Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke
forbes.com
forbes.com
This is not to dismiss the likes of Bill Gates: he has been very public with his donations, but in some cases (notably celebrity) notoriety in your donations may create a multiplier effect as it encourages others to do likewise. Even so, I think this is still on a lower-rung, philanthropy-wise, than Feeney's approach.
Nonetheless, we're sitting here praising someone who reduced himself from billions to $2M, but we must remind ourselves that this is unimpressive compared to the poor person who donates $25 to others while starving herself. The value of money is nonlinear. I'm sure that Feeney would say this as well: he no doubt sees himself as saddled with the burden of billions of dollars rather than someone doing something amazing.
I wonder if I ever will have the strength to do what he has done.
Try imagining Larry Ellison doing this.
an 80% loss of that $2M cash leaves him with a paltry $400K which, assuming a rate of return == inflation, is 10 years of $40K/yr spending, to say nothing of 2x SS income.
people's idea of "being broke" is just ridiculous.
Won’t pay for personal in-home nurses either.
But 2 million should buy him plenty of elder care. I would have kept 10 million just in case.
Aren't you forgetting that that he already "lost" the vast majority of his wealth? If he actually cared about the money he would have given it to his children. If he loses his last $2 million on healthcare he probably wouldn't care.
So of course his billionnaires friends will bail him out in the highly improbable event he should really need the money. The level of networking he reached means he doesn't need to spend a dollar until his last breath if he so wished.
Is it? This is a very Christian way of looking at donations: personal sacrifice / self-deprivation is what matters. [1]
However, utilitarians – notably Effective Altruists [2] – would make the opposite argument: what matters is the impact that you make with the dollars you donate (both in amount and allocation).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesson_of_the_widow%27s_mite
Oh come on. He's 89 years old and has millions of dollars still. How long do you expect him to live? "Sustainably generating" a median household income in perpetuity is an interesting bar to set. You're aware that most of the country doesn't have any savings at all, yeah? That the current median _at_retirement_age_ savings for the US is around 150K? That he's still getting an actual income from social security payments because why not?
That he's getting payments from Social Security after a lifetime of contributions to Social Security is also of no concern to me (I view it as the overwhelming default and entirely proper).
It is great that money is going to charity, it is great that money previously belonging to Gates' is going to charity, but I would be far more impressed by you if you donated $100/year to the Internet Archive than I am if Bill Gates donated $100 million.
In other words, I don't think anyone claims that $100 will help more than $100 million, but there is no great personal moral achievement in giving away something you don't need and can't use.
In that regard, perhaps it’s good to have social intervention performed by a mixture of democratic and individualistic entities. Perhaps one will address things that the other might miss.
(a) I believe that the government will use its money to impact the world in a better way than billionaires do, or
(b) I concede that (a) is false, but I don't care. It's not about the impact we make with the money, it's about dragging billionaires down.
Personally, I'm interested in impact. I have little faith that paying taxes to the US Government is a more effective way to generate positive impact in the world than personal charitable donations.
If I could pay my taxes to Bill Gates I would – my tax dollars would be used to eradicate polio or malaria, rather than on bureaucracy and starting wars.
I'm not saying I have a better idea, I don't, but democracy has been the driving force behind some pretty heinous stuff over the centuries (most obviously the resistance to equality of race, gay rights and universal suffrage). It's just less terrible than the alternatives that exist in the world today (e.g. dictatorship).
At least in giving your money to a Buffett, a Gates or a Feeney you have some evidence that they intend to put it to good use.
Only insofar as you're getting into a debate about how morally right it is _compared to billionaires and/or corporations spending the same money_.
(c) I believe in direct wealth distribution (e.g. via a basic income) and that you believe 100m people with $10 will spend that money in a better way than 1 person with $1bn.
I feel like the very existence of billionaires demonstrates that they are a self-selecting pool of abusers and/or criminals running exploits that place their interests above the system they're in. Even the idea of 'the wealthy allocate money better' is ridiculous. Towards what, themselves? It's like saying cancer allocates body resources better, because cancer can get into a position where it conclusively 'wins'.
If you live in a real democratic country, then you have no excuse. YOU* chose that government.
* obviously a generalization, but in the end enough people chose that outcome.
That means that billionaires also act against the interests of the donor class as a matter of course. If they were not the very definition of unaccountable power, you wouldn't see anybody defending them or their typical behaviors.
It is so benignly restricted since it excludes the possibility of charity and government funding can have a positive impact. Instead it is some fight against good and evil.
I don't know what it has to do with Christianity, but you are free to visit a church, maybe they can tell you something about the gospel you linked.
> Two of the billionaires whose philanthropy I most respect, Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, have done a lot of work on criminal justice reform. The organizations they fund determined that many innocent people are languishing in jail for months because they don’t have enough money to pay bail; others are pleading guilty to crimes they didn’t commit because they have to get out of jail in time to get to work or care for their children, even if it gives them a criminal record. They funded a short-term effort to help these people afford bail, and a long-term effort to reform the bail system. One of the charities they donate to, The Bronx Freedom Fund, found that 92% of suspects without bail assistance will plead guilty and get a criminal record. But if given enough bail assistance to make it to trial, over half would have all charges dropped. This is exactly the kind of fighting-mass-incarceration and stopping-the-cycle-of-poverty work everyone says we need, and it works really well.
> If Moskovitz and Tuna’s money instead flowed to the government, would it accomplish the same goal in some kind of more democratic, more publically-guided way? No. It would go to locking these people up, paying for more prosecutors to trick them into pleading guilty, more prison guards to abuse and harass them. The government already spends $100 billion – seven times Tuna and Moskovitz’s combined fortunes – on maintaining the carceral state each year. This utterly dwarfs any trickle of money it spends on undoing the harms of the carceral state, even supposing such a trickle exists.
Many other examples are provided.
I don't think it's what matters necessarily, but I do think that this is why he is receiving praise here and elsewhere. That's a problem, because if we're going to praise him for his sacrifice, we should remind ourselves that his sacrifice is minor compared to other donations due to the nonlinear effect of money.
Now Feeney certainly has had more of an impact, and that's great, but he had that impact because he was fortunate enough to have billions of dollars to give away in the first place. Being lucky is not a valid reason to be praised, I think.
Indeed I don't think Feeney wants to be praised: he just wants to be rid of his wealth in a meaningful way.
Maximizing positive impact should be the goal.
Perhaps someone with 25 to their name better serves the community by keeping it?
We have to assume that in the given scenario the other person needed it more and nobody else was stepping up.
> Why praise sacrifice at all?
You don't even have to praise the concept of sacrificing in general to praise caring enough to help those less fortunate even when helping has a cost. The alternative is for nobody to help except those for whom money no longer has any meaning, ie billionaires, and I don't see Jeff Bezos building homes for the homeless.
> Personal suffering/sacrifice adds no value to the community, and in fact reduces it. Maximizing positive impact should be the goal.
The first sentence is false. Donation is zero-sum in absolute dollar terms, no money is gained or lost, but money _does_ have diminishing utility to the individual, so the raised person can gain more than the lowered person loses. So a person can sacrifice AND maximize positive impact.
For what it's worth, I think the right approach is to eat the billionaires instead of waiting for the person with $25 to sacrifice even further for the person with $5. Clearly eating all of the billionaires would maximize positive impact.
Giving to help someone worse-off than you—ideally—engenders a feeling of gratitude and humility that makes our society a better place. Experiencing a greater sense of gratitude can help more than just money: gratitude helps one keep a positive mental outlook and can carry one through difficult times.
As a man of faith myself, I believe in divine blessings—both during and after this life—for sacrifice and generosity. That’s not my motivation for doing good, but I do believe that sacrifice does make a better community and a happier individual.
Now, as for the limit case of being utterly destitute (e.g. $25 to their name), a wise man once said “it is not requisite that you run faster than you have strength”—looking after yourself is noble, provided you continue to do what you can.
Sacrifice can be a demonstration of love and caring, but is the latter that is important. Sacrifice is just evidence. Would you agree?
Sacrifice exposes what is important to a person—both to external observers as well as the individual in question. A marital relationship—for example—requires immense sacrifice on both spouses’ sides for it to work out. Without sacrifice, affection wanes.
I don’t think sacrifice necessarily equals suffering. Sometimes it can. But based on my experience, when the sacrifice is made willingly and for a good cause, it serves more as a source of joy that I can get outside myself and aid someone in need.
Now, waisted or senseless sacrifice—yes, that doesn’t make much sense. I see a distinction between the two, but that could just be me. Does that make sense?
A fire code inspector might save more lives than a fire fighter, but nobody sells calendars of sexy fire code inspectors, or hands out medals for bravely insisting that tower block's staircase have a sprinkler system fitted.
Of course, an Effective Altruist / utilitarian would say who cares about feelings and medals? After all, altruism by definition isn't seeking medals.
What? How? If you see this extremely locally, like the community being, your country, sure, but I don't think that's apply when you consider the community has being the whole world.
> Perhaps someone with 25 to their name better serves the community by keeping it?
Does it though? We see this as a first world country, where even for the one starving a bit, still get a life much better than a good proportion of the world. That means that keeping that 25$ will help you surely, but would serve much better a few others, if given correctly.
I guess HN is probably a place where disproportionate ego exist in a higher percentage than anywhere else, that many believe that they are the 10x programmer which is worth more than everyone else, but I'm a firm believer that given the same opportunity as me, anyone else could have done the same as me, thus helping many reach the same opportunities as me, will help more than helping myself.
Sadly I'm still a bit selfish and still want a better life for myself. I still do self sacrifice, but it's extremely local.
The forces on a wealthy person giving up almost all of his wealth are also pretty great, but in a different way, when compared to a poor person doing the same.
As #1 in the original list implies, it may be most important to be lifted out of poverty as this is what creates fulfilling civilisation. So one might argue that the poor person should invest what little money they have into their own future first, in a way which will improve their lot, as this will give them the opportunity to help many others (like Feeney did).
Time whitewashes everything. Bill Gates has spent many years doing good work as a philanthropist. I'm not sure this undoes the fact that much of his gain was from blatant cloning, ruthless abuse of monopoly, and substandard products.
But it says a whole lot about Forbes that having at least $2M -- and I'm betting maybe a small apartment and a modest car and possibly even health insurance -- counts as "officially broke" in America.
As long as you convince yourself that the returns to compound interest are higher than the returns to charity at any one point, it's easy to justify just pushing off your donation time to sometime arbitrarily far in the future, and high luxuries can be justified as "self-care" that enhance your own productivity or whatever. Utilitarianism can too easily become perverted to just being self-serving.
On an ascending level, they are as follows:
8. When donations are given grudgingly.
7. When one gives less than he should, but does so cheerfully.
6. When one gives directly to the poor upon being asked.
5. When one gives directly to the poor without being asked.
4. Donations when the recipient is aware of the donor's identity, but the donor still doesn't know the specific identity of the recipient.
3. Donations when the donor is aware to whom the charity is being given, but the recipient is unaware of the source.
2. Giving assistance in such a way that the giver and recipient are unknown to each other. Communal funds, administered by responsible people are also in this category.
1. The highest form of charity is to help sustain a person before they become impoverished by offering a substantial gift in a dignified manner, or by extending a suitable loan, or by helping them find employment or establish themselves in business so as to make it unnecessary for them to become dependent on others.
[0] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/eight-levels-of-charita...
Actually the Prophet Muhammad said a similar thing to what Feeney has said here about wanting to give charity while alive rather than after his death:
> A man came to the Prophet and asked, "O Allah's Apostle! Which charity is the most superior in reward?" He replied, "The charity which you practice while you are healthy, niggardly and afraid of poverty and wish to become wealthy. Do not delay it to the time of approaching death and then say, 'Give so much to such and such, and so much to such and such.' And it has already belonged to such and such (as it is too late)."
They're taxes, period. There's no moral benefit to paying them in the same way there's no moral benefit to obeying traffic laws. It's not a charity as it's not voluntary. It's the cost of playing the game.
Historically, most societies considered maintaining social order as a moral obligation. Guest Rights and Obligations etc seem to disappear as society and governments became more effective. That’s somehow translated into the idea that not paying taxes is somehow perfectly ok. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospitium
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations.
Being poor in Latin America is an exponentially worse experience than being poor in France.
Adding more money wont solve anything.
That’s not right. I think more of people who pay their fair share. Feels like a moral issue for me.
Except that's not true at all. Vast majority of taxes come from the richest. They might pay less percentage wise than me and you, but they pay the most in absolute terms.
>>I think more of people who pay their fair share.
I think more of people who pay more tax, not of those who pay more percentage wise. Ie - someone who makes a million dollars and pays 100k in tax seems to be contributing far more to the system than someone who makes 20k and pays 4k in taxes - even though the second person paid more percentage wise. Which one of these is "a fair share"? Why is one person literally paying 25x as much in taxes? Do they use the roads and hospitals and prisons and the police 25x as much?
I mean, I can see both sides of this argument - but I do dislike when people just go "oh us suckers down here are paying all the taxes" - like, no, we just don't.
By use do you mean "physically interact with" or "reap the social benefits of?" Because for one of those it's a clear yes.
Isn't income tax higher for those that earn more?
In a huge oversimplification, let's say you're in UK and make £100k/year. If you take that as salary, you'll pay 20% tax on around £40k of it, then 40% tax on £50k, with the remaining £10k being tax free. On the other hand, if you open a limited company that makes £100k, well, you're only paying 10% corporation tax on any profits - but of course the way to play this game is to expense everything imaginable under the sun, so ideally you have close to zero profit at the end of the tax year. Yes, the money isn't "yours", it belongs to the company, but you can expense things like your rent, gas, electricity, "work meals" etc. Then take £10k salary from your own company which is within the tax-free allowance. Voila, in the eyes of someone external, you've made £100k but through "clever tricks" paid less than 10% tax on all of it. Of course most people don't realize that isn't not that simple, but things like this lead to very quick judgement.
Further, the often quoted top 1% is hardly the rich in the US, if you compare the income vs taxes paid of the top 0.01% their paying a lower percentage of their income than the average programmer in federal taxes. State taxes have a similar breakdown with property taxes, fuel taxes, etc representing a vastly lower burden for the 0.01% of income earners.
This is further compounded when you consider tax free wealth accumulation of capital gains where taxing in sale mean zero tax on possibly decades of income, or possibly ever. You don’t deduct charitable donations from social security taxes.
PS: As to what the rich receive in taxes. They receive a functioning society which is economically worth far more to themselves than lower income earners.
> They receive a functioning society which is economically worth far more to themselves than lower income earners.
This is not obvious. Historically, the lower classes have very little rights and are subjected to oppressive behaviors from the kings and nobles and other well to do.
Similarly, lumping everyone in the top 40% with the Rich completely hides how little the rich pay by lumping them in with the highest effective tax rate groups.
PS: It gets even crazier than that when you consider Trump for example qualified as having zero income for multiple years.
What if the "favor in return" is a reward after death? For a lot of people of faith, their motivation to donate is often post-resurrection reward... (The Bible is fairly against this attitude though. As Jesus for instance says "But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing" -- https://www.bible.com/bible/59/MAT.6.3.ESV ; and the general message seems to be that everything you have is a gift from God, so you're actually only just giving away what you've been gifted.)
