151–160 of 343 posts
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And you would be violating the law.
Not necessarily. Plenty of rich peoples’ charities are incredibly inefficient at their stated purpose, good for their owners, and legal. Consider an imaginary tobacco tycoon’s charity that promotes cigarette use. It would be 100% legal.
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Billionaire's 501(c)(3)s aren't charities in the typical sense. They're tax-exempt piles of money that are controlled exclusively by billionaire and their families (in this case Musk and his brother). The Musk Foundation in particular has donated less than 1% of the "charities" assets (most donations less than $500K, most years less than $1M) and these "charities" can pay out to their owners from tax-exempt gains on…
You have just enough information about foundations to completely misunderstand them. It's true that a major reason for the popularity of foundations is legal tax avoidance: you can donate to a foundation in a year when you have lots of income, get the tax benefit in that year, and not have to make a charitable donation in the same year. The foundations is allowed to sit on most of the money for a long time. However,…
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Every ultra-wealthy person has a charity for this purpose, right? Clintons, Bill Gates, etc...
Gates foundation actually does charitable work from what I can tell ?
Than your purview of 'charitable' work includes coaxing Oxford to not open source vaccines to the developing World in order or profit from the largess that big pharama reaped during the pandemic [0] and subsequently caused a lot of unnecessary deaths? That isn't even including their aggressive consolidation of arable farm land in the US with clear ties to large pharma and chemical corps under the auspices of their foundation and ties to the WHO.
And I'm not even going to delve into the Epstein relationship Bill had which included trips to pedophile island.
If so, you should really look into what you deem as 'charitable work' tbh.
0: https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bi...
Instead of giving directly to charities like St. Judes - he funds his foundation which gives to charities like St. Judes. When you give away $5B, wouldn't it be irresponsible to not give it to a foundation? And if you have your own foundation, wouldn't it be dumb to not give it to your own foundation? This seems like a nothing story; except that it's in vogue to hate Musk right now.
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And since he is narcist, he wants to be in the news all the time.
However negative news sell more. And somehow he made more enemies than Trump: Trump will not be booed in Oklahoma but Elon will be booed both in Oklahoma and San Franscisco.
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What's your point? Pointing out other billionaires doesn't make the billionaire we're discussing less horrible. Most billionaires are horrible in my opinion. This is due to the idea that you cannot get that rich without exploiting people, taking money from government (while simultaneously talking against people receiving help), and this charity scheme is yet another loophole that needs to be closed.
While you may love/hate certain classes of people it would probably be helpful for you to refresh how economies work and, not just modern day economies, all economies. There will always be some level of exploitation in every single type of government/economy and there will always be government there to support interest of its people. You might finesse your argument to the fact that you deem the level of exploitation…
A tax avoidance scheme which also placated a twitter argument about his contributions. Unsurprising.
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All true and a perfectly valid model. But also try: If I were incredibly wealthy and obsessed with running the score up, I’d see any taxes or other loss of wealth as a threat to my ego. If my tax accountants came to me and said I could have a greater net worth by founding a charity optimized for my personal benefit, I’d happily shuffle money there rather than paying taxes. I think that’s also a valid model. I don’t h…
I think he's probably optimizing for both. Don't hate the player, hate the game.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Billionaire's 501(c)(3)s aren't charities in the typical sense. They're tax-exempt piles of money that are controlled exclusively by billionaire and their families (in this case Musk and his brother). The Musk Foundation in particular has donated less than 1% of the "charities" assets (most donations less than $500K, most years less than $1M) and these "charities" can pay out to their owners from tax-exempt gains on…
You have just enough information about foundations to completely misunderstand them. It's true that a major reason for the popularity of foundations is legal tax avoidance: you can donate to a foundation in a year when you have lots of income, get the tax benefit in that year, and not have to make a charitable donation in the same year. The foundations is allowed to sit on most of the money for a long time. However,…
“If the organization engages in an excess benefit transaction with a person having substantial influence over the organization, an excise tax may be imposed on the person and any organization managers agreeing to the transaction.” https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz...
One example would be putting staff members up at a hotel you own.
The material improvements he could have gotten for this money... He could have created tens of thousands of homes in apartments and gifted them to municipalities to be social housing, putting a massive dent in homelessness. He could have built and furnished schools. He could have bought public transit vehicles. There's countless things that would have real, immediate, material impact on thousands of lives.