Jack Dorsey's Radical Experiment for Billionaires to Give Away Their Money (vox.com) 204
With a net worth of $5 billion, Jack Dorsey is the world's 410th-wealthiest person, reports Recode, and "has now kick-started one of the most radical experiments in this era of historic income inequality — whether it is possible to quickly give away more than $1 billion of his money, and to do it effectively."
Dorsey said this April that he would give away what was then one-third of his assets to a new charitable vehicle, Start Small, for coronavirus relief efforts, primarily. It was, by far, the largest dedication of money to Covid-19 by a billionaire. What was more striking, though, was Dorsey's willingness to disclose each gift in real time on a public Google spreadsheet. Dorsey has now given away $90 million to five dozen nonprofit groups, both around the globe and in his backyard, on immediate needs and on longer-term rebuilding projects, for coronavirus issues and for racial justice, and all of this with a standout record when it comes to supporting minorities — a record that is earning Dorsey respect from experts and is surprising even those who originally saw the announcement as a self-serving publicity junket...
Billionaires feel almost burdened by their enormous wealth, wealth advisers say, and feel such a responsibility to not screw up giving it away that they end up doing nothing — stockpiling money into private foundations or donor-advised funds and saving the hard decisions for their retirements, if they ever make them at all... But advocates dream that times are a-changin' in the world of the mega-rich — if only someone could show that it's not so hard to avoid fumbles while moving real money. And that's why so many eyes are on Dorsey as he tests a new way... Dorsey's approach is highly replicable for the billionaire class — even after the pandemic — by serving as a proof point that a lot of the process and bureaucracy that stalls their charitable giving are gratuitous...
"I want to give out all my money in my lifetime," Dorsey said on a podcast earlier this month to his friend Andrew Yang, to whose nonprofit he gave $5 million. "I want to see the impacts, selfishly, in my lifetime."
The article contracts Dorsey's approach to what other tech billionaire's were saying around a decade ago.
Billionaires feel almost burdened by their enormous wealth, wealth advisers say, and feel such a responsibility to not screw up giving it away that they end up doing nothing — stockpiling money into private foundations or donor-advised funds and saving the hard decisions for their retirements, if they ever make them at all... But advocates dream that times are a-changin' in the world of the mega-rich — if only someone could show that it's not so hard to avoid fumbles while moving real money. And that's why so many eyes are on Dorsey as he tests a new way... Dorsey's approach is highly replicable for the billionaire class — even after the pandemic — by serving as a proof point that a lot of the process and bureaucracy that stalls their charitable giving are gratuitous...
"I want to give out all my money in my lifetime," Dorsey said on a podcast earlier this month to his friend Andrew Yang, to whose nonprofit he gave $5 million. "I want to see the impacts, selfishly, in my lifetime."
The article contracts Dorsey's approach to what other tech billionaire's were saying around a decade ago.
- Jeff Bezos: "Sometimes I think we try to solve problems before we understand the problem."
- Google co-founder Sergey Brin: "Our philanthropy is something I want to take my time with and develop and systematize."
But since then Brin "has largely remained AWOL in the world of major giving," the article points out, possibly due to an overabundance of caution. "[B]y modeling an alternative, Dorsey is offering one of the most convincing rebuttals."
410th Weathiest Person (Score:5, Funny)
Re:410th Weathiest Person (Score:4, Interesting)
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Wealth != Money.
You can be a Wealthy person and Money poor. The term is Liquidity.
The richest people in the world don't have a Scrooge McDuck style money bin. But their wealth is spread out across assets at a different degree of difficulty to sell for cash.
Most of these billionaires, have their money into their businesses building, machinery, staff, retail locations, stocks. While stocks are rather liquid compared to the other stuff. It is selling power in the companies they have stock in. So it may
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He's worth $5bn, I'm sure he can fish a few bucks out of his sofa.
Put Up or Shutup. (Score:3)
Talk is cheap. Hell, this was free.
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Pay Your Fucking Taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
How about those billionaires pay taxes just like the middle class. No fucking offshore tax haven cheating and get rid of the last two decades of tax cuts. You have 'D' grade infrastructure, are you going to donate to that, how the fuck about something constructive like a high speed rail network connecting all US capitals plus surrounding satellite cities, higher density regional developments to cut the suburban sprawl. How about working to ensure full access for all regions to a high speed fibre optic network at low cost. How about not offshoring labour to feed your greed and deny you customers a job.