If Bob Johnson donates $20M to a hospital to create the Johnson Cancer Wing, he is in benefiting himself: he is buying his name on a building.
If Bob donates $20M to a local symphony orchestra that he attends, he is benefiting himself by buying better music for him to listen to.
If Bob donates $20M to a candidate for office whose policies would ultimately benefit Bob, well...
I wouldn't call these bribes. But they're less like donations and more like purchases.
Thanks for the clarification.
Even though I disagree with the candidate for office. It may be legal and technically not a bribe, but it does have a really bad stench and is arguably one of the reasons why US politics are so fucked up.
As far as I understand - by donating X amount of money, the most you can possibly get, is an X deduction from your taxes. But the total amount of money spent at the end is still X. You haven't saved anything anywhere. You have sort of re-routed your taxes from the government to someone else.
The only way I can see fraud in this is when people set up a charity owned by themselves, then donate money to it and simultaneously have it as a tax deduction - that's just fraud. But I still don't see what's wrong with simply getting a tax break for donating - it doesn't save you anything, in fact, it's an added hassle at your tax return time(if you live somewhere where you have to do those at all).
For example donating money to keep your local church running is paying for a service without paying taxes for it.
Another thing you can do is donate earmarked money that they will use to buy your products. For example Google donating chromebooks to schools. That is marketing dollars.
Some people believe that taxes are the primary way to implement solidarity among citizens of a state. I believe that they are correct. Charity comes only second, and should in no way impact taxes. Charity, although a beautiful thing, is fundamentally in-egalitarian: it is not benefiting the Republic as a whole, but only a fraction of people who are in need, and typically fulfill certain criteria (e.g., being Christian, living in a given area, etc.). In most cases, charity targets very specific needs and people that are seen by the wealthy as being worthy of their help. It has a fundamental flaw insofar it keeps the power of wealth allocation to the wealthy.
Notwithstanding corruption and aggressive lobbyism, taxes are much more egalitarian and democratic.
There's definitely an argument to be made about whether or not it's better for an individual to choose how to spend their tax dollars rather than a countries people to decide. It's definitely less democratic (I can't see how you can debate this), but I'm not sure the good of it is clear cut... That being said, as the class gap increases, individuals choosing how to spend a large portion of their taxes contributes to a concentration of power in the upper caste.
(btw, I made that description up to try and describe the kinds of states I'm referring to. e.g. the USA once was in that category and no longer is in my view, while many European countries probably are in that category).
EDIT: I'd like to point out, I'm assuming no/little corruption. i.e. the theoretical view of such a state.
Personally, I live in such a state (not the US), that has a safety net, and am happy to contribute via taxation. Not all my fellow citizens are happy to contribute and I accept that. I earn a decent wage and don't jump through hoops to minimise my tax. At the end of the day, people vote for governments that are more or less taxing.
Though probably it is possible to do both. I suspect there are many modern charities that help people become self sufficient where neither the donors not the recipients know who each other are.
Disclaimer: IANAR (I am not a Rabbi)
Jewish law prohibits lending with interest. There are many ways around that but Maimonides here is referring to a basic non-interest loan
5. When one gives directly to the poor without being asked.
Why would anything following that actually be better?
If you need to do this over and over again, and we're talking about just that, it seems like giving to the poor is a pretty good algorithm.
Here's a simple example. A mine closes down. You can start giving the ex-miners money on an ongoing basis to let them keep paying their bills, maybe. Or you could fund training for them to learn a new career.
How do you know they will become poor if you don't fund the training? You don't. Maybe they would have managed to change careers anyway. But chances are you are in fact helping people avoid poverty.
> If you need to do this over and over again, and we're talking about just that,
Ah, maybe this is the disconnect. No, we are precisely _not_ talking about doing this over and over again for any given person.
Or put another way, this is the "give a man a fish vs teach a man to fish" thing. The latter, if it's an option, seems evidently better to me.
This idea is behind a the success of the Earned Income Tax Credit in the USA. Giving people in need a substantial capital injection at a single point in time is a very impactful to people without the means to save.
But also, this is about the fact that if you provide help when a person just starts needing it, it might not take much to get them back to financial stability. If you instead wait until they have been out of the workforce for a while, lost their house, and maybe ended up with a substance-abuse problem as a coping mechanism, a much larger investment will be needed to get back to "normal". And that's not even counting the suffering involved in the interim in the second option.
a) teaching a man to fish is better than giving a man a fish
b) the former is also more dignified for the person receiving help
This applies whether a person is going to become impoverished or is currently poor. And this idea of dignity is strong enough that it outweighs other considerations, such as anonymity on either side (of course, there's the question of whether giving someone a job anonymously is better than doing it with one or both parties' knowledge... and I don't know what Maimonides would have said).
In this light the lower levels also make sense, each progressive level allows the recipient to feel less guilty (the donor is not annoyed that they have to help, or doesn't even need to be asked, etc). The really interesting bit here is that the levels are not about how much the donor sacrifices but how good the recipient feels.
My guess would be that when these levels developed, most giving was within a close knit community.
It is like results matter most (less than the process; big corps will disagree on that)
Now come on, downvote me to hell.
Don't give fish. Give fishing rod, fishing right and fishing classes to people who need it.
Only morons think they are better off in society full of poor oppressed people. In a was a social net system is ultimate selfish move as it lowers crime increases productivity and so on. Instead of living in permanent danger akin to current Rep of South Africa.
Taxes aren't voluntary.
You don't choose how much you owe.
Not all taxes go towards improving people's lives- in the US, many safety nets only kick in once you are impoverished, and can disincentivise work. As an example, the recent coronavirus add-on payments to unemployment often meant people at the lowest levels of opportunity would make more by staying home than if they got a job.
This isnt to say tax funded social nets are bad; most aren't. They certainly shouldn't be confused with charity, though.
Considering how low the Coronavirus add-on payments are, doesn't your point really mean that those at the bottom of the scale, where minimum rates have barely budged in the US - are vastly underpaid on a normal basis?
In fact, the NYT broke this down on a state-by-state basis: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/23/business/econ...
Aside from whether or not the minimum wage should be increased, it does seem to demonstrate easily enough that the stimulus is a perverse incentive.
Bringing this back to the original point I was replying to, it utterly fails the definition of the top level of charity by encouraging people to become dependent on the largess of others.
That's not to say it is therefore a bad thing, but it certainly isn't a reason to call paying taxes the highest level of charity.
On the other hand, I have a firm policy of always downvoting comments on HN that say things like "I know I'm going to get downvoted for posting this", because I think doing that should be strongly disincentivized.
I'm compromising by neither upvoting nor downvoting and leaving this reply.
Apologies for the bile, I‘ll engage in a more civil discussion tone going forward.
Concretely, you can help a lot more people with the same amount of money if you focus your giving on the global poor (ex. Africa), rather than those in the US. One way to do this is https://www.givedirectly.org/
This is also pretty much one of the ways a certain Shi'a Islam community, Dawoodi Bohra, administers loans which they call Qardan Hasana (the diginifed loan).
[0] https://www.thedawoodibohras.com/2020/07/16/qardan-hasana-th...
There are other perspectives on this. Often, the very poor person does not hope he will ever get out of poverty, and that makes it much easier to have a sharing/charitable mindset. Keeping the $25 will help him for a few days, after which he'll be broke again and no better off. Giving it away will have the same end result, albeit a few days earlier - but it will be a charitable act he'll feel good about for life, and may also make a friend.
The person for whom it is most difficult to give is usually the one at the edge of poverty. If he keeps the money, he has a chance he'll escape the cycle of poverty. If he gives it away, he'll never change his station in life. For this somewhat wealthier person, that $25 has a lot more value (As an aside, I'm not sure I would respect him much if he gave it away).
To paraphrase from a popular movie: Put people in a pit with no hope of escape and what you get is fairly boring. But give them a glimmer of hope that they can escape, and then watch how they will destroy one another in their attempts to get out. Charity is generally cheap for those who have nothing: They know they are not losing much when they give it away.
I'm not trying to downplay him in anyway. I'm just saying that $2M in the bank is still an extremely comfortable life so there is not much hardship to be had in giving up everything over that.
Also, as for donating anonymously vs non-anonymously I do it non-anonymously as trying to add social proof that you should donate. The more it appears normal to donate the more people will donate, or so I believe. If I could do that anonymously I would but people read me (my blog or other things), they don't read anon's blog/tweets, whatever.
On the idea of sacrifice as virtuous.
Sacrifice is only compatible with selfishness. This is because for an action to be a sacrifice, there is two criteria in which it must meet.
The first criteria are that the individual must love themselves.
She who has no value of her own life, cannot sacrifice it, just as she could not sacrifice a rock found in a cave. Vice versa, an individual which holds her own life as immensely valuable, is able to sacrifice it for an ideal, however this leads to the second criterion.
The second criteria are that the individual must hold no value in the ideal or cause in which they contribute towards.
This is because if you hold something as valuable, and you give it up for something of equal or greater value, you are not sacrificing, but rather trading.
Each trade has its own currency, and what that is I leave to the reader to investigate, but sacrifice is only possible for the woman that loves herself and does not hold any value in the ideal in which she sacrifices herself for.
Thus, if you do see virtue in sacrifice, it is only possible because of selfishness, and this is problematic.
Every rational choice is made based on some personal values. A person with unselfish personal values can take action on those values. Do you think their action occurs because of their selfishness?
Are all rational actions selfish?
I think that is not a useful way to think.
I disagree, and I pointed out the contradiction of praising sacrifice while disparaging self-interest, when the two are not possible without each other. If you disagree with that, I would be interested in hearing why.
Trades are not all selfish.
I never made the point that trades are inherently selfish, only that in some trades monetary gain is not the only form of currency.
Are all rational actions selfish?
Yes. You state in your second paragraph that "Every rational choice is made based on some personal values". I agree. If you act on your own personal values, this is selfish. And as all rational choice must be in service of personal values, then all rational action is selfish.
I'm very open to the idea that I'm wrong on all of this, but I can not see how, so I thank you for engaging with my comment.
While it is truly selfless, I'm not sure what is __really__ harder; for a person living a multi-billion-dollar lifestyle to change to a million-dollar lifestyle, or someone who is used to living on the penny, to give away most of what they have....
Tamas - given at wrong place/time, to wrong (unworthy) person, without respect/decency, with contempt.
Rajas - given with reluctance, expecting return (either from recipient, or praise)
Sattva - given at right time/place, to right (worthy) person, with humility, without expectation of return.
Note that while others religions mainly dwell on not expecting return and anonymity, Hinduism stresses not expecting return but does not stress anonymity as much as it stresses finding the right patra (bowl) i.e. right recipient.
Donating $100 to a poor person, who also happens to be wicked, and/or will definitely spend it on vices, is actually a bad donation, because it causes more harm to the recipient and society, than good.
Also, timing - a litre of blood donated to a save a life in urgent time, is worth more than a litre of blood spilled in war to gain territory.
Also, place - a donation done in holy land or temple is worth more than a donation from a local philanthropy club.
Also, the reward for donation is gaining goodwill in the heart of Bhagavan (God). And He dishes out goodwill proportional to the 'effort' rather than 'amount' - a $100 wage earner donating $10 is judged the same as $100 million donated by a billionaire.
Source : Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 17, verses 20,21,22
"This is an anglicized form of an Olde Gaelic name O Fiannaidh - composed of the elements 'O' meaning a 'grandson (of)' or 'male descendant' and 'Fianna' - a 'soldier'. The main O Fiannaidh clan was located in the parish of Easkey, Co. Sligo."
And He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites. So He said, “Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all; for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had.”
Luke 21:1-4
If we had taxed him at the rate we have taxed people in the 40's and 50's maybe there would not be such a need for all these "philanthropists" to give "their" money away.
And give me a break, he is NOT broke. I live on 20K a year and I do not even think I am broke. When he is living like St. Francis of Assisi let me know.
>this is unimpressive compared to the poor person who donates $25 to others while starving herself
I absolutely agree and think of this often when I see the philanthropy figures published each year when the top Billionaires have donated <0.2% of their wealth where as there are individuals like this gentleman[1] who donates 80% of his earnings from road side tea stall to educate underprivileged children[1].
[1]https://yourstory.com/socialstory/2019/11/tea-seller-kanpur-...
To whom it may concern:
Spend your money on riotous living – no tax; leave your money to your children – the tax collector gets paid first. That is the message sent by the estate tax. It is a bad message and the estate tax is a bad tax.
The basic argument against the estate tax is moral. It taxes virtue – living frugally and accumulating wealth. It discourages saving and asset accumulation and encourages wasteful spending. It wastes the talent of able people, both those engaged in enforcing the tax and the probably even greater number engaged in devising arrangements to escape the tax.
The income used to accumulate the assets left at death was taxed when it was received; the earnings on the assets were taxed year after year; so, the estate tax is a second or third layer of taxation on the same assets.
The tax raises little direct revenue- partly because the estate planners have been so successful in devising ways to escape the tax. Costs of collection and compliance are high, perhaps of the same order as direct tax receipts. The encouragement of spending reduces national wealth and thereby the flow of aggregate taxable income. These indirect effects mean that eliminating the tax is likely to increase rather than decrease the net revenue yield to the federal government.
The estate tax is justified as a means of reducing the concentration of wealth. However, the truly wealthy and their estate planners avoid the tax. The low yield of the tax is a testament to the ineffectiveness of the tax as a force for reshaping the distribution of wealth.
The primary defense made for the estate tax is that it encourages charity. If so, there are better and less costly ways to encourage charity. Eliminating the estate tax will lead to higher economic growth, which is the most important variable in determining the level of charitable giving.
Death should not be a taxable event. The estate tax should be repealed.
Signed,
Milton Friedman
Positing it as an unalloyed good to be frugal and accumulate wealth (especially at massive scale) is extremely murky at best.
However saving can hurt growth by reducing consumption.
Savings can be thought of as a steady state rate of saving that the economy has adjusted for. Saving is a higher order effect that causes an increase in the savings rate, temporarily depriving the economy of the level of consumption it expects.
If I buy $1mil of MSFT, I didn't contribute a cent to their payroll. I didn't create jobs, or grow anything. I just transferred $1mil to another investor, who will probably use that money to invest in AAPL.
Seems to me a huge portion of investment is just moving money around a relatively closed system akin to sports betting.
If MSFT never issues more stock, what then? Furthermore, helping to determine the value for possible future issuance seems like a very marginal benefit relative to the overall volume of stock trading.
Is there something virtuous about hoarding wealth?
Per https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/05/21/the-net-wo... the combined net worth of every US billionaire was 3.4 trillion in May of this year. Per https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/3-ways-that-the-u-s-popu... there were 331 million Americans in January of this year.
Dividing that out: $10,271.90 per person. Not enough to live on the passive income even in the cheapest parts of the globe.
Why do you think that is the right metric? 3.4T is obviously a vast amount of money.
Probably because it sounds like utopian nonsense.
Assuming you're American I believe you still have people in gov that got rich because of their family starting a pyramid scheme. I wouldn't call that a benefit to society.
Remember those guys in the 90's tanking company stocks and reputations then buying em up under the guise of saving them only to dismantle em and make their profit on the sale of the scraps? yeah they made money removing jobs.
The list goes on and on.
It's not sitting around collecting dust.
