Chuck Feeney: The Billionaire Who Is Trying To Go Broke
forbes.com
forbes.com
Is there a good chrome extension to tell you which tabs are producing audio output? I couldn't find one with (an admittedly cursory) search ... .
(a) you can still be targeted with advertising hidden in the actual content, and
(b) you can still forward that link to your acquaintances, many of whom do not have AdBlockers installed
Sure, you can think of it as "punishment", but Adblock is in fact a net win for advertisers and a net loss for everybody else. It is no coincidence that AdBlock Plus is developed by an advertising company.
If you want true punishment for such websites, the only real way to punish them is to stop giving them eyeballs entirely, being the online equivalent of voting with your wallet. Doing anything else that helps with the two afore mentioned points is helping them grow their bottom line, encouraging their current practices.
AdBlock punishes ALL websites equally (assuming you use the standard blacklist), not just those who have obnoxious content. But you can be assured that it is punishment as it impacts their revenue when ads are not loaded.
I stand by my point, ad blockers are a net win for publishers and advertisers.
Chrome is also supposedly getting indicators to show you which tabs are playing audio (Feb 2013): http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/02/25/google-chrome-may-so...
Otherwise only pet projects and passions get funded, while the daily bread and butter work of govt keeping the streets clean and cities functioning gets forgotten and sidelined.
Just my 2pence
These functions are only a small portion of government spending - it's mostly just wealth redistribution.
I say that because the term 'wealth redistribution' when it's used usually carries with it a loaded connotation, which I'm not sure if you meant to communicate across or not.
It's vitally important that we maintain and fund 'wealth redistribution' programs so that a lot of folks are at least able to carry on from day to day.
Many people disagree and believe that this end is much better served through charity than through (wasteful, bureaucratic, inherently un-personal) redistribution.
Tax planning for the purpose of charity is just "putting your money where your mouth is".
Social Security in the US is supposed to have minuscule overhead.
In Canada, even the government can't always be trusted to not give money to charity groups that are anti-gay -- individuals might find that a feature, not a bug, of the charity :P.
Knowing an accountant, I know that many charities put barely any of their income towards the actual charity (the legal minimum is 2%.. two percent!).
Breast cancer gets huge amounts of donations, while less glamourous, but more lethal cancers get much less.
I know that if I were to hit hard times, I'd rather have something not too personal, rather than feeling beholden to random people, nice and generous as they may be.
Plus, do we really want selfish people to keep the most money? :) Screw those people, give with the rest of us, with professionals deciding where the money goes, not random people's pet interests :P
In general, the problems with these programs is that they create dependency, and cannot be cut. When rough times come around, the first thing to be slashed are the citizen facing (and often job impacting) functions like street cleaning, police patrols and staffing at the city clerk's office.
As an example, in my US State, the Department of Transportation hasn't pruned trees and has reduced mowing at the roadside since 2009. The result? Traffic signs are obscured by branches (safety hazard), and the road drainage systems are going to be clogged by leaves and brush. This builds an implicit debt, as mowing grass and cutting trees is cheaper than rebuilding roads early and dealing with the human and financial costs of accidents. In the meantime, Medicaid spending automatically increases as much as 10-15% a year.
Mr Feeney is clearly someone who prefers operating out of the limelight, which is the exact opposite of the kind of personality who can use money to drive political change.
It also, in a very Carnegie fashion, shows the other way rich people can influence state spending. Offering money if the state does something (usually give money as well) in return. Carnegie used to give money for a town library if the town would pay for it's upkeep, Feeney offers money for universities and tech parks if the state chips in as well.
Much better than running a nebulous "I think government should be like this" campaign.
We do support the country that provides our wealth - we participate in the local economy. We give to charity. We provide a valuable service to the community. We help others in need.
You seem to conflate paying taxes with supporting a country/region, when that is not the case.
And good luck out side of the western world getting by with a hard working business owner to run any kind of high flying business. Good luck with the bribes you'll be paying the old USSR or India for example. Why do you think people are so keen to join our countries (presuming you are from Europe or the USA)?
1) Because governments, particularly democratic ones, tend to spread themselves very thin, change direction often, and serve to many masters, and lack an entrepreneurial surge of passion, they are less capable of unique, inspired, risk/reward, value proposition changes like talked about here.
2) Several inspired people taking different radical approaches is more likely to happen upon one that works. In short, he and Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are hackers of super-scale.
That would be an interesting relationship to read something about. Some brief searching doesn't turn up any good studies either way.
If we limit it to developed countries, the hypothesis would be that philanthropy is highest in low-tax places like Hong Kong, Singapore, and Chile; at a middle level in middle-tax places like Canada, the USA, and South Korea; and at the lowest level in high-tax places like Germany, France, and Sweden. I suppose there might be some confounding cultural differences between N. America, S. America, Asia, and Europe as well. Also may look different depending on whether you're looking at large donors, or at typical contribution by the median household.
(The list above chosen fairly arbitrarily, based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenu... as the metric for general tax levels in a country.)
When the government's taking over 50c of every euro you earn, you are giving plenty.
I read that countries with lower tax rates give less per capita than countries with higher tax rates. I'll try and find a source.
This included funding some very dodgy characters in Ireland which helped in their political rise at the expense of a moderate party that had opposed violence all through the troubles.
What Feeney does is give big money to big problems–whether bringing peace to Northern Ireland...
Whilst there's no doubting Feeney's massive philanthropic efforts in Ireland, the two claims quoted above are just absurd.