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Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

forbes.com

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Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#861

Post by pwinnski »

zpeti wrote: post #858
pwinnski wrote: post #823

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you've added personal insults to your class mockery. Please, this sort of casual disregard of other people is not appropriate on HN. Your initial claim was that he had no money apart from company stock, and lives entirely on debt. This is factually incorrect, as I pointed out: his family money predates all of his companies. Attached to your factually-incorrect claim was a casual denigration of a group of people w…

If you are so good on facts, please point to some (other than speculation) that confirm your theory that Elon somehow benefitted from family money, or is currently living off family money not Tesla and SpaceX. Your statement was extremely loaded, suggesting Elon's family somehow is part of his success. While our past is certainly part of us always, it is very loaded and complex. As is well known Elon's father was ver…

> I stand by the fact that anything implying Elon is successful because of his family money is a hugely far-left opinion, if not communist, and has its roots in your resentment for Elon's success.

This is not okay. Please, pursue empathy.

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#862

Post by jjeaff »

nitrogen wrote: post #102
jjeaff wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but what benefit does that power get him except to accomplish the goals of his philanthropy? He doesn't appear to be trying to amass more wealth. He needs to amass connections and power if he wants to accomplish his philanthropic goals. As for fixing his image, sure, maybe that was part of it. But I doubt it. He could have just made a few really big donations and then went off to himself to enjoy his wealth.

He is strongly opposed to end-to-end encryption, for one example.

I can't find any evidence to support that except some crackpot websites and forums taking a few things he has said out of context.

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#863

Post by Can_Not »

zpeti wrote: post #858
pwinnski wrote: post #823

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you've added personal insults to your class mockery. Please, this sort of casual disregard of other people is not appropriate on HN. Your initial claim was that he had no money apart from company stock, and lives entirely on debt. This is factually incorrect, as I pointed out: his family money predates all of his companies. Attached to your factually-incorrect claim was a casual denigration of a group of people w…

If you are so good on facts, please point to some (other than speculation) that confirm your theory that Elon somehow benefitted from family money, or is currently living off family money not Tesla and SpaceX. Your statement was extremely loaded, suggesting Elon's family somehow is part of his success. While our past is certainly part of us always, it is very loaded and complex. As is well known Elon's father was ver…

> anything implying Elon is successful because of his family money is a hugely far-left opinion, if not communist

TIL reality is communist

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#864

Post by wombatmobile »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #173
mulmen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if a person was more involved in charitable giving if they would have heard about this guy before? Mainstream news coverage isn't going to cover him much but stories have been written, he worked closely with Gates and Buffet. My takeaway from this story is to spend my time on things that matter to me. It's a reminder that our news sources are really just another form of entertainment, which is not something…

The article says "And he gave it away anonymously" but doesn't expand on that.

He gave anonymously until 9/11 forced his hand. In the wake of the attacks, international money laundering laws were tightened, and large international transactions were scrutinised.

Feeney donated some half a billion dollars to medical research in Brisbane, Australia, guided by an old friend from his young days in Hong Kong, the tennis player Ken Fletcher.

When Fletcher told former Brisbane Lord Mayor Jim Soorley he had a mate with millions to give away to good causes, nobody in Brisbane would take him seriously. It forced Feeney to come out with his philanthropy, and whilst he never cultivated a public profile, Feeney did at least speak in public on a few occasions when dedicating medical research centres that were built with his donations in Brisbane.

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#865

Post by superasn »

frabbit wrote: post #625
superasn wrote: post #160

Is a person who invests that money for-profit but makes giant advancements in maths/science while doing it an equally big giver? Take for example, Elon musk. Even though he hasn't given monet away to charities like Chuck, his for-profit enterprises like electric cars, solar farms, spacex and possibly neuralink might just have been things that end up equally great for humanity. So if you have billions I guess timtowtd…

What giant advances has Elon Musk made in maths/science?

I'd say spacex is a pretty big leap forward in terms of advancements in science, maybe even maths. Same with neuralink that will help handicapped people to walk one day. Hopefully that knowledge will drive our whole human race forward

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#866

Post by FeepingCreature »

habosa wrote: post #860
FeepingCreature wrote: post #859

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, props for donating, and I believe that you want both outcomes, but for the sake of completeness the revealed-preferences meaning of your giving patterns is that the marginal badness of a SF youth being homeless is equivalent to 16 africans dying. Like, I'm not saying that to denigrate your choices, it's just an inherent fact of donation splitting. https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/post/2013/11/should-you-only..…

I believe that article calls me out in point #6: > Bad Reason #6: I care about multiple issues! I want to end disease so I give to an anti-disease charity, I want to end crime so I give to an anti-crime charity, and I want to end poverty so I give to an anti-poverty charity. > Yes, we have many different values. But at any given time, one of these will be the most pressing; one of them will be easiest to make headway…

> I don't think every person who buys a new laptop for $2500 is saying they'd rather have a faster web browser than save a life from malaria.