I'm not sure where I stand on a wealth tax, but I would always be hesitant to tax money that in theory was already taxed when earned. I could certainly see the idea becoming more acceptable if the importance of community and a traditional, tight-knit family structure continues to erode.
Hopefully we can strike a balance between leaving only your direct descendants better off and leaving everyone in the next generation better off.
> I would always be hesitant to tax money that in theory was already taxed when earned
This is incompatible with having an income tax and any other tax. Although, income tax isn't exactly well loved by economists, so maybe there is something to that.
You're thinking that taxing the wealth of a billionaire is guaranteed upon death. Therefore from your perspective there are two options: taxing the wealth or not taxing the wealth. Except taxation is the exception, not the rule.
If you know your wealth will disappear then you will try to get rid of it before it can disappear. With the estate tax there is a strong incentive to just hand over your wealth to your children before you die or by spending it all on donations so the government can't take it.
There's something virtuous about living beneath your means and ensuring that you can be self-sufficient in your retirement.
There's something virtuous about living beneath your means and ensuring that, at a minimum, you are not a burden to your family, but that ideally you provide them support rather than siphoning support from them. In order to do that, it's almost a given that you will die with money left over. (The alternative being feeding the bloodsuckers who sell annuities.)
One person's "hoarding of wealth" is another person's "natural outcome of frugal living and appropriate planning".
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.
Obviously 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.
That person/family has shown some evidence that they're capable of investing money to generate an outsized return on that investment. I would tend to think they might be able to repeat that effect with the way they choose to reinvest the money, be it for societal value or charitable endeavors. I don't see evidence in balance sheets that governments have that same track record.
Society has made murder, theft, and rape illegal largely because of a fairly broad-based agreement that those are immoral.
Where there isn’t broad agreement on morality, I would prefer to avoid passing laws to regulate behavior and allow choice. (Roe v Wade/abortion being just one crystal clear case of this tension which I believe is generally best resolved in favor of individual freedom. I am free to follow my own morals where they are stricter than the law; I do not force others to follow them.)
Who decides that? The great and scholarly politicians we elect?
Sound familiar?
FWIW, it's not "obvious" that many poor people would decide that rich much pay a lot. That's not the case in US, for example. Sure, there're people who want to "make rich pay", but in general US system is already fair enough [1] (page links to multiple bipartisan sources).
[1]: https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/10/15/the-new-york-times-is...
My understanding is that the point would be to not tax someone leaving a much less significant amount to their children, in the case of either an untimely or expected death, and rather using more targeted methods to prevent the accumulation of billions, like taxing those who accumulate billions.
(I agree with your point if they are upper middle class or even have 10-50 million dollars of wealth). But when you are part of the top 0.1% of the population, there is no way you are living beneat your means to be self sufficient in retirement.
Well it's hard to argue that anyone who has positive wealth is living beyond their means.
Suddenly 99% of the world is no longer discouraged from being fiscally responsible. Do I really care if a billionaire is fiscally irresponsible? Maybe for a single generation. After that, we're good.
"As a result, only about 2,000 estates per year in the US are currently liable for federal estate tax." [2]
The argument that it "discourages living frugally" is just complete nonsense.
[1]: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...
[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_tax_in_the_United_Sta...
What you linked is an Estate Tax (aka death/inheritance tax) which only applies when someone passes wealth on after death. If they decide to give all their money away to charity or otherwise spend it while they're alive it does not apply.
Also, there's nothing uniquely American about considering greed virtuous[0].
I like Milton Friedman too, he had a cool show on PBS, but history isn't going to be good for that guy.
If you are saying an excess supply of credit leads to financial crises, I agree with you. But the federal reserve that intentionally pumps money into the big banks to make credit easy is a far bigger contributor.
I agree that Milton Friedman had his flaws, one of which is this very topic, he never properly connected the federal reserve, money expansion and easy credit to economic instability.
They invest in companies and expect a return! If money was directly redistributed, then the people running and working for those companies might able to keep that value that they have created.
When government provides a service that people don't want, that service can continue indefinitely, especially if the few who benefit can contribute back to the politicians who keep it going. Lockheed Martin and Boeing can contribute to some politicians to make sure that wars continue and they reap back way more than they contributed from the taxpayer who's only option is to vote between two pro-war candidates. Those jobs making bombs for Saudi Arabia to drop on Yemen don't contribute to society, they are a determent to society, yet they continue without end because nobody loses on that investment as long as the taxpayer can be forced to pay for it.
People used to argue that saving (investing) is better for the economy than spending (consumption). That's an argument for a lower capital gains tax. But you could argue the US has gone too far in favor of investors, at the expense of consumption. Presumably more $ in the hands of the 1% = more investment, more $ in the hands of the lower 50% = more consumption.
Anything else is either an affront to democracy, or at best is is morally neutral. E.g. what this guy did is morally neutral, and only good relative to the Carnegie knockoffs trying to launder their reputation.
Someone who has a lot of stored up value has given lots to society without receipt of anything but some electronic digits (yet). Plus if the government's rules were working they'd also have paid at least some taxes on all that stored wealth, leading to additional societal value.
in rational free markets sone does not need to give twice because the contribution to society is in the provision of things people want.
IMO most of the debate is missing that America doesnt have free markets and keeps trying to duct tape around it without fixing the actual bug.
With a better system, we shouldn't have to introduce one-off taxes for "special events" like death because extreme concentrations of wealth should already be heavily and unavoidably taxed--passing wealth to one's children (or anyone else... in any other country) shouldn't make a difference one way or the other.
Estate taxes stir up an irrelevant debate about the morality of inheritance, and puts the government in the role of deciding this moral question for everyone, when that debate isn't necessary and doesn't really matter.
All that really matters is 1 - how much we need to fund the prerequisites for a modern and decent civilization (which includes things like basic income, healthcare for all, housing for all, education for all, etc., imho), and 2 - what is the most progressive, efficient, and sustainable way to raise this money.
I highly doubt the answer to #2 is an estate tax.
Unfortunately, government is already the most extreme concentration of wealth in the history of mankind, spending $8 trillion dollars a year in the USA alone, of which $1 trillion (that's 1,000 billionaire fortunes, or bankrupting Jeff Bezos 5x over, every year) goes straight to the military.
And it's why I want government to use its monopoly on violence to stick to keeping the peace, and create an environment where actual companies can compete without violence.
Because when the men with bombs also own the means of production, they do whatever they want, and you get mountains of skulls.
Local roads, for example. You can have companies compete for contracts to perform the work, but ultimately the asset needs to be owned by the people, otherwise you inevitably get rent-seeking behaviour—which effectively replaces an elected Government with dozens of smaller unelected ones. Same goes for water, sewerage, and electricity distribution.
Public healthcare service delivery is another example. You can have companies compete for invention, manufacturing and certain boutique services, but for dealing with measles and broken arms, the profit motive does a hilariously poor job. Wealthy people get the absolute best service on this planet; poor people seem to get the most expensive service on this planet. (Yes, that's after factoring in the "cost" paid through taxes.)
Society works best when we all have healthy bodies, clean water and a decent education. Whether we all make good use of these resources is entirely up to the individual—Governments shouldn't mandate equality of outcome—but a functioning society is one where everyone has the opportunity to get a good education and not be a walking disease vector.
At the wealth levels at which the estate tax applies, a fair amount of luck has to factor in. Having been in the right place at the right time. That has little to do with morality because many other people had the same behaviors but never got lucky. The estate tax is more a tax on luck than it is on hard work and frugality.
Very arguable claims there - more “trickle down” economics I guess. The main argument against the estate tax made by this letter is not “moral” as it claims, it is that few actually pay the estate tax - so how about we close those loopholes?
Only insofar as you believe taxation to be a moral commentary. If one thinks taxation is punishment for a decision, then I can see why one might see it this way.
I don't agree, though. Taxation is reinvestment into the society that makes the usage of that tool–money–possible in the first place. I think it's morally wrong to sequester a social tool in the hands of a few people who never made the investment to get that return in the first place, i.e. children of wealthy parents. I think it's morally wrong for anyone to get to pick and choose who will start out having already won the race. This is different from me being a bad business owner and people choosing not to do business with me.
Should parents be able to spend their earned money on their childrens' upbringing? Of course. If a wealthy parent dies should they be able to leave money behind for their children to have a decent shot at life? Absolutely. Does that require millions or billions of dollars to be hoarded, unused, passed from hand to hand, contributing to a skewed money supply that forces the fed to print more, play with interest rates etc to try to keep the system stable? No, I think there's a reasonable amount that the government can request returned.
Now, the _amount_ of tax is certainly debatable. But to take the extremist position of repealing the tax altogether is absurd IMO.
I would actually argue the government has a pretty bad track record when it comes to creating good incentives and "good" disincentives, so usually a better approach would be to try hard and avoid creating incentives or disincentives at all. Proponents of things like VAT, or other very broad, general, and hard to avoid taxes usually see it in those terms.
Moral or not it is a deterrent
I think you got cause and effect mixed up. Every dollar that the fed is printing is being hoarded because the fed decided to only give dollars to people that hoard money.
If a person lives on a million a year, but accumulates a billion, do they become more virtuous if they accumulate a second billion?
Ah, yes, such a shame that the only way to spend a fortune is on caviar and jetskis.
This is a purposefully obtuse take. We have specific tax structures to incentivize charitable giving, building businesses, creating things to benefit others.
If you have the means, there’s nothing moral about living frugally. Spending money creates jobs and strengthens the economy.
A view toward growing the economy would prefer the riotous living, because it moves more money around. Note that in almost any other context, Friedman is concerned with impediments to economic activity. Yet here, we are led to believe that high levels of economic activity are bad or immoral for some reason?
And of course "riotous living" throws off all sorts of tax revenue in addition to revenue and profits. And since such tax revenue is realized earlier than the death tax, it is more efficient.
The irony of this letter is that Friedman gets it right--the death tax exists to encourage the expenditure of wealth during life--but somehow thinks that is a bad thing.
This is an ad hominem argument.
This wealth would be more efficiently allocated by the innovators of new generations. It is true that the economy isn't a zero sum game, but we can't pretend that so much new pie is created each generation that dynasties hogging the majority doesn't preclude new, more innovative money, from establishing the positions they might otherwise we allowed to, for the benefit of all participants in the economy. The velocity of money matters, and allowing dynasties to guard their wealth indefinitely is bad for everyone.
This also pretends that capital confers no significant power. The reality is that the inheritors of the ultra rich will also inherit their ability to influence society. While not ideal that the ultra rich themselves have this ability to the extent that they do, to be able confer it on an almost arbitrary set of individuals is additionally hazardous, as they have not set themselves apart from other individuals on any meritorious basis.
Wasteful spending should also be taxed. There is no dichotomy. Yes please, put tax on carbon, on plastic, on all the other things that are bad for society. Ideally the most wasteful spenders should be taxed the most - the ten-millionth dollar someone spends on a carbon-emitting activity should be taxed at 90%.
The letter is BS with the first line. It makes it sound like the options are giving money to your kids or getting drunk. But that makes no sense for the range of money we’re talking about.
Jeff Bezos could throw a $10 million party every night for a year and his net worth would go down 2%.
“If I leave this hundred billion dollars to my kids, the government will take a portion. Better to spend it on hookers and blow instead!”
That makes about zero sense, so I don’t at all believe that’s the message the estate tax is sending or it would even matter if it was. The thing that keeps billionaires from partying isn’t the price tag.
I found the problem.
If everyone lived virtuously, then society wouldn't need laws or taxes. Unfortunately, humans are inconsistently virtuous, so we use laws and taxes to help our society function well.
His argument is hilarious:
"We're going to try and avoid it anyway, so you might as well not try to collect it."
I'm sorry, but I'm not necessarily going to trust someone who has a vested interest in the removal of something that its existence was pointless in the first place. If it truly is meaningless, then why bother?
Another good question is why should a person's accumulated wealth go to that person's heirs upon their death? Those people did nothing themselves to earn that wealth. It is only through the accident of birth they were selected. They completely ignore that. It is assumed that passing their wealth down is natural and right and that any other outcome needs defense.
If that money changed hands via employment or purchase of goods and services, it would have been taxed, even if the exchange was between parent and child. Why is an exchange upon death special?
The idea that you think needs to be defended - inheritance - lies near the root of Western mores. It is fine to question it, but it is the sort of thing that one cannot refute without a very, very strong argument.
I have private property rights over my money and house during my life and it’s my choice to consume during my life or live more frugally and pass that property to people I love. When I give my kids money for school or give them dinner, that value is not taxed additionally because it benefits them and not just me.
> "As a result, only about 2,000 estates per year in the US are currently liable for federal estate tax." [2]
[1]: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...
[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_tax_in_the_United_Sta...
The primary way inheritances concentrate wealth is through the "firstborn son rule" where the first son simply receives all of the wealth. If you were to split the wealth among the children it would disappear within a few generations. So simplify the whole ordeal by codifying that no single person may inherit more than 50% of the wealth of the deceased. If son and daughter receive half the wealth of their parents they are unlikely to collaborate for the sake of maintaining generational wealth. Even if the son kills the daughter he will only receive 75% of the wealth of his father.
No liquidation is necessary and therefore it is easy to implement. Paying taxes on inheriting a family business is far more difficult than simply splitting ownership among the living who are still working in that business.
What about amassing as much stuff as possible selling controlled substances and brokering crime?
If you want society completely out of your business, you're going to have a hard time.
They are treated fundamentally different in law, economics, and philosophy.
And taxation is also not the only parallel one could draw. For example, limits on the usage of you property is also highly regulated in various ways. Usage and ownership are very closely related.
There are tons of people who want exactly what you find so abhorrent.
For all you know I am a libertarian making the argument for a libertarian paradise.
Plenty of countries don't have an inheritance tax and aren't libertarian in the least.
The same objective (or subjective, take your pick) morality that discourages robbery-murder can effortlessly extend to the distribution of wealth in society. An objective moralist once said: "Render unto Caesar...". A subjective moralist could say: "whatever minimizes human suffering and maximizes human opportunities" which leaves policy-makers with a broad canvas.
Personally I don't think this is a particularly moral issue, except near the extremes; but even if it were, the answer isn't what you're hoping for.
How do you go from "it's no ones business how much wealth I accumulate or give to my children" to "anarchy"?
That's not what the OP said at all.
If we live in a free society then we should be free to do what we want to do, because otherwise we wouldn't live in a free society.
Any argument that justifies itself merely with "because freedom" can be used to argue for complete anarchy. After all, "rule" of any sort inherently implies restrictions on freedom. And if restrictions on freedom are inherently bad, then "rule" of any sort must be bad by definition.
> That or we stop pretending we live in a free society.
This is exactly what we should do. There is no such thing as complete freedom. All freedoms come at the price of restricting some other freedom.
yes, let's do that. we don't - there has never been such thing as a free society, and we don't live in one now. all society has rules - without rules, it's not a society anymore. Let's once and for all take away this absurd escape-hatch where one can avoid defending an idea on it's merits by claiming it restricts their freedom.
If we truly lived in a free society, we wouldn't have estate law at all - wheover kills you should simply claim all your property.
The government is there, supposedly, for the benefit of a healthy society, not to enforce some capitalists' idea of what they think is fair. It is the same reason why the rules change for a company when it becomes a monopoly (there is that word again).
