81–90 of 136 posts
Bill Gates pledged the same and yet his wealth hasn't reduced. Worse, the philanthropy has been targetted ideologically (like encouraging private schools) and somehow keeps ending up favouring companies he has ownership in.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really don't get the animus against private schools. Surely a one size fits all public school can't possibly best serve the interests of every possible student. Furthermore in a pluralistic society, shouldn't we tolerate people's different preferences in education, especially those who opt for more religious education?
Try opening up a Madrasa in your neighborhood and you may find a lot of pushback to private religious schools, even from people who say they are in favor of such a thing.
Billionaire philanthropy is mostly just another tax shelter. https://thehighasia.com/private-charity-just-another-scam-fo...
Once the money is in the foundation or DAF, you can't get it back out again to use for personal gain, and you really can't use it to pay yourself. If you make a foundation, you can pay people to run it, and they can be friends of yours, even family members, but it's not like you can pay them ridiculous amounts of money compared to other foundations. That would be illegal. That's not to say some people don't try that,…
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/business/donor-advised-fu...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-10-03/rich-use-...
Archived links:
From the bloomberg article:
"The Mercers and the Allenders are among a small but growing number of wealthy Americans who’ve discovered how to bypass rules designed more than a half-century ago to ensure philanthropists stay accountable for the billions of dollars in tax breaks they receive each year. The key is the donor-advised fund, or DAF, which is so flexible that charitable dollars can sit in one indefinitely, and so opaque that no one needs to know either way.
...
In a study of more than 2,600 DAF accounts, the Council of Michigan Foundations found that the majority of donors paid out less than 5% of assets in 2020. More than one-third gave nothing to charity at all. The biggest sponsors of the funds have rebuffed calls to release that kind of account-level data, even as the number of accounts has swelled to more than 1 million. As of 2020, DAFs held almost $160 billion, an 85% increase in four years. Although the industry says it’s paying out more than one-fifth of its assets a year in aggregate, the reality is probably less: Some of the biggest recipients of grants from the funds are other funds, as donors shift money from one sponsor to another."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really don't get the animus against private schools. Surely a one size fits all public school can't possibly best serve the interests of every possible student. Furthermore in a pluralistic society, shouldn't we tolerate people's different preferences in education, especially those who opt for more religious education?
There's no reason public education can't be religious, if that is desired by the population in a region. Both ethnic and religious public schools exist in many countries, to cater to minorities. The problem is charity with the privatising of schooling as a condition. Not unlike charity with the purchase of a specific type of seed sold by a specific company as a condition.
There is the establishment clause of the constitution in the US, which prevents the nation from establishing state sponsored religion. Courts have been pretty clear that compulsory religious elements in public school violates the establishment clause.
> The problem is charity with the privatising of schooling as a condition. Not unlike charity with the purchase of a specific type of seed sold by a specific company as a condition.
I have no idea what you mean by this.
Billionaire philanthropy is mostly just another tax shelter. https://thehighasia.com/private-charity-just-another-scam-fo...
Once the money is in the foundation or DAF, you can't get it back out again to use for personal gain, and you really can't use it to pay yourself. If you make a foundation, you can pay people to run it, and they can be friends of yours, even family members, but it's not like you can pay them ridiculous amounts of money compared to other foundations. That would be illegal. That's not to say some people don't try that,…
They can direct their foundations to give billions of dollars to corporations controlled by their friends, who use that money (after taking a cut, of course) to do whatever it is the foundation was set up to do.
This is one of the things the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation was accused of doing: enriching their friends' corporations.
Of course, their friends can do the same in return, or compensate them in other ways, in money or influence.
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They deserve their wealth because you keep buying and using their products. If everyone who hated billionaires stopped using amazon tomorrow, Bezos would be in serious trouble. But alas, Bezos offers a service that enormous amounts of people seemingly can't quit using, which to me (and the market that prices it), is infact worth hundreds of billions. I haven't used amazon in 2 years. I'm sick of sitting in peoples ap…
"They deserve their wealth because you keep buying and using their products." Their products or the products of the people who work for them?
Fixing wealth inequality doesn't necessitate throwing out the entire legal and economic system we have. Workers can form unions if they they are not being recognized. There is no need to topple capitalism so that amazon can become a nationalized business with an inverted pay hierarchy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"They deserve their wealth because you keep buying and using their products." Their products or the products of the people who work for them?
It's their products. Fixing wealth inequality doesn't necessitate throwing out the entire legal and economic system we have. Workers can form unions if they they are not being recognized. There is no need to topple capitalism so that amazon can become a nationalized business with an inverted pay hierarchy.
Amazon as we know it today wasn't made by Bezos, but by the thousands of people that work for him.
It's their company, not his. If anyone has a right to Bezos' billions it's them.
He, of course, deserves a nominal fee... maybe on par with the lowest-paid worker at Amazon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no reason public education can't be religious, if that is desired by the population in a region. Both ethnic and religious public schools exist in many countries, to cater to minorities. The problem is charity with the privatising of schooling as a condition. Not unlike charity with the purchase of a specific type of seed sold by a specific company as a condition.
> There's no reason public education can't be religious There is the establishment clause of the constitution in the US, which prevents the nation from establishing state sponsored religion. Courts have been pretty clear that compulsory religious elements in public school violates the establishment clause. > The problem is charity with the privatising of schooling as a condition. Not unlike charity with the purchase…
Gates offers charity only under specific conditions, especially in Africa. He gives charity for schooling, if it's for private schools he could make money off of elsewhere (at the expense of public schools). He gives charity for agriculture, if it's for some specific seeds he makes money off of (at the expense of the local people choosing what they think is appropriate). He distorts poor economies towards his own ends, that is the problem.
Bill Gates pledged the same and yet his wealth hasn't reduced. Worse, the philanthropy has been targetted ideologically (like encouraging private schools) and somehow keeps ending up favouring companies he has ownership in.
What does that mean his wealth hasn't reduced? Any money that he's given away (and he's given away a lot) has reduced his wealth. He'd be worth more if hadn't given it away.