Hacker News Reader

Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

I know this is a terribly jaded way to look at the world but when I see big corporations boasting of big donations to charity, which have to be only a small portion of their profits, it makes me wonder why they are paying their employees so little or charging their customers too much.

Their corporate voice doesn't speak for me and other individuals would have chosen different charities, so why don't they empower more people to make their own donations instead of taking from us and doing it for us in their own name.

What if instead Google just doubled the pay for all their employees in India (for example) and allowed those people to put the money back in their own economy as they buy things they need?

View on HN

Yes, you are jaded. And yes it might make some sense if you were trying to fix the economy. But I'd hedge that these charities will do more to alleviate poverty than Google paying some people more and hoping that something good happens.

Take a dollar from the middle, and give ten cents to the bottom. This way the top gets to keep 90¢ and look like the hero!

To be fair, it's what has always done. But this makes ck2 "jaded"? I am disappointed that so many people agree with you. Maybe the bottom wouldn't be so poor if there were some well off people who lived next to them and could help them out when they really needed it. Moving 90¢ from Bangalore to Tokyo / New York / Los Angeles reduces the local wealth a lot more than sending 10¢ back.

Except the "taking" part didn't happen. Google (or, in your terminology, "the top") created that value.

I typically favor the 'hands off' approach to social causes. That is, individuals can do more good on their own than benevolent corporations or governments. That said, Google doesn't exist to do good deeds. It is a corporation designed to make a profit by providing a valuable service and charging for it. Donating was not necessary, and I applaud these 'giving back' efforts. I particularly like how it was quantified primarily in terms of number of people affected, instead of amount of money given.

Brin and Page are not exactly the prototypes of profit-seeking corporate overlords, either. This is their type of move. Bravo.

Personally, I would rather they remove ads from YouTube videos. YouTube is a great channel for learning, but is becoming marginalized by needless, annoying crap popping up. Instead they have done what the rich always do, make a small, visible allocation of their profits to a "cause" that is easily marketed. They will certainly derive more revenue from increased traffic due to this advertisement than it cost them, and they get to feel warm and fuzzy about it at the same time.

This is not HN worthy.

If you look at it from the point of view of charities, they might prefer getting a lump sum donation in big amounts rather than a lot of small contributions. First it is less of a hassle. Second, knowing that they have this certain big amount with them, will help them aim for more ambitious causes and plan better.

And don't worry about salaries in India. I can tell you that most of the people whom Google or similar companies can pay here, are already well paid and have sufficient disposable incomes for contributing to charities if they so wish.

Right. Not everyone deserving of aid is employable either.

Apparently Coca-Cola did that for years. Not sure if this is still the case, but for a while they gave nothing directly. Instead, they offered a lump sum to their employees to distribute however they saw fit.

As a result, there were all sorts of good things happening in and around Atlanta - examples of small amounts going a long way in places where a giant company wouldn't even think to look.

Lets say they paid their employees more, charged their clients less and then still gave something to charity. Someone would still be asking the same questions, "howcome they don't give more to employees and charge clients less?"

Will there ever be a point at which they're allowed to use their money to give to whom they see fit?

Paying your employees more and charging your customers less apparently doesn't look nearly as good as large donations to charity, regardless which helps more. At least in America.

Not being a cynic. There are reasons for this. We make a big deal of charity donations in general, and you get to claim a lump-sum. $1 million donated sounds better than 1000 donations of $1 thousand.

Edit: there's another upside, too. It's a lot easier to make large profits and then give back what you can later, than it is to figure out what you can afford to give up ahead of time and set a tight budget.

giving more to employees in India will just help the growing gap between rich and poor, which is a big problem in these countries.

So it makes sense then that they should actually pay their employees in India less, to reduce the gap.

I like it even better when the big corporation "strongly encourages" its employees to donate to some charity, and then the company collects the donations and takes credit in their ads for donating to said charity.

At least Google donated their own money.

Because to pay one additional dollar to employees they also have to pay the government about one additional dollar in taxes.

In contrast, by paying one dollar more to non-profit charities they can pay one dollar less to the government (within limit).

You're jaded and want to address the problem of rural isolated low-access to education children by giving people in big cities more money? You're jaded by the selfish acts of corporations and yet are encouraging trickle-down in an economy and in reference to a problem that is probably uniquely even less apt to respond to trickle down?

Huh.

Yes, giving money (or cutting taxes) to people who are already wealthy is proven not to work (aka "trickle down economics") because they do not need to spend it locally and tend to only save/invest it overseas to their own benefit.

However it's also been proven that giving money to people of low income (ie. all the callcenter agents in India that Google and other corporations use) will then tend to spend the money immediately as they have little to no savings and need goods/services right away.

This also works for unemployed people in the USA, they tend to spend any funds given to them immediately, locally, which is good for the economy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com