"I want society out of my business."
This sounds like the libertarian mindset that takes for granted all the benefits that come from being a business operating in a healthy society.
Although worker productivity has gone up tremendously over the past 40 years, nearly all of the incremental gains in wealth has accrued to a small fraction of the population. Yet that form of unfairness doesn't ruffle the people who think taxation is theft.
The problem for me is not even that people amass such large amounts of money (do I think we should have some higher tax brackets on capital gains, sure) but that generational wealth creates power and economic structures which hurt the rest of us and ultimately impinges many more peoples’ freedom
On the other hand, Bezos, a single person, has control of a $1.58T company and you are totally okay with it?
I don't know what the solution is, but it seems to me that the estate tax system is overly complex, too open to abuse, and needs to be simplified. It is unfortunately intertwined with Trust laws, Probate laws, Income tax laws, international tax treaties, etc. As far as I can tell, the estate tax exists only because of the "stepped up cost basis" feature in the US tax code, where all capital gains is zeroed out upon death by increasing the cost basis of the asset to the current market value. (Does any other country have this?)
I think it would be simpler to eliminate Stepped Up Cost Basis, and replace the estate tax with something like a "deemed disposition" tax, where the capital gains tax is paid upon death (above a certain exemption amount, say $5M/couple), or paid upon transfer to another non-pass-through legal entity (e.g. an irrevocable trust). Oh, we should also eliminate the long-term capital gains tax rate, and all capital gains should be taxed at the same rate as earned income. I think this would eliminate the "carried interest" loophole. Oh, and we should eliminate Dynasty Trusts, which can last as long as 365 years. It's hard to see how allowing a Trust to last 365 years is good public policy. Oh, and so many other loopholes need to be closed.
Unfortunately, I don't think there is much political will to tackle these issues. Estate tax law is a very obscure part of the tax code. Very few people care, except for the small number of ultra wealthy people and their lawyers who are taking full advantage of the current system.
I'm curious what the statistics are for a family remaining wealth over a long period of time.
Even with wealth evenly split between each generations kids, given a growth of just 4% it might end up with each generation getting a greater amount of wealth still.
In the past large familes prevented this, but if the average extremely wealthy person only averages 2 kids. The dilution through children just doesn't occur.
I don't have statistics, but a fun factoid is that the Grosvenor family, who own many properties in the west end of London, were originally granted those properties because the grantee was the grand-nephew of William the Conqueror. So wealth can last a long time. For those families who are luckiest and canniest, the only major threat is social breakdown as a result of revolution or being conquered.
> Even with wealth evenly split between each generations kids
This is why primogeniture and entailments were invented. They were necessary to maintain dynastic wealth. In cultures where partible inheritance is more common, such as the US, dynastic wealth has a much shorter half-life.
The author shows numerous examples but one of the most striking for English-speakers is that the Norman conquerors of 1086 are still, 31 generations later, over-represented at places like Oxford and Cambridge admissions and upper class probate court records.
But you can also flip that around: Let's say your dad opened a Facebook, but then dies, why should you get $98 billion? You didn't do anything. Why is that now yours in the first place?
Because we live in a system which rewards good genes, and that is a very good thing. By instituting a generational wealth tax you will be killing the human desire for wealth on a generational timescale.
Where does the money go? To other people i assume, you have now created a system where the evolutionary incentive is to leech from the system contributing as little as you can get away with. We live in such a system today but at-least there are some benefits to contributing more, those benefits are inherently that you can turn wealth into more children and transfer that wealth to them.
Also, is this really your main motivation if you're Jeff Bezos? To make even more money? Doesn't the money stop mattering after the first 100 million and you're simply staying at Amazon because that's what you actually like doing? (Including having influence, shaping the future of commerce, etc etc)
I'ts not that simple, we are talking about evolutionary timescales here. It's very easy to see that if we live in a universe where accumulating wealth will not benefit your descendants, then accumulating wealth is an energy and time sink which will be selected against.
As for the second point i have no idea what Bezoz's motivations are.
I agree we should strive for a system which incentivises empathy, compassion, generosity and contentment.
Billionares do not have more kids but wealthy people have the capacity to have more healthy offspring, irregardless if they actually do.
I have said nothing about poisoning the gene pool, i am not a eugenicist and far from it. But every system has free-riders (leeches) as game theory predicts, we should try to counteract this behaviour not reward it.
They would have to give up their US citizenship. Financial implications aside, few are willing to go that far. The financial implications are also large. You have to pay an exit tax, which would be substantial. And giving up US citizenship to avoid taxes is illegal, so there's that too...
What I find sickening is people trying to meddle in other people's pockets.
Really? You have no problem one person owning so much money? That's around 30$ for _every_ person on the planet, can you even wrap your head around that? There's no reason why a single person should ever own this sort of wealth, none at all.
This is the kind of concern that isn't a problem right now, but will be one day. And it will happen in the blink of an eye.
Seems like that was by design.
It is. Philanthropy exists to launder the reputations of the rich, on the one hand, and are paternalistic on the other. The only things that get funding are things that can attract the attention of our "betters." If we had taxed them on the front end to the point they couldn't become billionaires in the first place then people in general (through democracy) can decide what causes are valuable. And with the added bonus that the negative effects of they got to be billionaires don't cause more problems (Feeney worked in private equity. PE are strip & sell firms)
I'm willing to argue that it is in fact possible to become a billionaire though honest earnings.
but, if that's all morality is, pretty pointless
Sorry, I’m not able to parse this sentence. Could you please rephrase?
I'm not sure how accurate of a representation this is, but it certainly appears to work that way in some places. Realtors are a really good example of this, and of course, Butler's "War is a Racket" is a classic regarding the US military-industrial complex.
Cable originally started because people in valleys of PA and the like could not get antenna reception. So the CATV companies put up lines and started selling the service.
Sure, they were filling a 'need'. But I think when we look back at how the CATV Industry itself punishes 'piracy' there is more than a little irony. The only reason they started paying was because it was codified into law.
Also, the CATV Industry's general union-busting structure; lots of linework invovles 2-3 layers of contractor companies. By doing so, they help prevent unionizaiton (which is a thing in the Phone line side of things, their workers tend to get paid more and be happier in my experience) and also 'absolve' themselves of much of the responsibility when something goes wrong (especially in the contractor industry, that 'last layer' may not be around in 1-2 years.)
Aye, there's the rub. The greatest evils are when the billionaires team up with the government. Shifting money from the villains with money to the villains in the legislature doesn't solve that problem, and the villains in the legislature already spend close to half the GDP.
As a datapoint, "Fifty-five percent of Harvard College students receive need-based scholarship aid, and the average grant this year is more than $53,000." (https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=harvard...)
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/29/against-against-billio...
> I feel this is one of your lesser thought out pieces. I mean false equivalencies are rampant in it.
but... if we must, a few hard counterpoints:
> 1. Is criticizing billionaire philanthropy a good way to protest billionaires having too much power in society?
This point misrepresents how journalism & counter-criticism occur.
People criticize billionaires. Full stop. Criticism of their philanthropy is not selective: it's a criticism of the billionaire when they receive press due to their philanthropy, not because its philanthropy. Billionaires don't receive wide-reaching press because of their new yachts because those articles are only of interest to niche audiences, whereas philanthropy is promoted more broadly. THAT's the only reason it receives more criticism.
> 2. If attacks on billionaire philanthropy decrease billionaires’ donations, is that acceptable collateral damage in the fight against inequality?
This is cross-referencing the first point and doesn't hold water once the first point is debunked: the "attacks" on billionaire philanthropy are directed at billionaires because they receive positive press, not because they are philanthropic. This question only makes sense if you believe non-philanthropic billionaires should not be criticised for being billionaires.
> 3. Do billionaires really get negative reactions from donating? Didn’t I hear that they get fawning praise and total absence of skepticism?
(a) the question is bizarrely worded and I don't understand how any answer to this question would either confirm or debunk... anything.
(b) the author's "research" has sample sizes of 25 (Twitter search) and 10 (Google search) respectively. i.e. is basically junk.
> 4. Is it a problem that billionaire philanthropy is unaccountable to public democratic institutions? Should we make billionaires pay that money as taxes instead, so the public can decide how it gets spent?
This is again a poorly worded question but the content of the "answer" essentially amounts to a (rightful) critique of the current US government, and compares it to 3 cherry-picked examples of philanthropy that the author believes were better than what the current government would do.
Moving past the obvious point that... dear god what a low bar that is... as a general simple rebuttal: criticism of billionaire philanthropy generally centres around the fact that their philanthropy does less good than the negative impacts of their existence as billionaires. These negative impacts are absolutely the reason for the current state of the US government.
Arguing that billionaire philanthropy is inherently better than functioning democratic government in general is obvious nonsense.
> 5. Those are some emotionally salient examples, but doesn’t the government also do a lot of good things?
Same point as 4
> 6. The point of democracy isn’t that it’s always right, the point is that it respects the popular will. Regardless of whether the popular will is good or bad, don’t powerful private foundations violate it?
I mean this is slightly different but it's essentially 3 Qs on the same thing...
> 7. Shouldn’t people who disagree with the government’s priorities fight to change the government, not go off and do their own thing?
4 Qs on the same thing. This is a crafty technique to seem like you have more bullet points than you really do.
> 8. Is billionaire philanthropy getting too powerful? Should we be terrified by the share of resources now controlled by unaccountable charitable foundations?
We're now wandering off-topic from the original "should we criticise billionaires" to "is billionaire philanthropy dangerous in theory", and starts with the argument of whether they wield too much power. For this, they use their total philanthropy spend as the operating metric, rather than the actual resources at their disposal. Total net worth of US billionaires rivals the federal budget, and exceeds the mandatory spend. The wealth of just one of those billionaires is almost 1/16th of the federal budget and fast increasing.
---
At this point the list of bullet points verges off into the land of vague discussion and is no longer a set of "counterpoints" and just a rambling conversation.
This author sure can write a lot, but none of the points seem to land.
And Scott's point is that non-selective criticism is dumb. If you don't want your dog to chew the carpet, criticizing your dog, full stop, as you say, is a terrible strategy.
If you're opposed to dogs or people richer than you in principle, then you can make that claim too I guess. But you won't get much sympathy if you do it when they're doing their most praiseworthy things.
Just out of curiosity, do you just think that billionaires are evil, or does that also extend to people in rich countries making six figure salaries in tech, who are also ridiculously richer than most of the rest of the world?
That's a reasonable point to make, but... I don't think I saw Scott making it. Are you sure that was Scott's point, or is it yours?
> criticizing your dog, full stop, as you say, is a terrible strategy
I guess this depends on our definition of "criticising" and it's intent. If you're sitting at home, shouting at your dog, I'm not sure that's particularly productive. If you're having a conversation with a peer, and expressing your frustration at your dog chewing carpet, you may perhaps combine forces to arrive at some solutions to your carpet problems.
You can argue that perhaps discussing the plight of billionaires amongst peers (or even random folk on the internet) is equivalent to sitting at home shouting at your dog, but I think that's a debate for a different day.
Point being: I doubt many "criticising" the billionaires/dogs are expecting them to listen. They're discussing problems (and potential solutions?) in a more general sense by criticising a system/event that exists/occurs.
> do you just think that billionaires are evil
Are you proposing that dogs chewing carpets are evil? I presume not, but I presume you still want to save your carpet.
Billionaires are not necessarily "evil" in intent in the absolute sense. What I am proposing is that their existence is a problem needing solving in and of itself.
The existence of billionaires (or anyone who holds more economic resources than are needed to be content... I think that stands somewhere around the ~$150k mark according to some studies... certainly far short of whatever number of millions/pa leads to billion-level assets) necessitates that those resources have been withheld from someone who has less than are needed to be content (in many cases, to survive).
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It may be worth noting that Feeney has gone about solving this exact problem (the existence of billionaires), albeit in a very individual way (making 1 billionaire no longer a non-billionaire). Which is quite an remarkable and laudable achievement, even if that billionaire was himself.
(and that's before we get into the very far-reaching, and—in my own experience—enormously positive impact, of his philanthropy)
Which government exactly is it that you think is excellent at solving societal problems and spending taxes efficiently?
[edit]
The top individual income tax rate is 22 percent, and the top corporate tax rate is 17 percent. The overall tax burden equals 14.1 percent of total domestic income[1].
Depending on how much you value each one depends on the answer you get.
I thought for certain the level of hate the left has for the current federal regime would make my constant refrain of "do we really think the government will do a better job?[1]" finally make sense. However, the empirical fact that government agencies will be directed by those you don't like doesn't seem to deter people from wanting to increase the role of those agencies.
1: To be clear: I'm not an anarcho-libertarian; I think the answer to this question can very often be "yes" but living in coastal California, I too often seem to be surrounded by people who think getting the government involved is the only reasonable solution to any problem. Conversely there is a very large minority of the US right that seems to think that bombs, guns and walls is the only time the answer is "yes"
Like lobbying their representatives to allow for loopholes and credits to allow them to keep their money and avoid the taxes that the lesser incomes must pay
People’s ability to agree where money should be given isn’t great. Worse so when the people who are giving the most have less say in where it goes.
In my experience, most appeals like the above tend to be driven by the idea that they would make better decisions than the philanthropist.
Whats a better model for deciding the distribution of political power, a democratic one, or a dictatorial one?
At the very least I don't think its an unreasonable position to believe that democracy makes more sense.
Unless you're trying to do things that pretty much nobody finds unsavory (e.g. funding education) money by itself doesn't go very far.
If democracy gets involved in that process, suddenly there's only an obstruction to say "No...you can't spend it on that." It's just there to introduce a form of majority control.
Conveniently, we can already see what causes we think are valuable, because the US government already spends about 40% of the entire GDP, $8 trillion per year.
Apparently we've decided that Donald J. Trump should manage it, and that $1 trillion per year should go to the defense industry (that's 600 Chuck Feeneys), with another $500B (300 Feeneys) to interest on the national debt.
(*edit: assuming 1 Feeney = $1.5B)
Maybe HackerNews needs to read some Adam Smith.
Chuck Feeney didn't work in PE, and he wasn't one of those creatures you despise. He invented Duty Free Shopping in WWII, selling booze, smokes and cars to returning servicemen. He pioneered airport shopping, doing all the hard, clever work himself, and spent the bulk of his life giving the billions earned to good causes anonymously.
Why? He didn't care about money or reputation. He wanted to make the world a better place.
Wikipedia Bio of Chuck Feeney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Feeney
Biography of Chuck Feeney https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2842145-the-billionaire-...
> Philanthropy exists to launder the reputations of the rich
It can be used that way, but Chuck Feeney didn't need or want that. That's why he gave anonymously right up until international money laundering regulations post 9/11 forced him to reveal his identity.
Yup. Even Adam Smith talked about this, it helps propel the capitalist system.
If you let billionaires make the choices then sure you get some like Feeney/Gates/Buffett but you get Koch brothers.
Government could theoretically do a more equitable job but only if social programs are run competently. Think about the leadership of EPA and HUD.
I for one don't have time in my life to be an expert on running an economy, creating an immigration policy, balancing the environmental and societal needs etc. I specialize in my area of expertise and use that money to employ others who specialize in their areas, and that includes government.