So there's this thing called "revealed preferences". I have a $2000 laptop, and I was very aware when I bought it that I was saying that this laptop was more important than an african life. I don't have a moral defense for this. I think it's not so much that people don't prefer a laptop to an african child surviving - they do prefer the laptop - but they don't want to perceive themselves to be the sort of people who prefer a laptop to an african child surviving. And so they don't think about it, and get angry at you when you make them think about it. But they still act in that way.

Personally, I sort of feel I'd be a lot more ready to donate a fraction of my income to worthy causes if everyone else was willing to help as well. Maybe we need to run charities like very long term kickstarters - say "we need X trillion dollars over a span of ten years to have an even shot at wiping out Malaria forever, commit yourself to a monthly payment, payment starts once we cross the threshold." I think something like that would be better at motivating me, at least - humans are inherently more sensitive to relative local standing than absolute global effects.

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#867

Post by halflings »

raz32dust wrote: post #306
halflings wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't it be a % of (income - essential expenses), rather than % of non-essential spending? If you're very frugal, you'd end up giving away a very small amount of money, saving all the rest... Saving is super important, but giving money to effective charities is also a great way to use your money. To take a typical example of someone that might be reading HN, any software engineer working in NY or the Bay Area can…

I am not sure if you can easily give away that much money. If it were easy, people would already be doing it. Buying a nice home is a distant dream even for many software engineers in the bay area for example, and future education and healthcare costs are very unpredictable. Putting it in terms of money you are already spending helps put it in context.

There are many beneficial things people can do but are not doing. For example: investing your money. Many people aren't doing it (instead leaving cash in their bank account for a large part of their life) out of pure laziness/ignorance of its benefits.

Let's assume you're a junior SWE in the Bay Area, making $130K. Annual take home is ~$85,753 according to [1] You pay $3K in rent (nice 1 bedroom apt in South Bay, or just a decent one in SF), $2K for various expenses, that's $60K and you're left with $25K.

This is for a junior engineer, and granted they might want to save $25K vs $15K (arguable; I would consider those savings don't matter much in the long run, the goal being to quickly increase your salary by advancing your career), but an engineer in a large tech company is making closer to $250 - $300K total comp, and you'll see that the $10K donation isn't making much of a dent in your savings at that point.

[1] https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-paycheck-calculator#...

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#868

Post by halflings »

dingaling wrote: post #728
halflings wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't it be a % of (income - essential expenses), rather than % of non-essential spending? If you're very frugal, you'd end up giving away a very small amount of money, saving all the rest... Saving is super important, but giving money to effective charities is also a great way to use your money. To take a typical example of someone that might be reading HN, any software engineer working in NY or the Bay Area can…

> but giving money to effective charities is also a great way to use your money Those charities aren't going to help you when you're retired and subsiding on a meagre state pension. Or if there's a resurgent global pandemic and you lose your job and home. Save first, always.

I mentioned that you can do this on top of saving money. Just saving money with no goal in mind (or with the goal of buying a $1M house) is IMHO not always worth it.

Absolutely for saving to be able to survive ~1 year as life is very unpredictable, but we're talking about altruism here... Let's for a second assume we all want to have the largest positive impact on other people, is that $1M really the best way to spend your money to both improve your and other people's life? Could you instead buy a house/work elsewhere, pay $400K, and invest $600K in saving a hole bunch of people from certain death / extreme poverty?

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#869

Post by jcheng »

strken wrote: post #503
jcheng wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless there's actual corruption involved (like giving to a "charity" that actually fuels your personal expenses), how could a deductible gift be used a tax loophole? I've heard the misconception that one could use a deduction to bump yourself into a lower tax rate on your entire income, and therefore come out ahead, but that's not how U.S. federal income tax rates work.

It's like the government is matching your donations, and in the case of certain charities, that means the government is effectively funding lobbyists for you. "Loopholes" are often in the eye of the beholder.

https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/lobbying
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