Don't want you fucking donations, stop being, insanely greedy psychopathic cunts and start paying for what you have received and stop screwing the fucking little people. Stop fucking censoring, stop fucking invading their privacy, stop fucking trying to control them, stop squeezing their salaries to pump up your own so you can moronically pose about handing out money to the pathetic poor you fucking create by your psychopathic greed to feed your ego.
Wealth it clogs the brain, it feeds it the bullshit, it hides from reality, live is a quest for the future for every person, for every living thing, you deny life a future and it will deny you, leave you behind to fade in the void a silent scream in the dark. You working to create poverty with the majority suffering as a result, is not 'paid' for, you life debt not relieved by occasional self aggrandising donations.
Re:Pay Your Fucking Taxes (Score:4, Insightful)
No mod points to give, but this, in every way. Daniel Markovits makes a good point, which is that all these mega-corporations are making their billions using things that belong to the people -- our personal data; publicly-funded infrastructure; and of course the massive amounts of labor by the armies of underpaid drones working around the world. In a very real sense their wealth belongs in part to the people. It's time to stop sucking the cocks of people like Tim Cook or Jeff Bezos when they donate, to a given cause, what is effectively a rounding error on their company's balance sheets. We shouldn't be beholden to the goodwill of these assholes. Pay your fair fucking share.
Re: Pay Your Fucking Taxes (Score:2)
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Great idea, who would maintain the roads? Who would take away your rubbish, and where would they dump it if there was no government to impose dumping restrictions.Who would do health and safety inspections or maintain the illusion that there is someone doing health and safety inspections?
Who would stop some other country from invading? Who would pay the police?
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Actually road-building and waste removal can and has been handled by private interests.
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Yes if you have loads of money but if you are poor then there are no roads for you and your waste will not be removed. Having loads of poor people without any sanitation is a recipe for disaster. Diseases and contamination will soon follow.
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Ummm you sure about that? Private road building is toll roads. There used to be a lot more of them around than there are now, and they are kind of a pita, but you get a road without having to pay taxes on it. Which is kind of nice. Believe me, the poor do wind up paying taxes on things like roads whether it comes directly or indirectly out of their hides.
As far as waste removal goes, there are lots of private waste removal services out there that charge about as much as government-owned trash services.
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And who paid for that? And how was the money collected?
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Actually road-building and waste removal can and has been handled by private interests.
And they're interested in maximizing their profit, not providing the best possible service to the community. Understand that logistically isn't always possible or efficient to open up all services to competition, and some services simply aren't conducive to profit.
Government serves an important role in society and I would wager that any attempts to live without it would eventually regress back to an obvious form of government with most people being served well by its functions and others constantly bitchin
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What it clearly is not... is a practical solution to every fucking problem
You're right. Slavery is much more practical. I like driving on cheap roads, so I'm going to force you to pay for the road I want. I live in the middle of nowhere...it's sorta marshy out here. The government had to dig down about 10 feet, lay a bunch of boulders, pack it was gravel, and inject concrete. They built the road bed up about 16 feet, and then did a bunch of dirt work so everyone's driveways were 'fixed' so they could connect with the new higher road. It cost millions. We have 4 families t
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Okayyyy.... ? I'm not sure what was the point though. There are real-world situations where people have handled problems like roads and trash removal without government doing it. We're talking practical, real-world solutions to problems that do not involve an elected official telling us how and when to do things. Not simply ideological thought experiments.
Granted, sometimes toll roads are a really bad idea. And sometimes they aren't.
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While trash pickup is easy to privatize, there's still the dumping problem, industry will go for the cheapest solution when it comes to dumping.
Toll roads around here depend on a private/public partnership. Government guaranteeing loans and profits, government handling the land side. In a purely private world, just acquiring the land to build a road on could be quite the undertaking and expense, defeated by one holdout.
Consider the railroads being built in the 19th century, needed huge government grants to
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Government can not replace philanthropy as long as election cycles happen so frequently. Government is very ill suited to tackle most of the large scale problems of our time, because these problems require long-term thinking and solutions that take 10,20,30 years. They are not the kinds of problems that get tackled during a 2-4 year election cycle.
https://www.philanthropyroundt... [philanthro...dtable.org]
Felt good? (Score:3, Insightful)
Aaaah. I bet that felt good to let that out. Cool deal.