Perfect the enemy of good, etc, etc. What I solved is the problem of relying on a potentially authoritarian government which is what was brought up, rather than all possible problems. What I suggest would be better, not perfect.
> I for one don't have time in my life to be an expert on running an economy, creating an immigration policy, balancing the environmental and societal needs etc.
That's the point of liquid democracy. You delegate but reserve the right to override your delegate if needed.
You just disagree with the things the Kochs choose to fund. You could have easily said Murdoch instead (or Bloomberg if you wanted to pick someone who's hate crosses party lines).
Were the government funding the causes these billionaires fund the causes would still be controversial. We just wouldn't have a single person to have the lion's share of the blame.
Correct. Then we'd only have the electorate i.e ourselves to blame.
Sure, and I'm also not a fan of Jeffrey Dahmer's taste in fine dining, but I don't think it is reasonable to chalk that up to a mere difference of appetite.
> Were the government funding the causes these billionaires fund the causes would still be controversial.
Were the government funding those causes we could stop funding them because they are horrible and people hate them.
But it doesn't. Regardless of what we say here, the majority of the US wants a big military, and wants hard immigration controls.
Then it becomes a different argument: should we tax the wealthy more if it means the money will go to government initiatives that the majority seems to want, even though a minority of us believe that those things are largely bad for society and the world, and represent short-term thinking that is a result of bad risk assessment? Essentially, should we let the use of this money be directed by the will of the people (rather than a few ultra-rich people) even if we believe the will of the people is often wrong?
I don't have great answers to this. As another commenter mentioned, the billionaire-philanthropist system is good when we have people like Feeney, but fails when we have people like the Kochs. Do we have a net excess of Feeneys in the world, or Kochs? And even if we have the former, is that still a good thing; could we get more fair or equitable outcomes if we did let electorate decide how to allocate these funds? And even if we couldn't, is it antithetical to democratic values to go against the will of the people, even if the people are wrong? And if so, does that matter? I tend to think it does, but I can see the argument for both sides.
Support for the War in Iraq was 39% in 2004, 30% in 2006, 34% in 2007, etc. Despite massive PR campaigns on the part of politicians and the natural tendency to ("support the troops"), our various military adventures are actually not very popular among average Americans.
But they are very very popular among rich members of the military-industrial complex, and those people have enough money to win elections and buy politicians, so here we are.
> Do we have a net excess of Feeneys in the world, or Kochs?
Kochs, absolutely, unequivocally. There is no billionaire on Earth who could fix all of the damage caused to the environment by the Koch brothers, any more than a sufficiently well-intentioned German Chancellor could undo the damage Hitler caused.
This is one of the fundamental asymmetries of life: it is easier to destroy than build, easier to harm than heal. With a cheap kitchen knife and a fraction of a Newton of force, you can sever someone's head. Can you as easily put it back?
This is, I think, the core reason why inequality is dangerous. Because when you concentrate power in fewer people, the variance of the resulting outcomes increases. And if you increase that variance, the bad outcomes get worse more than the good outcomes get better.
Say what you will about hunter-gatherer societies, but they never dropped a nuclear bomb, caused a Holocaust, or filled the atmosphere with lead fumes. We obviously shouldn't dial inequality back to pre-industrial levels, but the existence of billionaires is essentially playing global-scale random wildcards in the game of life.
Biography from 2013: https://www.powells.com/book/billionaire-who-wasnt-how-chuck...
The last time he was reported as giving away "the last of his fortune", in the NY Times, 2017: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/nyregion/james-bond-of-ph...
NY Times at $1B left in 2014: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/01/your-money/a-billion-to-s...
At $1.5B left: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/nyregion/a-billionaire-ph...
NYT on his secrecy in 2007: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/26/nyregion/26about.html
Series when he was outed in 1997 while trying to remain anonymous: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/02/business/lone-rangers-of-..., https://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/26/weekinreview/they-gave-mi..., https://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/24/nyregion/quiet-man-with-b..., https://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/23/nyregion/a-man-who-repaid..., https://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/23/nyregion/he-gave-away-600..., https://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/23/nyregion/giving-a-fortune...
My takeaway from this story is to spend my time on things that matter to me. It's a reminder that our news sources are really just another form of entertainment, which is not something that can give your life meaning or a sense of accomplishment.
Feeney donated some half a billion dollars to medical research in Brisbane, Australia, guided by an old friend from his young days in Hong Kong, the tennis player Ken Fletcher.
When Fletcher told former Brisbane Lord Mayor Jim Soorley he had a mate with millions to give away to good causes, nobody in Brisbane would take him seriously. It forced Feeney to come out with his philanthropy, and whilst he never cultivated a public profile, Feeney did at least speak in public on a few occasions when dedicating medical research centres that were built with his donations in Brisbane.
While weighing journalist's actions you might want to consider that Chuck Feeney wanted to remain completely anonymous and the media - the members of the media acting in accordance with your desires specifically - made that impossible.
(that some of us have known his name for many years might also indicate that this has never come to my attention is not a meaningful measure of the media's performance - perhaps it's a measure of your use of media)
By contrast, charities and non-profits get this halo of being socially beneficial, even though they're often some of the most wasteful institutions of all. Cornell gets a billion dollars from this guy, as if they didn't get enough money from the racket that is higher education in the US.
That's not true. You can go and pay people a 50 million dollars to make a yacht for you. Or you can pay that 50 million to other group of people to build housing for the poor. In both cases, it provides jobs and puts food on the table of the people you employed. But, the yacht is just a toy for you, while housing will be life-changing for hundreds of families.
If instead you hired some of these poor people to build something nice for you, they wouldn't be so poor anymore. They could even afford decent housing, if the government didn't prevent that from happening with zoning laws and various other regulations.
But their labor isn't worth that much, and no one would ever pay the poor that much when they could pay someone else less, or undocumented immigrants almost nothing under the table. "Pay the poor enough not to be poor anymore" is not how capitalism works.
Jeff Bezos could give every Amazon employee $100,000 and still be the richest man in the world. He could also afford to pay every employee far more in wages than he does, and Amazon would still make money hand over fist. As companies go, Amazon is one of the more laissez-faire, so it's not as if he wants to, but his hands are tied by overburdensome regulations. He doesn't, because why should he? Why not spend a few million dollars on a ten-thousand year clock instead?
Many people living in low income housing are already employed, and the market has already decided the value of their labor is worth just enough to scrape by with government assistance, and no more. Depending on the free market or the magnanimous (and mostly nonexistent) charity of the capital class to lift up the poor doesn't work.
You digress.
> Jeff Bezos could give every Amazon employee $100,000 and still be the richest man in the world.
Jeff Bezos doesn't have that much cash. I guess he could award that much in stock though. True enough.
> He could also afford to pay every employee far more in wages than he does, and Amazon would still make money hand over fist.
Wrong enough. Amazon is already spending most of its income in the areas where it employs most people. Turns out shipping cheap junk for free across the globe isn't that profitable. That business is cross-subsidized by other more profitable areas like AWS.
If Amazon were to use those remaining profits and put them into fulfillment workers' salaries, the company would be pointless from an investment perspective, the stock price would tank, the company would have trouble raising capital, and Jeff Bezos wouldn't be the richest man in the world.
It's similar for other companies like Wal-Mart that work on razor thin margins but employ a lot of people. Sure, all of these people earn a low income, but at the same time they benefit from low prices.
> Many people living in low income housing are already employed, and the market has already decided the value of their labor is worth just enough to scrape by with government assistance, and no more.
Sure, but "the market" is society as a whole, not just some billionaires. Billionaires aren't forcing down their wages, it's the ordinary people consuming their labor, who only buy at the lowest price.
The least productive people are always going to be poor in relative terms. In absolute terms, the salary of an Amazon warehouse worker puts you close to the global 1%.
You may believe the narrative that all these profits go into the pockets of a few rich people, and if only those people left some of that money on the table, everybody would be way better off, and it's all capitalism's fault. It just doesn't add up. Capitalism doesn't tolerate high profit margins over an extended period of time, it drives prices down for everybody, which benefits those the most who don't have a lot of income in the first place.
Biography of Chuck Feeney https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2842145-the-billionaire-...
For a great read, and to get a sense of who Chuck Feeney really is, track down a copy of Hugh Lunn's book The Great Fletch, the story of Chuck's mate Ken Fletcher from his Hong Kong days.
https://www.abc.net.au/7.30/the-great-fletch-story-of-a-tenn...
[0]https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/finance/ucsf-childrens-ho...
[1]https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2015/02/123366/ucsf-receives-100m-...
Edit: I'm more than fine with it because it makes Zuckerberg seem less special.
But sure, if you put out a call for solicitiations when you announced you were giving it all away, you probably also need a big announcement when you're done or you'll be dealing with development officers all day every day.
Feeney seems like an awesome guy but sadly in 100 years nobody will know his name!
If there actually two general hospitals, do what Toronto East General Hospital did, subdivide by location.
Recognizing what’s important to you and knowing that you have it is what’s actually valuable.
Basic numbers and letters. Building 4, Building C, Building 97, Building Z, etc.
I'm 99.9999999% certain that no one cares about their name when they're dead.
Given how much weight most folks put in defining themselves through other people...
Basically, the uber rich want to be seen as something more than just money. Guys like Anschutz and whatnot. There seems to be a pattern where they get a new shiny glass and steel building with a bunch of sick kids in it, and then they put the wife's name, an ampersand, his name, and the last name in big 3-D letters on the side. Likely it's a tax writeoff.
Also, not to be too cynical, but it's not a bad thing overall. The money could be sitting in the Caymans afterall.
That doesn't make any sense. They pay for that art, and the money goes to the people that owned the art previously. Either they stick it into an account in the Caymans, or a regular/investment account, or they just have it available, but purchasing assets with it is not money hidden away as an art investment.
A significant amount of wealth may be in assets, but that's the same for most people that's aren't poor (i.e. that own a house). The money used to purchase those assets is still circulating though.
You can take $1 and pay the taxes on it and end up with $0.60. Or you can give away a dollar and not have to pay $0.40 in taxes. But you still gave away a dollar, so you're sixty cents in the hole.
I would much rather someone have something named for them who donated their own wealth than a political party go around stamping their members names everywhere.
I would much rather have the naming of government buildings to be never named for any politician.
I think it's a cultural thing. In some countries it would be considered very poor taste for someone to pay to get their name on a building. If it's an academic building, I think it makes more sense to name it after someone who contributed to the field. Or it could simply be the "CS building".
Have you seen the halls of the US univerisites?
Yes, absolutely. And if a certain General Hospital in San Francisco were not named after the tackiest of billionaires then maybe it could honor, I dunno, Hugh Toland?
Instead of dedicating most of its "about us" page to shining a youngish oligarch's already controversial reputation?
https://zuckerbergsanfranciscogeneral.org/about-us/our-histo...
I was wrong.
[0]https://www.ucsfbenioffchildrens.org/maps_and_directions/par...
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.
Trump Tower, Trump Airlines. Trump Taj Mahal
Oh wait.. NVM
Not when it's on a submarine ;)
> And he gave it away anonymously. While many wealthy philanthropists enlist an army of publicists to trumpet their donations, Feeney went to great lengths to keep his gifts secret.
The government should at least take away the tax deductibility of non anonymous donations.
If it lowers the amount people donate, then it proves my point...that people were intending to get something in return, hence not a donation.
I don't care about Benioff's need for legacy. I care about reducing corruption, which non anonymous tax deductible donations enable.
I've heard the misconception that one could use a deduction to bump yourself into a lower tax rate on your entire income, and therefore come out ahead, but that's not how U.S. federal income tax rates work.
"Loopholes" are often in the eye of the beholder.
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.
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.
- Universal healthcare - Free education - Funding homeless assistance programs - Employment insurance - UBI
(granted these last 2 are pretty much just redistributing money)
The question is whether you want the few billionaires to decide where to spend the money, or everyone (that is, people who haven't been disenfranchised).
AND THEN arguably given the polarization of the US today, I can understand that anyone feels frisky in raising the taxes to found the other side's ideas (being republicans not wanting to fund healthcare or democrats not wanting to fund a wall)
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 avoid paying taxes.
Fun thought video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTAE5m3ZO2E
But there are other reasons to make a public show of philanthropy: to encourage others to give, to be a part of giving campaigns, to draw attention to an issue you consider important, to tell a personal story for why something matters for you, and otherwise to direct that attention towards the cause rather than yourself.
It is very similar in fact to tithing instead of the practice of having your name called out in service in front of everyone so you can later trade on that donation for social standing.
On the other hand, a culture of anonymous donations (and less wealth signaling) could indicate a culture where everyone, no matter how rich or poor, is expected to do their part to help others.
It depends a lot on what people's takeaways are from these acts, which are shaped by cultural expectations and norms. One should consider the cultural externalities of donations in addition to purely the dollar amounts.
Giving anonymously can be a way for the giver to prove to themselves what kind of person they are.
I disagree. This is an attempt to buy legacy and erase their past. It benefits only those who make the donations, and whatever causes happen to pique their particular interests. It also creates yet another organization of people dependent upon the good will and whim of a single supporter.
> to encourage others to give
I would presume the tax breaks are enough.
> and otherwise to direct that attention towards the cause rather than yourself.
Large portions of non-profit budgets are specifically spent on awareness and on generating future donations. There is no need to slap your last name on the side of a building for this purpose.
I don't feel bad that people buy a legacy. I believe that a legacy of being a massive philanthropist is a legacy worth having.
I don't feel bad that they "erase their past", because all people can still be judged by the totality of their actions.
The recognition does benefit the people that make the donations. Doesn't seem to be a problem to me.
Charitable organizations are dependent upon the whim of their donors regardless of whether the donors get any recognition.
The fraction of non-profit budgets that are spent on awareness seems to be a tangential point that I do not understand.
I can't even say how a bit of fame for people giving large sums is harmful. And whatever people object to, I doubt it's anywhere close to the significance of the positive effects of giving.
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. Charities can be really bad about selling your name.
I'm not a Christian myself and definitely not rich at all, but I do prefer anonymous donations.
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.
As if the whole thing is just a karmic ponzi scheme.
A gift given in secret is seeking the rewards truly worth having: the praise that comes from God. Those who seek that find it, because they loved what was truly worthy of love. But gifts given for others to see are seeking a reward on earth, not heaven—and that’s what they get. Either way, they’re not penalized if, say, the word gets out against their wishes. That’s not the point: God knows and judges the heart and rewards them based on what they were actually seeking.
So seeking rewards is not only categorically OK, it’s actually encouraged, but with the caveat that the seeker set their heart on what is eternally worthy of their love and desire.
The result is a lot of joy, knowing one has brought blessing and joy both to God and to other people.
This passage presents altruism as a tit-for-tat deal with God. Do good, and you'll get some of that back...later. I promise! It's almost tacky.
Only by an extremely shallow reading.
God is more loving that any good parent: God IS Love, 1 John 4:8. I trust God's goodness and follow Him, I therefore don't have any reason to go into a tit-for-tat deal with God.
Correction: the passage makes no mention of "heaven."
I don't think you mean to say "tit-for-tat" as that means something else, but I do get the gist: it seems that there's some kind of contractual obligation on the part of God. The logical argument being: if you do [GIVE], then He does [REWARD]. This is a subtle argument, but flawed for a number of reasons (and why texts should never be taken out of context).
