 15th - and such people would not be so quick to figure out ways to avoid paying taxes.

Fun thought video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTAE5m3ZO2E

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#485

Post by wang_li »

AQuantized wrote: post #462
wang_li wrote: post #418

One could argue that everyone has the same responsibilities to society at large. Thus for every Chuck Feeny and Bill Gates, you, personally you, have an obligation to create many billion dollars of value and give it away. If you don't do that, you're worse than any evil billionaire you care to name. They at least are paying millions of dollars in taxes for any money they pull out of investments. How many millions in…

This seems like a strange argument since someone who is say, running a large conglomerate, benefits much more from society's infrastructure and organization than a layperson. It then seems reasonable for their obligation to be proportionally greater.

In the US, according to the CBO[0], the people who are in the top two quintiles of income pay for all services and infrastructure. Saying that these people benefit more from this infrastructure than a middle income household is very odd. It's like I decide to be a farmer and need more water, so I dig a well to water my farm. Then my neighbor sees the well and asks if they can get drinking water from it and I say sure. Then they tell me I get more benefit from the well and I have to pay to maintain it.

0. See page 31. https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-...

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#486

Post by JoshTko »

paulpauper wrote: post #452
bedhead wrote: post #240

I’ve long argued for massive estate tax rates on large estates in order to incentivize behavior like this. I have no problem at all with Bezos being worth $200 billion (or whatever it is now), but it’s this dynastic wealth that I find borderline sickening. Why in the hell should the Rockefeller’s of today be billionaires??? Also, these giant charitable foundations/family offices are similarly off-putting, as they are…

This would hurt family owned businesses. Under such a system, within a family, everyone would keep their money to themselves. Let's say your dad wants to open a restaurant, so you donate $1 million, and the business does well, but then he unexpectedly dies and the his net worth is assessed at $5 million. Now you are out $1 million due to the tax. pretty bad deal.

I think that is the point? To reduce legacy wealth and force each generation to compete on a level playing field

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#487

Post by snowwrestler »

settrans wrote: post #261
bedhead wrote: post #240

I’ve long argued for massive estate tax rates on large estates in order to incentivize behavior like this. I have no problem at all with Bezos being worth $200 billion (or whatever it is now), but it’s this dynastic wealth that I find borderline sickening. Why in the hell should the Rockefeller’s of today be billionaires??? Also, these giant charitable foundations/family offices are similarly off-putting, as they are…

An Open Letter from Economists on the Estate Tax To whom it may concern: Spend your money on riotous living – no tax; leave your money to your children – the tax collector gets paid first. That is the message sent by the estate tax. It is a bad message and the estate tax is a bad tax. The basic argument against the estate tax is moral. It taxes virtue – living frugally and accumulating wealth. It discourages saving a…

To have an economist leading off with a moral argument tells you how strong the economic argument is. (not strong)

A view toward growing the economy would prefer the riotous living, because it moves more money around. Note that in almost any other context, Friedman is concerned with impediments to economic activity. Yet here, we are led to believe that high levels of economic activity are bad or immoral for some reason?

And of course "riotous living" throws off all sorts of tax revenue in addition to revenue and profits. And since such tax revenue is realized earlier than the death tax, it is more efficient.

The irony of this letter is that Friedman gets it right--the death tax exists to encourage the expenditure of wealth during life--but somehow thinks that is a bad thing.

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#488

Post by sjwright »

winston_smith wrote: post #350
danenania wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sort of agree with this in the sense that the estate tax seems like a distraction from the larger and vastly more important challenge of implementing a broadly fair, progressive, and efficient system of taxation. With a better system, we shouldn't have to introduce one-off taxes for "special events" like death because extreme concentrations of wealth should already be heavily and unavoidably taxed--passing wealth t…

> extreme concentrations of wealth should already be heavily and unavoidably taxed Unfortunately, government is already the most extreme concentration of wealth in the history of mankind, spending $8 trillion dollars a year in the USA alone, of which $1 trillion (that's 1,000 billionaire fortunes, or bankrupting Jeff Bezos 5x over, every year) goes straight to the military.

But Government is owned by its people, who are effectively shareholders of a corporation.

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#489

Post by phaus »

jandrese wrote: post #477
dumbfounder wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a shame. I have never heard of him. How many could he inspire if he was more vocal? But, to each their own.

Donating anonymously is a way of avoiding ending up on the mailing list of every charity in the country. While it wasn't so important in this case because as a former billionaire I assume he had people at a foundation who's job it was to handle his correspondence, but if you are a regular person looking to make a donation it's often a good idea to keep your name and contact info out of it as much as possible. Chariti…

Not sure if it was the case for Chuck, but a small percentage Christians strongly believe that charity should be anonymous because it actually says as much in the bible.

I'm not a Christian myself and definitely not rich at all, but I do prefer anonymous donations.

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#490

Post by [deleted] »

settrans wrote: post #261
bedhead wrote: post #240

I’ve long argued for massive estate tax rates on large estates in order to incentivize behavior like this. I have no problem at all with Bezos being worth $200 billion (or whatever it is now), but it’s this dynastic wealth that I find borderline sickening. Why in the hell should the Rockefeller’s of today be billionaires??? Also, these giant charitable foundations/family offices are similarly off-putting, as they are…

An Open Letter from Economists on the Estate Tax To whom it may concern: Spend your money on riotous living – no tax; leave your money to your children – the tax collector gets paid first. That is the message sent by the estate tax. It is a bad message and the estate tax is a bad tax. The basic argument against the estate tax is moral. It taxes virtue – living frugally and accumulating wealth. It discourages saving a…

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