And now ...
1% of Americans pay 37.3% of the taxes.
10% pay 70% of the taxes.
I AM paying my taxes, and paying most of your share too.
You can keep whining if it makes you feel better. For me, I'd prefer to spend my time improving my situation than jealously whining about someone else's. Your call on which you put your time and attention toward.
Re:Felt good? (Score:4, Insightful)
22%, not 70% (Score:4, Informative)
The top 1% earners pay 37.3% of the taxes and get 22% of the income.
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As a non-moron, perhaps you by now realized that the two percentages he listed could be recursive with each other, i.e. the Top 1% vs the Top 10%.
Re:Pay Your Fucking Taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost none of these people are actually doing charity, which is them giving a million dollars to an organization, taking the write-off, and then letting the people do what they do. They are creating their own foundations. They are demanding representation. They are using their money to shape the world to meet their expectations.
Proper taxation restores the democratic process. That is the basis of the US. We shouldn't have aristocrats telling us what is good for us. We should not be developing a ruling class. We are not a number, we are humans with free will.
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Indeed, you can be some racist slave trader arsehole and the prime minister or president will still back you up over a hundred years later when people say maybe it's not such a good idea to have a statue worshipping you.
Remove the statues of the slavers and war criminals, put up statues of the people that defeated their nasty practices - so that history can remember the right people, the people that deserve a statue.
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I would agree with you whole-heartedly if
a). the people tearing down those statues knew who those people really were and
b). the same people would put up tasteful statues dedicated to those who defeated said slavers
Sadly, in the United States, I doubt many people really understand anything about the Confederacy, including those who wave its battle flag (you never see any of the other Confederate flags, and if you did, most people wouldn't recognize them). They know even less about the Union generals and abo
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Yup, sounds about right.
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Hell, you can set up your factories today in the worst places imaginable, ones where workers are forced to work so much that many commit suicide. And you'll be lauded for making the products white and shiny and with the letter i.
Back several hundred years ago the slave trade was seen as "one of those things", god knows the slaves were already slaves when purchased, and at least the first half of the Atlantic slave trade were given freedom after years of servitude (as that was the way things were too).
Today
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Are you actually trying to imply that the way black people were enslaved wasn't so bad because it was 'one of those things' and because eventually after half a lifetime of slavery they might of been freed into massively racist societie
Re:Pay Your Fucking Taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
The alternative for those captives was : a) sold into slavery which would have resulted in them eventually being free men.
b) ritual human sacrifice.
the west africans [persee.fr] who were taking slaves were doing both of these, if the excess slaves had not been saleable, they would have been horribly killed, like the thousands of war captives before the portuguese discovered Africa.
There are plenty more black people who have statues to them who were cunts. There's one of Shaka Zulu in London, killed millions of blacks as they swept through southern africa like animals. Or the likes of Ghandi - massive racist, and turned out to be a paedofile too. Nobody is a saint, even the saints turn out to have a dodgy past, the problem is the selective viewing of them.
And yes, it was one of those things - at the time, it was accepted. Just like in Roman times, and Viking times, and Islamic times ...err.. today where slavery is currently being practiced.
So if you want to complain about slavery - and good that you do - complain about it all, not just 1 rather small part of human slavery throughout history because it suits your modern-day political BS.
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None of that makes it right. Raping and pillaging wasn't right either - or would you class that as just the way it was too?
Are you or are you not implying that the slavers statues should not be torn down?
Are you or are you not saying that black people should not have statues because a couple of people that you cherry-picked had a bad mark against them.
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Nothing in the past can be "put right", it happened.
Taking down a statue doesn't help those slaves one bit. Doesn't change history at all. Doesn't change the socio-economic reasons for slavery in those times.
All it does do, it pretend that it never happened, like putting the sofa over that wine stain. Those statues were not put up becuase they were slavers, it was because of their other activities. Colston (for example) was a moneylender, that's really where he made his cash, and then he got given a nice pl
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I think the better point being made (even if unintentional) is that we should still be trying to abolish slavery in this country and abroad where our economic interests have forced it. We offshore our sweatshops and just don't treat it like slavery. But it isn't very removed.