First, God isn't beholden to anyone. He does as He pleases, and the only "laws" He is bound by is His own nature (good, omniscient, eternal, etc.). There's many examples where Pharisees try to play these logical gotcha games with Christ, and they're always repudiated.
Secondly, the point of the passage itself is twofold: (1) avoid religious hypocrisy, and (2) avoid materialistic vainglory. Reading into the text deeper than that, brings us to my last point...
Finally, given that Christianity is a theist moral system, it makes sense that the ultimate arbiter of "goodness" is God -- in my opinion, that's why Chist brings up the "reward" -- which, for all intents and purposes, might just be God's approval (who knows what that entails).
This passage teaches people not to do things for show which is what many of us do in order to gain esteem and puff up our egos, often with still further gains in mind. This leads to enslavement to our egos, the approval of others, to things, and generally our constant grasping and our desires. Such false charity is pointless; it only leads to spiritual death. Allow your good deeds to remain a secret between you and the omniscient God. Charity is not loss. True charity produces spiritual "reward" by starving the monstrous, tyrannical ego that enslaves us to death. I would go so far as to say that it is even better for the giver than the receiver. The ego is Man's idolatry, and we cannot serve two masters. Thus killing the ego frees us to worship God and to live. The ego blinds us. It is like sitting in a bus at night with the lights on. All you see in the windows is yourself. Shatter the mirror and you will be freed.
"He who gives charity to the poor without knowing to who, and the poor knows not from who was taken, this is a true Mitzva"
The 2nd ranked charity level. [pls excuse my poor translation]
“…A man who gives in charity and hides it, such that his left hand does not know what his right hand gives in charity; and a man who remembered Allah in private and so his eyes shed tears.” (Abu Hurairah & collected in Saheeh al-Bukhari (English trans.) vol.1, p.356, no.629 & Saheeh Muslim (English trans.) vol.2, p.493, no.2248)
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/256321/jewish...
The fact that he's effectively been doxxed on the donations does mean it's no longer anonymous, yes.
Consider giving at least 10% of your income to cost-effective charities -- because cost-effective charities can do thousands of times more good than merely regular charities. So your $1,000 donation can do as much good as $1 million, if given well.
Join others: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/
But how would you go about verifying any stated claims?
If an organization cures blindness for $20 through cataract surgeries in developing nations, and another spends $40,000 to train a seeing eye dog for a single individual, we are looking at ratios of 1:1000 in terms of effectiveness. The amount spent on 'overhead' is irrelevant!
It's very plausible to disagree with some of their choices. For instance, you might be interested in efficient charitable giving within your country, and bite the bullet of "this means I value starving africans a lot less." The important part is to prompt charities to document costs and outcomes in general (preferably to a scientific standard), so that people can make more informed choices about their donations no matter their values.
Umm, no
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-...
If you're very frugal, you'd end up giving away a very small amount of money, saving all the rest... Saving is super important, but giving money to effective charities is also a great way to use your money.
To take a typical example of someone that might be reading HN, any software engineer working in NY or the Bay Area can easily give away $10K a year while saving enough money to get a very cozy retirement.
Let's assume you're a junior SWE in the Bay Area, making $130K. Annual take home is ~$85,753 according to [1] You pay $3K in rent (nice 1 bedroom apt in South Bay, or just a decent one in SF), $2K for various expenses, that's $60K and you're left with $25K.
This is for a junior engineer, and granted they might want to save $25K vs $15K (arguable; I would consider those savings don't matter much in the long run, the goal being to quickly increase your salary by advancing your career), but an engineer in a large tech company is making closer to $250 - $300K total comp, and you'll see that the $10K donation isn't making much of a dent in your savings at that point.
[1] https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-paycheck-calculator#...
Those charities aren't going to help you when you're retired and subsiding on a meagre state pension. Or if there's a resurgent global pandemic and you lose your job and home.
Save first, always.
Absolutely for saving to be able to survive ~1 year as life is very unpredictable, but we're talking about altruism here... Let's for a second assume we all want to have the largest positive impact on other people, is that $1M really the best way to spend your money to both improve your and other people's life? Could you instead buy a house/work elsewhere, pay $400K, and invest $600K in saving a hole bunch of people from certain death / extreme poverty?
You didn't get here by yourself. You know some of the people who have generously contributed to you. There are more than you know. The ones who stick out are relatively wealthy. Do you think they are generous because they are wealthy? I submit to you that normal wealth does not make it easier to be generous. A person rich enough to buy a boat has just created more demands on their wealth. A big house usually involves more ongoing financial obligations than a small house.
For most people, generosity is not a function of net worth. It is a matter of character. You can make it part of your character beginning today. You are about to leave my house and face the world on your own. There will be challenges. Money will be tight. "Starving college students" isn't always an amusing tagline. I encourage you to make a point of doing something generous. Maybe commit to giving $1 to a random person on the street every week. Maybe donate plasma. Maybe volunteer to be a Salvation Army bell ringer. But make a point to do something frequent. At least once a month. Even when tuition is due, or rent. Even if just an hour of your time. It's up to you. But do it regularly and relentlessly. If you ever get to where it is easy, it is probably because your circumstances have improved but your generosity has not kept pace.
Making a commitment up front to donate 10% just creates a situation in which its not any sort of conscious decision to give $X to charity. You just operate as if your taxes were 10% higher or your income is 10% lower and go from there.
WRT income, I am thankfully able to afford my lifestyle, but I currently earn 5 digits a year and always have (I am still young). I don't regret a penny I gave.
I remember watching a documentary on him some time ago. There was some issue he was interested in. I think it involved a community in Ireland. He put his money into the issue, but it didn't have the desired outcome. He looked closely at what they were doing and decided the strategy wasn't a failure, so he committed some astounding amount more with specific strings attached. His strings forced others to put skin in the game with him. Then they worked together towards their desired outcome.
How do you make sure that your donation to the blind center will get that roof repaired? Grab a hammer.
I think this could be a convenient excuse that keeps some from donating more money (I'll wait until I can spend time creating my own charity / doing some hands-on vetting on who gets my money). There are already plenty of organizations (GiveWell, OpenPhil, etc.) that have very good research on the impact different charities have, often with RCTs on those interventions proving how much each $ buys (in terms of quality-adjusted life years or else).
Donate $100 to a literacy campaign, then volunteer for 30 minutes each week at a beneficiary elementary school to have a struggling reader read to you from one of the books your money purchased. You don't have to buy the book. You don't have to decide which books are purchased. You don't have to decide which student gets to read the books. But you can be involved enough to know that books were purchased and the students are benefiting. And your extra effort makes the $100 so much more fulfilling.
A $3 donation (via Against Malaria Foudation) buys a bednet that protects about 2 people from malaria for 3-4 years. As a donor you don't get the satisfaction of meeting the individuals you help (though you can look at some photos). But is the fulfillment you seek important enough to donate to a charity that is a thousand times less efficient at converting dollars to benefits-for-others?
A good suggestion here is to "purchase your fuzzies separately". That is, give to the most cost-effective charities you can find, regardless of how fulfilling it feels. And then find the most fulfilling activity you can, and maximize that until you had your fill.
Especially if you give resources to volunteers doing genuinely good work in your community, it has a huge multiplier effect.
I've also seen the impact of organizations which promise to spend money to save people there, and it's not always pretty. You can't serve two causes well. Picking between Western donors and local recipients, successful NGOs must choose to serve the former and not the latter. That often just distorts markets and causes its own problems.
Things ARE complicated. Teams spend time navigating the questions and coming up with their best answers - the poster who started this thread posted a site that has done that exercise https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/giving-recommendations/
They have a model, and they can iterate on that model as they get new information or insights. It's hard for me to think that their model is worse than my lack of model.
For large-scale work of the type you describe, family foundations do a pretty good job. Gates, Schmidt, CZI, etc. all have exceptionally competent staffs who are able to take in grant applications, sort through those, and support quality projects in a way in which you or I can't. Program managers are top people in the field hired to rigorously evaluate projects.
They have billions of dollars to throw around too. If you want to fight malaria in Ghana, be Bill Gates. Or if it's something you're passionate about, take your next family vacation in Ghana, understand the people, context, and culture, and THEN donate to good people or organizations you know there. Combine your vacation with your giving.
What family foundations don't have are the cost structure to support individuals in the field or small organizations. If there is a good project in a school in Ghana, there is no way they are raising funding through Gates/CZI/Schmidt/etc. On the other hand, if you see a problem and spend money to fix it, you'll fix it. If you see an organization in need of resources and donate them, they'll have them. It's really not rocket science to do that.
At the same time, I think it is a bad systemic solution to rely on charitable giving to solve large-scale problems.
Imagine an island with 100 residents, each with $100. Their moral compass varies randomly from Mr. Rogers all the way to a few outright sociopaths. Each day, everyone decides how much to donate. The kinder people donate more because they're kinder. The selfish assholes obviously don't.
What does tomorrow look like? Well, now all the good people are a little poorer and have a little less power. The sociopaths are richer and stronger. They use their edge to secure a little more power, maybe skim a little more off the top.
Watch that island for a few years and what do you start to see? A few avaricious monsters with all the wealth and a horde of poor decent folks doing their best to distribute fewer and fewer scraps equitably amongst themselves.
This is the real magic of taxes. Because taxes are morally neutral. They don't preferentially take more money away from the most decent folks. Ultimately there are some bad selfish people out there and if you don't have some way of forcibly reducing their power, they will take it all. Taxation backed by the force of government is one of the least violent ways of doing that.
It's important to recognize that some causes are not as cost-effective as others, but are still worthy. I'll use my own donations as an example:
1. Against Malaria Foundation - widely recognized as one of the charities that can do the most for a dollar. Malaria nets cost about $2-3 and it's estimated every ~$2500 given to them saves a life from Malaria.
2. Larkin Street Youth Services - helping homeless youth in San Francisco (where I lived). A very expensive city and they provide not just housing but education, job services, medical care, etc. Helping just one full-service client can cost $40,000 a year.
I think it's a productive discussion when those involved learn something new. My hope is always to share the counterintuitive finding that in today's world we are able to help people a tremendous amount with (relative-to-our-lives) very little financial involvement.
I hope that when people learn about this remarkable fact, they reflect on their goals and consider giving to more-cost-effective charities, and to give more overall.
I'm thrilled to hear you too give to one of GiveWell's top recommended charities!
Cheers!
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/post/2013/11/should-you-only...
> Bad Reason #6: I care about multiple issues! I want to end disease so I give to an anti-disease charity, I want to end crime so I give to an anti-crime charity, and I want to end poverty so I give to an anti-poverty charity.
> Yes, we have many different values. But at any given time, one of these will be the most pressing; one of them will be easiest to make headway on. And that's the one we should concentrate on. By focusing all our resources on one cause, we have the greatest chance of accomplishing our cause.
It's not bad logic, but I don't personally buy into it. It may be easy when dividing up a pile of cash, but it's harder when you take it down to a personal level. Imagine if someone on the street says "Can you spare a dollar, I am hungry?", could you look them in the eye and say "No, I gave your dollar to end malaria in Africa. It's more effective". I certainly can't do that! And having met so many of the clients at Larkin Street and knowing how deserving they are of a better life, I can't do it to them either.
Furthermore it's a pretty slippery slope to say that every dollar I spend reveals my marginal preferences when compared to every other dollar I spend. I don't think every person who buys a new laptop for $2500 is saying they'd rather have a faster web browser than save a life from malaria. We don't expect everyone to operate that way. Spending money is a hybrid between emotion and rationality, and I think that's ok.
So there's this thing called "revealed preferences". I have a $2000 laptop, and I was very aware when I bought it that I was saying that this laptop was more important than an african life. I don't have a moral defense for this. I think it's not so much that people don't prefer a laptop to an african child surviving - they do prefer the laptop - but they don't want to perceive themselves to be the sort of people who prefer a laptop to an african child surviving. And so they don't think about it, and get angry at you when you make them think about it. But they still act in that way.
Personally, I sort of feel I'd be a lot more ready to donate a fraction of my income to worthy causes if everyone else was willing to help as well. Maybe we need to run charities like very long term kickstarters - say "we need X trillion dollars over a span of ten years to have an even shot at wiping out Malaria forever, commit yourself to a monthly payment, payment starts once we cross the threshold." I think something like that would be better at motivating me, at least - humans are inherently more sensitive to relative local standing than absolute global effects.
"“supposing I have come by a fair amount of wealth — either by way of legacy, or by means of trade and industry — I must know that all that wealth does not belong to me; what belongs to me is the right to an honourable livelihood, no better than that enjoyed by millions of others. The rest of my wealth belongs to the community and must be used for the welfare of the community.” [1]
Each time I bike past Cornell Tech, Feeney's generosity awes me. What a mensch. Makes me proud to be human.
[1] https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/mahatma-ga...
Can we just celebrate Chuck Feeney and his awesomeness?
“I wonder if I ever will have the strength to do what he has done.”
“I’ve long argued for massive estate tax rates on large estates in order to incentivize behavior like this.”
“This is a role model I can actually appreciate.“
“I humbly encourage everyone to make giving a larger part of your life.”
Those are quotes from the current top 5 comments in this thread — plenty of celebration of Chuck Feeney’s awesomeness.
Edit: See below ;)
Please read my other comment:
Nice A/B experiment.
I have always heard the complete opposite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Giving_Index
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/12/28/the_ge...
Myanmar is an exceptionally devout Buddhist society with many monasteries supported through traditional almsgiving. I suspect that's why Myanmar tops even the U.S. in the World Giving Index, which merely asks whether you've donated money or time (volunteered).
Not that faith-based giving is inferior, but different people have different notions about what constitutes philanthropy and charity.
I'm sure there are people who will find a way to invalidate this kind of charity. But it takes a level of dedication, discipline and a moral code to take 10% of earnings for benefit of your community and do it without legal compulsion. And it's the latter part that makes it different then those that pat themselves on the back for merely voting for higher taxes or disparage others for not voting for higher taxes.
Absolutely, but I think that's pretty rare among the general population. IIUC, if I drop $10 into the offertory basket at Sunday Mass I'm counted just the same as a Mormon who tithes 10% of their income.
A lot of people only donate to reduce their tax bill.
Also, because we don't have a social safety net in the US, a lot of people donate to make up for that, which is certainly noble, but would be far less necessary if we had a stronger social safety net that more evenly distributed that wealth giveaway.
Unsure if that index referenced, or any other studies/reports on this subject, account for this in terms WHY the donation happened or motive.
It does include willingness to help a stranger and volunteerism too, and those are ranked top 3 as well and doesn't reduce tax bills.
It’s not being pedantic; this changes the calculus altogether. Deducting from your taxes means you can say “oh well, I have to pay $1M in taxes, I might as well just use that money to make a donation to a charity of my choice and gain some PR instead,” whereas deducting your taxable income means “instead of parting with $1M in tax, I would need to part with $5M in charity to zero out my tax burden,” which is a very different decision and still largely a philanthropic one at some level or the other.
But yes, I meant your pre-tax income, as all deductions work. Credits apply to taxes directly, deductions always mean pre-tax income.
It's still money gone from your pocket. It doesn't save you money overall.
