can someone here who thinks charity is a morally noble act answer this question: why is it good to extract billions from people who work for you and then give it a way and feel good about it? why not share the profits with your workers in the first place? how is it morally justifiable to steal and exploit in order to give?
Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke
511–520 of 875 posts
Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke
#512I’ve long argued for massive estate tax rates on large estates in order to incentivize behavior like this. I have no problem at all with Bezos being worth $200 billion (or whatever it is now), but it’s this dynastic wealth that I find borderline sickening. Why in the hell should the Rockefeller’s of today be billionaires??? Also, these giant charitable foundations/family offices are similarly off-putting, as they are…
I don't get it, the Rockefeller family has an estimated net worth of $11bn today. That's for 174 members of this family or around $63m per family. While not a small amount, it's not outrageous either; especially that it's an old family, so they haven't really accumulated lots of wealth. You'd think compound interest would have made them own much more than that. On the other hand, Bezos, a single person, has control o…
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Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke
#513Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps a slight twist on that would be to be if society as a whole considered paying taxes as if it were "pay it forward" philanthropy. In fact if the government recognized honest taxpayers as if they were forward thinking "philanthropic donors" (replete with award dinners for the million dollar donors) - perhaps there'd be more excitement for April 15th - and such people would not be so quick to figure out ways to…
It would help if we could decide what our taxes got allocated to directly. Like 50‰ nasa 0% racist border wall. I hate paying my taxes because it's going to bullshit like that federally. Or locally, funding mismanaged pensions.
That'd be an interesting additional feature - a minimum 50% toward general funds and the remaining 50% to the government programs of your choice.
Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke
#514Earlier quoted context omitted.
We could also just tax the income used to make the donations at similar levels to prior top brackets and not depend on philanthropy as a means to fund public institutions or social safety nets.
That puts the decision on where to put public good will and non-profitable money sinks solely into the machine of government bureaucracy, which I don't think would be very effective. Currently we incentivize private individual donations, and that lets a lot of things happen quickly and without the requirement of soliciting the permission of a bottlenecked council for anything to happen.
Government is often significantly more effective at spending money for charitable works than private charities due to all the overhead involved in running charities. Further, as a private individual I dislike that my tax money is used to in part fund charities that I strongly disagree with.
If you want to use your money to support some private crusade that’s fine, but why must we support anything anyone thinks as a worthy cause? It’s in effect a blank check without meaningful oversight. Their are for example homeopathy charities whose donations are tax deductible.
Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke
#515I vaguely recall that there are classic levels in Jewish philosophy regarding philanthropy, and among the highest is to give with no expectation of any return whatsoever: that means not only giving where it matters, but to do so anonymously, to organizations that don't benefit you (no opera companies), and to people with no ties to you. In this respect Chuck Feeney has been incredible. This is not to dismiss the like…
I don't think that seeking to be starving and on the street should be the ultimate end goal of philanthropy. I much prefer to limit my generosity via the First Rule of Rescue: be careful not give away so much that now you need charity yourself.
Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke
#516Earlier quoted context omitted.
My money, my choice. As long as taxes are paid, it's nobody's business what I do with my money, as long as what I do is not illegal.
But you don’t decide how much tax to pay. Obviously many poor people will decide that few rich people must pay more.
> many poor people will decide that few rich people must pay more
I fail to see the problem, if you have more money than you could possibly use in a lifetime, why shouldn't that be redistributed through programs that benefit all of society, instead of whatever pet projects the rich person favors.
Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke
#517May this giant of giving live well. He truly made it through the eye of the needle.
Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke
#518Earlier quoted context omitted.
Namely something after yourself is tacky. But what should buildings be named after? Famous scientists? Planets? Feeney seems like an awesome guy but sadly in 100 years nobody will know his name!
Why name it after anything? "UCSF Children's Hospital" tells you everything you need to know.
Because naming rights have a very real, tangible value and you can sell them to further your mission?
I guess Jerry Jones could have named his stadium "Dallas Cowboys Football Stadium" and that would have certainly told you everything you need to know. But instead he called it AT&T stadium and pockets $400 million. Both Jones and AT&T are happy. Same principle applies to colleges and hospitals.
Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke
#519Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the US, according to the CBO[0], the people who are in the top two quintiles of income pay for all services and infrastructure. Saying that these people benefit more from this infrastructure than a middle income household is very odd. It's like I decide to be a farmer and need more water, so I dig a well to water my farm. Then my neighbor sees the well and asks if they can get drinking water from it and I say sure…
Their large incomes are made possible by infrastructure. The analogy doesn't make much sense to me since even the most prolific billionaire didn't build much of this infrastructure.
As a class they did. Some of it was built by billionaires past, but is maintained by the current generation of the well to do. Regardless, the middle income household certainly did not build it.
Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke
#520Earlier quoted context omitted.
Donating anonymously is a way of avoiding ending up on the mailing list of every charity in the country. While it wasn't so important in this case because as a former billionaire I assume he had people at a foundation who's job it was to handle his correspondence, but if you are a regular person looking to make a donation it's often a good idea to keep your name and contact info out of it as much as possible. Chariti…
Not sure if it was the case for Chuck, but a small percentage Christians strongly believe that charity should be anonymous because it actually says as much in the bible. I'm not a Christian myself and definitely not rich at all, but I do prefer anonymous donations.
Matthew 6, 1-4 (NIV):
1 “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.