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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

#121

Post by ch4s3 »

nevinera wrote: post #120
ch4s3 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of us don't have a problem with _private schools_, just with state money or charity being aimed at them. State money already goes to a dizzying array of non-profit and religious institutions. Anywhere from local homeless and addiction services to the University of Notre Dame. Why should primary and secondary schools be excluded? > Private schools are fundamentally capitalistic This is a meaningless statement.…

Yeah, I was clarifying a sentiment, not starting a debate about a complex topic. This was actually a policy debate topic back when I was in school, it's very tired ground -.- I understand that you disagree, and you probably have thought-out reasons for that. You'll just have to understand that I do as well, and we can both skip the hours of wasted time where we try to convince each other (or an imaginary audience).

That’s fair. By disposition I prefer to always try to make a clear case for an idea. It sharpens my own thinking and sometimes observers are inspired to look into something more deeply.

Re: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

#122

Post by pmoriarty »

zie wrote: post #119
pmoriarty wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." 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 foundat…

Please understand the law, once it's in a Foundation or DAF, you can't then send the money to corporations, only to charitable purposes. For a Foundation, it's more limited than that, as you have to spend the money to fulfill the foundations purpose for existing.

Charities buy products and services all the time... for charitable purposes, of course. That money they spend goes to corporations.

That's what I meant when I said "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."

It's not "given" in the sense of a gift, but given as part of a trade. The corporations they purchase from still profit.

Re: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

#123

Post by panarky »

tyingq wrote: post #41
chadash wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The commitment was "commitment to give the majority of their wealth" . https://givingpledge.org/about

Promises to do something good in the indeterminate but distant future generate tons of positive press coverage for free.

Better to ignore empty PR nonsense and wait for billions in philanthropy to actually materialize before showering sociopaths with praise and adoration.

Re: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

#124

Post by malfist »

pmoriarty wrote: post #69
fy20 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: What is the alternative? We could apply a really high tax rate to billionaires, but that has its own set of problems and doesn't guarantee anything will change for the warehouse workers. Governments are much less efficient than private companies at spending; a lot of the taxes will go towards 'defense'; which government should tax global companies like Amazon?

"We could apply a really high tax rate to billionaires, but that has its own set of problems" What problems? For whom?

For billionaires.

It sounds like "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas"

If someone is starving, and you have food to give them, you don't say "We could give them food, but that has it's own set of problems. I guess there's no way to solve the problem"

Re: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

#125

Post by whatwherewhy »

frumper wrote: post #117
whatwherewhy wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gates pledged to give his wealth away before he dies, not immediately. And that's good - the world will be getting much more money than it'd get if Gates just gave away all his money the moment he announced it. > Then your net worth is $110 and when you give away $10 your net worth goes down $10. Gates' wealth fluctuates all the time. There was a time when he was rather low due to his donations - multiple 10s of bill…

I'm not saying it's bad to do what you're describing, I'm just saying when you actually donate money, not pledge, it decreases your net worth.

It does, but that doesn't mean your net worth will decrease by that amount that year. There are other effects - e.g. the rest of his investment portfolio.

Re: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

#127

Post by zie »

pmoriarty wrote: post #122
zie wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please understand the law, once it's in a Foundation or DAF, you can't then send the money to corporations, only to charitable purposes. For a Foundation, it's more limited than that, as you have to spend the money to fulfill the foundations purpose for existing.

Charities buy products and services all the time... for charitable purposes, of course. That money they spend goes to corporations. That's what I meant when I said "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." It's not "given" in the sense of a gift, b…

OK, You are correct, they can buy goods and services from corporations, but this will ONLY apply to Foundations, as DAF's are different. Plus, it's not like these foundations can get away with over-paying for goods and services. They have to file returns to the IRS, if the expenses start to look ridiculous, they can audit, just like they can audit anyone else.

DAF's are not controlled by the contributor, so this does not apply to DAF's AT ALL.

So I still don't see why this is somehow bad.

Re: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

#128

Post by frumper »

whatwherewhy wrote: post #125
frumper wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying it's bad to do what you're describing, I'm just saying when you actually donate money, not pledge, it decreases your net worth.

It does, but that doesn't mean your net worth will decrease by that amount that year. There are other effects - e.g. the rest of his investment portfolio.

if you give away $10 then your net worth at that moment goes down...it may easily recover that price, but if you count it like that then you can surely count that the money you donated would have been worth more too

Re: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

#129

Post by karmakurtisaani »

Bilal_io wrote: post #34
alach11 wrote: post #11

You're going to see a lot of cynicism in this thread so I want to be a dissenting voice. This is a great thing. I'm glad the ideas behind the Giving Pledge are catching on.

The cynicism is warranted in my opinion. Because we've seen rich people give money only the further their wealth and power by influencing politics around the world, even when it appears that they're helping poor people.

Don't forget avoiding taxes. The one and only way we can be sure they gave the money away to someone else and have no control over how it's spent.

Re: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

#130

Post by germinalphrase »

whatwherewhy wrote: post #126
germinalphrase wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is Chuck Feeney.

So what? Gates said he will donate before he dies, not immediately.

I think the Gates Foundation does good work, but the cynical "so what?" is that creating a structure like this to "give away most of his $124bn (£107bn) fortune during his lifetime" (RE the linked article about Bezos) is a ruse to maintain control over the money without paying taxes - while also producing some good PR.

If they truly wanted to just give it away, Chuck Feeney offer a straight forward model for doing so. You just do it. If "giving it away" merely means putting it into a foundation you control, many people would feel that little has, in fact, been given away.

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