That makes no sense. If I get to deduct a donation, then when I donate $1000, it really only costs me $700. But it still costs me $700.
I would have more money if I never donated.
Also, it's hidden. If you used TurboTax for example, you put all your numbers in and get a number out. All you've heard is "donations are deductible" but there really is no obvious connection to putting in your donations and seeing how much it saves you.
It’s interesting because having grown up steeped in the culture for 30 years I have never once heard this or seen much real charitable action. I see small donations and token donations but very rarely anything like donating most of ones wealth or giving up excess to donate to those less well-off.
I’d love to better understand this discrepancy. I hear more about how much money people spend more than how much they donate in the media. And even anecdotally I can’t think of anyone talking about a donation they made in conversation. It seems like this should be something we talk about and champion more.
If you were raised a certain way, in a certain era, it wouldn't be rational to spend it on 'frivolity'.
There are a lot of people like this. Tons of very rich folks living in normal homes, driving normal cars that they 'never buy news'.
I think in some ways more common than not, especially in more rural and suburban areas wherein projecting wealth isn't actually necessary to their professional identity.
I don't know about suburban areas in general. I think it largely depends on which neighborhood.
While it may not impact peoples professional identity, in many suburbs it impacts their social identity.
I don’t have much to add that hasn’t been said already, but his donations - right up to the last - have made genuine and lasting differences in the hearts and minds of kids growing up here and I doubt even he knows all the good that’s come of what he did in this place.
I don’t want to ramble on because it’ll end up sounding like a eulogy but he’s done an incredible thing for our people and we’re incredibly grateful for it.
I hope I can live like Mr. Feeney, although I personally wouldn't be quite as ascetic as he given the circumstances (I would own a small but nice house in San Diego or Hawaii and a nice 0 emission solar/sail powered boat).
Good work Chuck!
He is known for helping to bring peace to Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. That is, to end the Troubles, a conflict that lasted about 30 years, from the late 60s to the late 90s. People who were not yet adults in that time may have difficult imagining the violence of the Troubles. The terrorism, riots, violence and armed actions that characterized a guerrilla war and its suppression, all on the edge of Western Europe. The southern counties that now make up the Republic of Ireland had only achieved independence a few decades before that (the dates are complicated, but let's say it was in 1921) after 800 years of British occupation, and a recent war of independence.
That was the backdrop against which Chuck Feeney tried to bring peace. He did so by working with both sides of the conflict, the Catholics and the Protestants, with diplomacy and massive investments, to make sure that they could see a path to peace despite all the anger, animosity and desire for vengeance that decades of violence and killing can instill. He helped resolve that. Not alone, but he was crucial. And we don't even think about it any more because it's all been relatively normal for a while. And that's amazing.
Basically if you make a high tier engineer's salary, you could do more utilitarian good by hiring several people to work at a food bank on the weekends. Roadside trash pickup is an example of a problem in need of a systemic solution, so if you can reduce litter in the first place, or build a machine that cleans everything, you might be doing more good that way, even though it doesn't look or feel as "noble".
But others have pointed out that it is useful to donate your time if you are giving your skills, and not just effort.
So, please donate time by volunteering! But if you can't, money is also good of course.
Everybody knows the most important parts of charity are who gets the credit and one's own personal growth.
I am saying that credit isn't the point. Also, I am not entirely clear on why you would require $15/hour to volunteer at a charity...but...good for you turning charity into a second source of income.
Btw, my point (I will spell it out) is that the problem is almost never money. Money is required to the extent that is required to pay other people...but, particularly for almost all local problems, the issue is not money but time. There is no reality in which people donate enough income to solve these problems but they could donate time, and that would be effective.
By all mean, volunteer at your local soup kitchen. It is a great thing to do! But the money is more helpful on an ongoing basis.
[0] https://youth.gov/youth-topics/mentoring/benefits-mentoring-...
"Donating time" is a deceptive phrase because it just sounds like you are paying out some currency other than money and that's it. "Donating time" encapsulates "building friendships, lifting up others, increasing love/unity in communities, gaining new perspectives" and more, unlike "donating money" which encapsulates none of them.
I'm paid salary. I'm of the opinion that it is usually the self-absorbed that think that after they leave the office they are still worth what their employer pays them.
Making it a requirement that your time donation be within your professional skillset is saying, "such work is beneath me". I'm not above ladling a bit of soup into a bowl or picking up the dog shit while at the animal shelter.
I'm not opposed to that if you're doing it for your own benefit. But you should be thinking of this as leisure time for yourself, rather than assuming that you're "donating time" for the sake of real social impact. There's picking up dog $#!+, and then there's actually impactful stuff.
You don't have to be rich to do this. Although yes, some people truly can't spare 10%, that's fine, nobody needs to reply saying so. Anyone can spare what they can spare, whether that's 0 or more. For a lot of people 10% seems about right to be enough to feel it without being a hardship. (I calculate 10% of take-home, post-tax. It is still enough to feel it).
I give about half of it in automatic monthly contributions, the other half in spontaneous one-offs. I (in the USA) don't require to be tax deductible, but enough of it is that I reliably increase my tax refund every year.
It definitely makes me feel better about what I'm supporting and doing with what I'm lucky enough to have. Although of course "making me feel better" should not be the goal if I want to maximize impact, but nobody would do it if it weren't rewarding in some way. I don't give enough to get any kind of 'public recognition' (and wouldn't want any), my reward is feeling like I'm putting my money where my values are and hopefully contributing to what i want to see in the world.
Giving away your fortune then letting go is harder.
Take for example, Elon musk. Even though he hasn't given monet away to charities like Chuck, his for-profit enterprises like electric cars, solar farms, spacex and possibly neuralink might just have been things that end up equally great for humanity.
So if you have billions I guess timtowtdi.
Tesla and SpaceX don't make a profit or pay dividends. My guess is he finances his entire life from taking on debt which is secured against his stock.
So how exactly are people like him supposed to just give money away? What happens to the stock he owns then? Would he forgo control of his companies?
How would he pay taxes on that income anyway?
Lots of questions the billionaires-shouldn't-exist crowd have no concept of.
Your mockery is ill-directed, and in the context of a post about someone whose corporate wealth was able to be donated to charity, in really poor taste.
Ever heard of Zip2 and Paypal?
Your resentment and jealousy based communist thinking is pretty ugly.
Your initial claim was that he had no money apart from company stock, and lives entirely on debt. This is factually incorrect, as I pointed out: his family money predates all of his companies.
Attached to your factually-incorrect claim was a casual denigration of a group of people with whose beliefs you disagree. This was both misguided and unnecessary.
My factual statement in response was simply:
> He started out with a lot of money from his family's South African mining operations.
Based solely on that true statement of fact, you derided me, responding to claims I never made and labeling me and my "thinking" in inaccurate and insulting ways.
Please, stop.
Your statement was extremely loaded, suggesting Elon's family somehow is part of his success. While our past is certainly part of us always, it is very loaded and complex. As is well known Elon's father was very abusive, committed crimes, and has just married his stepdaughter. Ask any psychologist and I think that is more a hindrance than an advantage in terms of family background.
I stand by the fact that anything implying Elon is successful because of his family money is a hugely far-left opinion, if not communist, and has its roots in your resentment for Elon's success.
This is not okay. Please, pursue empathy.
TIL reality is communist
Farmers working under communist rule in China who started private farming caused agricultural productivity to skyrocket and the number of starving people to drop [1]. Say what you will about human greed, but aligning a behavior you want with a natural economic incentive is a powerful tool.
On the flipside, some industries like healthcare don't belong in such a ruthless system, because "voting with your wallet" is sometimes equivalent to "voting with your life". Other industries like scientific research have too long a lag time for the the companies to stay afloat, or for the decision makers to benefit from the decision. These industries are the ones that frequently need help from government, nonprofit, donors, etc.
[1]: https://reaction.life/chinese-capitalist-growth-happened-spi...
That data could reveal which things are the most effective things to operate charitably in terms of increasing human happiness.
That's something I really like about Jack Dorsey's approach. I get to follow along and see what works.
Crazy respect for this. Many times billionaire charitable foundations are just tax preferred ways of building your image or amassing influence. Bill Gates has done a lot of good, but his charitable work also served to redeem his image from that of the ruthless businessman crushing competitors that he had in the 1990’s. In addition, it has also given him a lot of soft power. I bet there are dozens of heads of state, especially in Africa and Asia, that he could personally get on the phone within 30 minutes if he really wanted to.
He needs to amass connections and power if he wants to accomplish his philanthropic goals.
As for fixing his image, sure, maybe that was part of it. But I doubt it. He could have just made a few really big donations and then went off to himself to enjoy his wealth.
I think we need 5x the number of representatives at the House level. Separate their duties, strip power from some of them, and keep them in district most of the year so they can actually be held accountable. Would also help to further democratize the House.
That is a a great idea. One idea along those lines, is maybe make the House entirely online with the representatives being in the district 100% of the time. It would do a couple of things. It would make lobbying harder since instead of getting a bunch of people together in Washington at a fancy dinner, the lobbyists would have to travel and meet 1:1. In addition, it might decrease partisan ship by decreasing the power of the party whips. When people are all in a single location, tremendous social pressure can be brought to bear to convince a representative to vote along the party lines, even if it would be going against the wishes of their constituents. With the representatives dispersed and remote, the social pressure would be diminished, and maybe representatives would vote more in line with their constituents’ wishes.
2) A man feels a certain responsibility to take care of his wife even when he's gone.
3) $2M only spins off $80k in income, hardly a rich lifestyle and far less than most Americans on this site could live with.
* And check your math, 2% of 8B is $160M not the $2M stated in the article.
Plus, your math is way off. 0.025%.
Chuck is human like all of us. Most people have to spend some amount of time solving for generating enough capital to meet their (and their family’s) needs - whatever they may be. The fabulously wealthy / successful did too once upon a time but at some point crossed a threshold the vast vast majority of people - which I will refer to as “typical” - will never, and that is having enough to do and buy literally anything they could possibly desire indefinitely.
Thus the motivation to keep on going professionally (ie to earn more and more, something that drives typical people who are solving to meet needs), I suspect, changes to things money can’t buy which are nevertheless “typical”: The desire for impact.
Some want it in their life times, others want it for generations (legacy). Some want it in their church or on their job. Others seek and have the means to achieve it on a global scale.
I'd much rather work as an individual contributor and earn an upper middle class salary for my entire career, with enough to retire comfortably. Growing up I always heard stories about how happiness is not correlated with income above a certain (commonly achievable) level, and I can now corroborate those stories!
You don't have to be rich to give. You can not make the money in the first place, and instead make the world a better place by tending to your own happiness and doing something you enjoy. And if you are lucky like Chuck you can give it away. Or if you are lucky like Jonas Salk you can dedicate your talents to good causes.
Congratulations to Chuck for being happy.
> When I visited a few years ago, inkjet-printed photos of friends and family hung from the walls over a plain, wooden table. On the table sat a small Lucite plaque that read: “Congratulations to Chuck Feeney for $8 billion of philanthropic giving.”
I don't know why the author had to cross the line into falsehood with the title. It's a great story about a great person, why sacrifice your integrity with an utterly false headline, particularly when the story doesn't need it?
More scandalous title gets more clicks. Sucks...
That said (i.e. time to be the irritating pedantic little asshole, but I think it's a genuine enough question about the purpose/execution of philanthropy)... does the anonymity really warrant extra props? We know that the guy gave away essentially all of his money; does the anonymity of the individual donations really make it more selfless? If anything the headlines "Feeney gives $100M to cause X" and going on TV to talk about it etc. would likely bring more attention and donations to X, which I assume is why Bill Gates and others tend to do things that way.
Edit: ok, I've just figured out from other posts that it basically wasn't known beyond a small group of people that he was giving away most of his wealth. I didn't realize that (although it's also my first time hearing of him). I agree then, he really did spend the bulk of his life being pretty much truly anonymous and that does deserve extra props.
For myself, I have always wanted to appear to be doing my best in hiding my charitable donations while inadvertently getting discovered for my generosity, killing two birds with one stone. Unfortunately, I don't nearly have the wealth to pull this off.
One of the things almost all foundations do is this: give 100K for $100M problem. There are certain reasons for this: (a) foundations have become mini governments; (b) foundations want to support everyone that comes their way; (c) either foundations can't judge the potential of ventures or they end up supporting their crony or pet projects.
He has $2 million in retirement. That's over 7 times the median net worth of Americans 75+. He's anything but "broke".
This is why I want to believe. I want to believe in the goodness of people. Just as I’m constantly troubled by the realistic notion of death as I try to appreciate the transient presence of being here, I want to believe things will get better in the sense that there will be less suffering and people will learn and mature and become wiser and nicer to each other.
As we approach death and become one with nothing, we become one.
As we exist, we are only inducing more pains to ourselves. There are meanings though. I hope there are more meaningful things. We are sentient.
But it still makes me sad to see this sort of thing celebrated. A small number of ultra-rich people should not be deciding for society what causes get funded, no matter how pure their intentions are. The fact that individuals are able to amass this much money in the first place is itself a problem.
[0] Then again, we can't actually know that he's ideal, since he's worked hard to keep his activities anonymous. On one hand I applaud him for not seeking fame for all this, but on the other, we have little insight into whatever impact -- good or bad -- he's had.
What's your proposed alternative to the amalgamated actions of rich individuals? I'm not sure what else could work better, and we've certainly seen worse collective approaches throughout history.
It’s sad when all these billionaires and multi-millionaire athletes are afraid to risk a few million dollars by commenting on human rights abuses (concentration camps in China e.g.). You can’t take it with you! Use your wealth for good...
Chuck Feeney is officially welcome at my table, anytime.
Not sure word “broke” is the right adjective here. If consciously someone donated their money to charity they need to be celebrated as a “winner” or overpoweing materialistic “money”? Something amazing. “Broke” means very negative. I don’t know. I could be wrong.
I think when an article is shared on HN some consideration needs to be given to ambiguous situations like this.
I know it sounds revolting that giving money to politicians is better than fighting malaria or cancer. But at the end of the day, those who are having the most impact in alleviating poverty and disease are not international philanthropists, but the governments of the respective countries. Misery is the result of the lack of institutions or their systemic failure under corrupt, inefficient and incompetent leaders. We have known for decades how to eradicate malaria and provide all people on Earth with basic food, shelter and education, what we lack is world-wide execution of essential state-building and infrastructure that would enable it, and much more.
And money is a fundamental part of politics; politicians are just like any other people: if a decent, respectable living an be made in the field of politics, public office will attract decent and respectable people. If the only way you can get into power is by making trades with the devil, since no one will found politics, then what you get is corrupt and ineffective leaders that oppress rather the serve the public.
This is why, for all his sins, George Soros remains one of the most effective philanthropists in the world. And this is why he's vilified by a whole wagon of authoritarians, from Putin to Orban to Jinping: they know that the most pressing threat to their power is not some foreign country, or a political or military international alliance; they are most afraid of a well funded and cohesive internal political opposition that can properly articulate the public discontent.
I know Ted Turner did it with the UN Foundation, although that isn't technically the UN itself.
Are there other examples?
They certainly can. I don't how many people actually do it, but most governments will accept direct cash donations. E.g. here's a page on how to make a gift to the US Government: https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.h...
