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Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

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Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#61

Post by chroem- »

edmundsauto wrote: post #47
chroem- wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Previously he's been known for being openly communist (i.e. not just a regular socialist). As an aside, I still find it odd how we've rightfully shunned other totalitarian and mass murdering political ideologies, but we've completely whitewashed communism. I couldn't imagine another newscaster openly identifying as a nazi.

The difference is that communism is an economic idea, which was used by regimes that did brutal things. Whereas the Nazi ideology drove the violence. In one case, it was correlated. In another, causative.

A core tenet of communist ideology is violent overthrow of democratic governments to implement a "dictatorship of the proletariat". Both are rooted in violence.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#62

Post by slg »

chroem- wrote: post #60
slg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His wikipedia page does not say that. It seems like this controversy comes from his stance 30 years ago[1]. Van Jones was protesting the Rodney King verdict and was rounded up as part of mass arrests. From there he fell into a crowd that radicalized him as a communist, but a few years later his politics changed. He became more focused on unity and results rather than revolution for the sake of revolution. He also say…

You are suggesting that we hold him to a different standard than everyone else and give him the benefit of the doubt. Other people have had their careers ruined for far, far less, while Jones gets a television gig and $100M for his troubles. And wikipedia does discuss his Leninist activities. See below.

>You are suggesting that we hold him to a different standard than everyone else and give him the benefit of the doubt.

The opposite. I am suggesting we allow people to evolve over time. If someone demonstrates that the person they are today is different than the person they were 30 years ago, I think we should be more willing to forgive those 30 year old beliefs. If the person shows no indication of change, I am fine with them being made to account for those old beliefs.

>Other people have had their careers ruined for far, far less, while Jones gets a television gig and $100M for his troubles.

You are insinuating that Jones can just pocket the $100m which almost certainly isn't happening and is probably illegal depending on how all the paperwork is being done on this.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#63

Post by jjulius »

chroem- wrote: post #54
jjulius wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ctrl+f'd "Lenin" on Van Jones' Wiki page, and this is literally the only time Lenin is mentioned: >He became affiliated with many left activists, and co-founded a socialist collective called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM). It protested against police brutality, held study groups on the theories of Marx and Lenin, and aspired to a multi-racial socialist utopia.[13] I'm not sure how be…

Does co-founding a Leninist organization not make one a Leninist? Why would you create an organization if you don't believe in its ideals?

Does one have to adopt every ideal of something when founding an organization? Would that not be the point of discussing those theories? What do we like? Dislike? Want to modify/mold to fit our current system?

But given your tone, and responses to other commenters, I am 100% certain that your feet are dug in and you aren't actually open to being swayed. So, enjoy your day! :)

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#64

Post by akira2501 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #10

The really interesting thing to me about this announcement is that it's the first time I think I've ever heard about such a large gift being given to individuals , instead of a foundation or non-profit. Curious if Bezos is just testing to see if this type of philanthropy has better results. I'm also interested in the logistics of a gift this large. I mean, Bezos would have to pay a large gift tax for gifts sent direc…

> is just testing to see if this type of philanthropy has better results.

The idea of a billionaire spending time minmax-ing their donations seems highly unlikely.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#65

Post by edmundsauto »

chroem- wrote: post #61
edmundsauto wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that communism is an economic idea, which was used by regimes that did brutal things. Whereas the Nazi ideology drove the violence. In one case, it was correlated. In another, causative.

A core tenet of communist ideology is violent overthrow of democratic governments to implement a "dictatorship of the proletariat". Both are rooted in violence.

Aren't democracy and communism orthogonal? Admittedly, I'm not a scholar, but it seems to me that democracy is mostly concerned w/ how leaders are chosen. Whereas communism is about how resources are distributed. It sounds possible to have a democratically elected government that sets a communist economic policy.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#66

Post by kstrauser »

tills13 wrote: post #20
balozi wrote: post #3

Bezos isn't known for being dumb with his money. So, I am curious about his motivation in this case. What is the deep reptilian part of his tycoon brain telling him? Is he buying positive press after yesterday's show? Does he care about the cause? Or is he buying a 1990 Cutlass Supreme from Jones on the down-low?

It's a tax write-off.

I'll explain why that comment almost never makes sense.

Let's say your tax rate is 50% and your taxable income is $1,000,000, so you'll owe $500,000 in taxes. If you donate $100,000 to charity as a "tax write-off", now your taxable income is only $900,000 and you'll only owe $450,000 in taxes, but you lost $100,000 to save that $50,000. At the end of the day, you'll have $50,000 less than if you didn't donate anything.

Before anyone starts with "but what if it drops you into a lower tax bracket!": a) that's not how marginal taxes work, and b) the top tax bracket starts at $518,400 in the US in 2021, and I'm pretty sure Bezos made many times that amount.

"It's a tax write-off" doesn't make sense mathematically. It's not a thing. There's not a plausible way where giving away money can improve your bottom line over not giving it away without having tax rates above 100%, which we don't have.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#67

Post by TechBro8615 »

peakaboo wrote: post #38
Zelphyr wrote: post #9

All the critics lobbing cynicism against Bezos, Branson, and Musk saying, in essence, that their money is better spent here at home reminds me of a wonderful scene from The West Wing when one character asks why we have to go to Mars: "'Cause it's next. For we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill, and we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean, and we pioneered the West, and we took to the sky. The history of…

I don't know how to put this in a polite way... Let's just say your brain seems to have gotten too much TV entertainment. These billionaires made many billions on covid, while you got a 1400 dollar check so you could survive. These billionaires pay their workers minimum wage every day. People can't get toilet breaks at amazon warehouse without being harassed. This guy is a world class parasite. There is nothing "we"…

They also caused me exactly zero suffering. In fact, they actually helped me since I was able to order from Amazon throughout the lockdown.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#68

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

akira2501 wrote: post #64
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #10

The really interesting thing to me about this announcement is that it's the first time I think I've ever heard about such a large gift being given to individuals , instead of a foundation or non-profit. Curious if Bezos is just testing to see if this type of philanthropy has better results. I'm also interested in the logistics of a gift this large. I mean, Bezos would have to pay a large gift tax for gifts sent direc…

> is just testing to see if this type of philanthropy has better results. The idea of a billionaire spending time minmax-ing their donations seems highly unlikely.

You don't know many billionaires then. Many prominent philanthropists have written extensively about how to track, measure and optimize the impact of their donations.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#70

Post by chroem- »

jjulius wrote: post #63
chroem- wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does co-founding a Leninist organization not make one a Leninist? Why would you create an organization if you don't believe in its ideals?

Does one have to adopt every ideal of something when founding an organization? Would that not be the point of discussing those theories? What do we like? Dislike? Want to modify/mold to fit our current system? But given your tone, and responses to other commenters, I am 100% certain that your feet are dug in and you aren't actually open to being swayed. So, enjoy your day! :)

> Does one have to adopt every ideal of something when founding an organization?

Let's change the labels. If someone founds an organization to spread nazism, is it a reasonable inference to suggest that the founder might be a nazi? I think yes, and that it is facile to suggest that the founder of an organization whose core principle is Leninism, is not actually a Leninist. And that's to say nothing of Jones' other activities that were cleaned off of wikipedia.

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