Edit to add: Here's some data on donations made to reduce the federal debt https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm . You can see that this seems to average a few million dollars per year.
Especially knowing that for having such a career behind him, he must probably have spent a lot of time working and not being there for his family.
Still, mad respect for what he/they did.
I'd call it Sexat. It's like Taxes but spelled backwards.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/nyregion/james-bond-of-ph...
http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/talk-cheap-rich-guy...
It sounds great but I'm still puzzling over this phrase and trying to grok it
Other than science, those are some very bloated and inefficient causes. $1 billion to Cornell? Aren't most of the prestigious universities already swimming in billions of dollars of endowments? He can do what he wants of course, but it would have been nicer if the money was targeted to long shot bets--that only a super rich person could fund--rather than normal things are already well funded through taxes.
Where else does research get done? Who pays for the buildings, where each one costs hundreds of millions of dollars? Scholarships? Who pays for new tenured positions?
Yes, administrative costs could be cut (I think substantially). But there's this long-going misunderstanding about the roles of endowments at American universities. These endowments have been budged into the next century of operation -- each year they are expected to generate some income to cover operating expenses. These expenses include salaries, financial aid, etc. The larger the endowment, the more income. They can't just drain the whole thing to pay for a building, because then they auction off the future for the present.
He's not broke, he still has two million dollars (in a very advanced age). I wish I was that broke.
And you can't be solving big systematic problems and bring about societal change by working with individual cases. This is like fighting fire when you should have made the building fireproof in the first place.
Two million is, like, the opposite of broke for the vast majority of Americans. But this is Forbes.
If he's broke, then at least 90% of retirees are broke.
Maybe that should tell you something about the state of retirement savings in this country.
To be that good at making money and that intent at giving it away is such a massive paradox not to mention paradigm shift from how we typically discuss wealth and wealth accumulators.
Looking for video interviews....
Hope I can learn something from this. What does a non rich person do? I guess it is about trying to influence things rather than injecting money.
Time is money and if you don't have money then give your time. It's the most generous thing a person can do. More so than money in many ways since you can always make more money but you can't make more time.
You can't expect to make a major change in the world. But you can make some small changes that means the world to some people.
I don't pretend to know the motivations of Bezos or even Musk (even though I think he has been clear) but I see this as consistent with what Feeney did.
I can at least conceive of a thought process like "I can help humanity now and in the future by making money to fund new businesses that would not otherwise exist." Maybe the best way to contribute is to give away money to charity, maybe it is to start a rocket company. I don't think either of those are wrong, and I think they can have the same base motivation.
It feels like a weird and maybe bad example, but it feels like sort of a chaotic good version of The Dark Knight Joker. You have the idea of "if you're good at something never do it for free", combined with a more wholesome version of "some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money."
Maybe you just have weird anomalies where you have someone who likes business, like what their work entails, but for whatever reason aren't drawn as much to some of the other trappings. I think the assumption being the baseline is that the interest follows the money.
Yes you could argue that.
> Thus for every Chuck Feeny and Bill Gates, you, personally you, have an obligation to create many billion dollars of value and give it away
Now that is a big jump. It does not follow that we all have the same responsibility that we all have a specific responsibility.
Historically some rights were tied to the ability of the upper classes to fulfill some base responsibilities that the lower the classes could never possibly meet. Such as being able to afford a full set of bronze armour and a spear. Thus achieving both moral and social superiority.
Let me put it to you this way: I couldn't give 2 shits how many mansions, yachts, and Ferraris anybody has, but, when there are people[0] who literally have the ability to spend an amount of money greater than the entire GDP of a small country[1] to influence my country's elections, then I have a problem with that. Put another way, it's not the amount of money that certain people have accumulated that bothers me. It's the amount of undue influence those people get because of it that's the problem. It's not 1 person = 1 vote. It's more like $1M = 1 vote, when you take that $1M and apply it in the right places (such as directly into the pockets of politicians by way of lobbyists).
Find a way to fix that problem, and then we can talk about allowing billionaires to exist. Until then, America isn't a republic: it's a de facto oligarchy. And that, I have a real problem with.
---
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bloomberg_2020_preside...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Federated_State...
0. See page 31. https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-...
And no, most companies don't pay zero tax.
Do we really need to take time out of our day to praise billionaires? What about the workers who's productivity they robbed to get their status?
I think the billionaires are well compensated enough by society. Really odd to see people rushing to defend them.
When the Waltons utilize the interstate highways, they do so using giant tractor trailers which chew up blacktop with heavy loads.
They deserve to have a higher tax burden because they use more resources.
What an absolute gut-punch of deeply sickening waste.
I feel extremely outraged reading. It’s a absolutely shocking waste of money. I can’t believe this is celebrated or held up as good. This is a form of basically negligent homicide.
$3.7 billion on education? $76 million to lobby for Obamacare.
How can you not instead fund known, effective charities like Against Malaria or SCI. $1 billion to a wealthy Ivy League credential mill - that’s astronomical waste.
This is the charity equivalent of seeing a lottery winner blow their money on sports cars or Vegas. This is appalling.
I mean this so sincerely. People should be sick and outraged over this degree of negligent waste.
The speakers they mentioned are the most establishment politicians you can find. What does that say about his actions that those are the people representing him?
How can you give $70M+ to something that is grassroots too?
Yes, there was probably a more impactful way of spending it from a humanitarian perspective, but presumably there wasn't a more satisfying way to spend it for Feeney.
Nearly everything that everyone does is a negligent homicidal waste if you view it through the lens of opportunity cost. Unless you are living the life of an acetic, working every living hour, and donating it all to charity, you personally are hundreds if not thousands of people a year.
This one person had a huge fortune and explicit goals to spend it in efficacious charities.
From that point of view, this particular story is one of exorbitant waste and missed opportunity, the magnitude of which should stupefy people.
We’re not talking about some other joe schmoe who failed to be as ascetic as possible - that’s just rhetorical deflection. We’re talking about this particular instance of egregious waste.
Your comment is like if some heard about the Deepwater Horizon spill and replied, “everything looks like waste or hazards if you measure every cubic milliliter of spilled oil, can’t we just given them a break for trying to harvest it and do something with it?”
Tell the children who have died and will die from directly preventable malaria or waterborne parasites that Feeny’s negligence has done no harm.
By not spending the money on them, he literally facilitated their deaths. For what? Cornell has a fancier campus? Obamacare had a nicer grassroots website? It’s sickening.
And it’s no defense to distract by saying nobody can be perfectly ascetic or optimize away every wasteful purchase or discretionary spending. That’s not at all related or up for discussion. We’re talking about one guy with a stated goal of funding efficacious charities with $8 billion of available funds to do it over time. Just about as pure a thought experiment of negligence as there ever was.
This is immediately the reason why these donations are anonymous!
Guy gives away nearly all his money, and people are still not happy about it.
It’s a luxury to blow $1 billion in donations to Cornell. That’s not humanitarian anything. That’s not charity. At best that’s gross negligence, at worst narcissistically relegating hundreds of thousands of people to preventable deaths.
We’re not talking about wasting a few thousand dollars on selfish consumption. This is egregiously wasting the better part of $8 billion. It’s gobsmacking, the scale of it.
He has built one of the largest charities in the UK, and I believe it is top 10 in the world. He has given away his net worth multiple times. His general story is also totally remarkable for the UK, he came from literally nowhere.
Somewhat inevitably these days, he is regarded negatively in the media (most recently, he came up because the UK's finance minister used to work at his fund, so Hohn was the "vulture" capitalist with his beak in govt...funnily enough, their view didn't change when they found he is the main funding for Extinction Rebellion...2020 is amazing).
And then those celebrities say "You should also donate Joe Doe, we must ALL be charitable".
Meanwhile Joe is in debt and cannot even afford to eat non-pesticide laden food while the celebrity retain 99% of his $$$$.
Like you said most people don't really have any extra income. They have a mortgage. Their retirement is heavily underfunded. Kids future school is not paid for.
Then there are people that have 100% of everything paid for and already have more than they will ever need... not to mention they can grow their money way quicker than the people who need it.. Yeah, it's pretty easy to be "generous" in that situation because it's literally extra money just sitting around doing nothing but making more money.
edit: wow, downvote me and op for this? Must be by the HN 400k engineers without a family who don't understand what the problem is
One stops and carefully donates his money to have the most impact. He ends up "officially broke."
The other doubles down on for profit enterprises, but focuses on those with the most impact, like electrifying a fossil fueled sector of the economy or making us a multi-planetary species. The profits are reinvested to accomplish these goals. He ends up richer than ever.
It isn't clear that the second billionaire is less admirable than the first.
For God's Sake
Let this great guy who gave away $8 billion of his hard earned money get proper credit without dragging a @#$#$ subsidy entrepreneur into it
I guess EVs have less environmental impact after four years of use, but do Teslas last that long? The intent there (and the impact) is still very much to monetize
Opinion Coronavirus treatment Bill & Melinda Gates: Vaccine fairness will make us all safer | Free to read Sharing Covid-19 jabs equitably would result in fewer deaths and faster control everywhere'
If you want to say something, say it. Use articles to bolster your point, sure, but posting them without commentary isn't discussion.
Gates is exponentially wealthier than Feeney, and is extremely noisy in the media he funds as the second wealthiest human on the planet. I wonder what Feeney makes of Gates in 2020.
Stuff like that.
My point is that spamming links with no other commentary makes me wonder if you have a point here.
We're not going to try and guess what you're thinking, you have to tell us.
Given Gates central role in driving for global pandemic vaccines, I wonder what Feeney thinks of that huge global and very public project. The Ft Gates oped link above is from today, I just read it before opening HN and seeing the Forbes Feeney post.
I think you're being misinterpreted by me and others in this subthread, but it's your fault. :) You're literally just wondering aloud what Feeney thinks of Gates and whether that's changed in recent years, but we are reading an insinuation that it has changed for the negative. I don't think our misinterpretation of what you're saying is unreasonable -- someone above states that Feeney has publicly stated that he thinks highly of Gates and your response is to suggest that that's different now, and you link to a couple of articles, seeming to be supplying "evidence" of that, but the articles don't give any reason to think Feeney's thoughts about Gates have changed.
Your responses have convinced me that you really are just asking questions and have no preconceived notion of the answers, but the way you're asking the questions is causing people to bristle because they are presented like insinuations.
FYI.
edit: in my attempt to be helpful I see I'm being a bit repetetive. Was trying to get this out there quickly before the misunderstanding escalated into a shit-fight. :D
I don't know about everyone else on HN, but having 2mil in the bank is not my definition of "Broke". I want to see what trusts have been setup. What life estates has he retained? I credit him for giving most all of it away, but "broke" doesn't mean you are worth 0.0001% of some huge number. Broke means you might not cover next month's rent and are parking your car at a friend's to hide it from the repo guy.
If anything, having enough money to take care of his needs I think is good. If he was hiding his car from the repo man, it's probably because he's not paying payments on it, and therefore all the people that rely on those payments for their jobs you're kind of "stealing" from, in that you aren't fulfilling the legal and financial obligation. And that doesn't seem very charitable either?
Stealing requires conscious choice. Not being able to pay a debt isn't a choice and therefore shouldn't be described as stealing.
- How much to employees at Duty Free Shoppers (DFS) make? Is their healthcare fully covered? Do they have generous paid time off and access to higher education for themselves and their children? Was any of his fortune used to give back to the employees whose labor built his wealth in the first place?
- Does this dude realize how difficult it is to get into Cornell compared to when he went there on the GI bill? Giving to Cornell seems counter-productive to me. Giving a bunch of Ivy League jocks more resources doesn’t seem like an equity promoting endeavor.
Not to diminish his other accomplishments. Still, philanthropists get to choose who to include and exclude. Ideally, it wouldn’t have been possible for this guy to amass 8 billion dollars of wealth in the first place - it would have been properly taxed and invested into our communities equitably.
Questions can be raised about some of his specific donations, but when someone gives away $8B of his wealth, spending nearly none on himself, does it globally, influences other billionaires to do the same, picking at any one of his specific donations seems counter productive.
Yes Cornell is an Ivy League school, but it is where he went to school, he probably has very strong ties to that school, perhaps met his wife there, or his business partner, if he chooses to give back to that school that is also good.
Plus there was a tremendous amount he gifted to "education" so without knowing all of the details, hard to imagine that he didn't provide some sort investment in to under represented communities. If he helped Vietnam with their healthcare he obviously wasn't just US centric but helped where he though his donation could have an outsized return.
By the way he gifted a large amount of money to the Obamacare campaign, so by proxy, he was providing healthcare to his workers, and more likely than not.
The US government is actually really impressively good in a lot of areas, and I personally get fatigued of the oft-repeated notion that government “can’t possibly work” or that they “can’t possibly spend tax dollars responsibly.”
I think you have little appreciation of how wealth is created.
Jeff Bezos became the wealthiest person in the world neither by stealing or exploiting , but rather by improving peoples lives. Amazon was able to organize systems, take advantage of technological developments and put capital to work to improve the lives of hundreds of millions of consumers.
There probably are thousands of millionaries that helped build Amazon... assuming they held onto their stock from the time they joined to the present.
Citation needed, as they say.
There have been dozens of controversies involving Amazon: shopping for tax breaks it doesn’t need for HQ2, micro-managing warehouse employees’ bladder, union busting, firing a COVID whistleblower, cross-contaminating inventory, insufficient protections against counterfeit items, building a book ecosystem monopoly, probably numerous others I haven’t thought of off the top of my head.
No idea. Maybe some of it was.
> Does this dude realize how difficult it is to get into Cornell compared to when he went there on the GI bill?
His donation to Cornell was earmarked for opening a new campus (Cornell Tech) to employ more educators and educate more students. It wasn't for replacing a stadium and putting his name on it.
I have similar thoughts when I hear about the philanthropy of the mega wealthy. Instead of a single person like Chuck Feeney or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates amassing ungodly amounts of wealth and then later choosing how to distribute it, why couldn't the companies they built have made 1,000 or 10,000 or X other people relatively rich instead of one man mega rich?
Some suggest that taxation is the answer but maybe another answer is for companies to distribute their wealth more widely.
In essence what has happened as the upper-middle class has grown over the last 40 years. Poor, lower-middle and regular middle class percentage has shrunk to its lowest levels. We have fewer poor people than ever before. But because the upper middle class has grown so much, middle class people feel closer to poor people.
We have more well to do people than ever before. The middle class is smaller but the lower-middle and poor classes are even smaller. So people have generally moved up.
[1] https://www.aei.org/economics/the-us-middle-class-is-disappe...
More people have moved up than down. However as the nation has become more wealthy a greater share of the wealth has gone to upper middle than below them.
I think there’s so many dynamics at play here and it isn’t 100% cut and dry. For instance, there are more single parent (or single person) homes. Divorce isn’t socially unacceptable anymore and young people are waiting longer to get married. Do people lose the efficiencies of 2 earners in a household and possibly the class bump?
I’m not an expert on this but the data does show growth in the middle class by growing the upper-middle and a shrinking poverty class.
The West is hyper-wealthy.
Welfare states run from taxpayer money and overseen by democratically elected officials, while they have their downsides that are often commented on, at least tend to assist groups that would be marginalized otherwise, and there are no religious strings attached.
Why should the single billionaire get to chose?