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This kind of action should be done globally, we should have minimum standards of living. We get 'trade' treaties that are designed to lower standards and prevent governments from protecting people and the environment when we really need the complete opposite - treaties to protect people and the environment.
People are not watching, corporations are usurping national laws by writing treaties to over-ride laws them and instituting kangaroo courts filled with their own lawyers to oversee these kangaroo courts (
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Nice try.
Straw man in there somewhere at the point you decided to put words into my mouth.
And BTW, where did the 'rich people' get their money? It's funny how it's fine for a rich person to earn a million a year but it's not ok for a poor person to ask for a reasonable wage for the work they do.
You work hard then you should get paid fairly.
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If you earn $30k/yr then you are "the rich" by global standards. You complain about global living standards but don't seem willing to give up your own money.
The logical conclusion to all of this is that to make everyone truly 'equal' means everyone has to be equally poor. You first.
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People being paid fairly, does not mean every needs to be paid the same, another straw man there.
People who work in sweatshops are typically paid 1% or less of the value of the the item they are producing. If consumers paid the extra 1% to make sure the person producing the goods was paid fairly, then those consumers wouldn't suddenly have given all of their money away and become the same status as the person producing the goods.
Do you think anyone needs a billion dollars? That level of wealth is pointless.
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What are you going on about?
Since when does people getting paid fairly mean you get stolen from? How does that make any sense?
If people get paid fairly for the work they do then they don't need to use food banks or apply for food stamps or get benefits in general to supplement a wage that isn't enough.
If people can't afford to buy enough food then they are not being paid fairly, I'm not suggesting everyone should be able to buy a yacht. Being paid fairly means people can afford reasonabl
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The reason most very wealthy people want control over their giving has nothing to do with wanting to "set the agenda outside the democratic process" - it is because government is extremely inefficient at many charitable missions, and also because certain missions simply can not be executed well by government.
Gates talks about this a lot. Government is by its very nature very focused on short term goals, due to a combination of . politicians looking for "wins" within a 2-3 year timeframe so that they can tac
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What do you imagine happens with tax money? You think there's a big Scrooge McDuck money-pool under the white house for the President to play in?
Taxes get spent, which puts the money back into the economy in whatever places the legislature has decreed.
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how the fuck about something constructive like a high speed rail network connecting all US capitals plus surrounding satellite cities..
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Be careful what you wish for, you may get it.
The fortune of all those billionaires is not _income_, it is _wealth_. What's the difference? Income is recurring, while wealth (by itself) is static. If you tax half their wealth, that half is gone, and it will never come back (unless replenished through income).
But let's roll with it: let's say you just tax wealth over $100,000, for example at 50%. But don't forget: that law also applies to you!
Do you have a pension fund? Is it over $100,000? Shame, seems you l
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Nobody would tax wealth at 50%, that'd be insane. We do have it here in Norway, tops out at 0.85%/year. Normally not a big deal, but it hurts one group in particular and that's start-ups not paying dividents but with a booming valuation. We have people who've really struggled to pay their taxes because it's all paper wealth that would be silly for a founder to sell at that time.
Re: Pay Your Fucking Taxes (Score:2)
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Every modern country already has a wealth tax. It's typically set around 2-3% per year. It's called "inflation." One of the problems is that it's a flat tax, so if you're a minimum wage earner saving up an emergency fund or a billionaire, you pay the same 2%.
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The scary thing is that if all that money went to the government, it still wouldn't be "enough".
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Yeah, but then the hated Drumpf would get the money. This way their cash goes to really important things like "racial justice" groups (who are not at all simply political shills for the opposing political side)
So that's why your sane approach will never happen.
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You can't pay tax you don't owe. The IRS doesn't take donations.
Capital gains are taxed at a tiny rate, much lower than standard income tax brackets.
You want real reform in the tax system, its relativelty simple
- Capital gains should be taxed as regular income. Period.
- Inheritances over $1M should be taxed at an extremely high rate, like 75% or maybe even more.
- Donations and endowments to foundations over $1M SHOULD ALSO be taxed at an extremely high rate.
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How about those billionaires pay taxes just like the middle class.
Nah. You see, that approach, while much easier, would remove two key components of it all:
a) it wouldn't be headlines and good PR when you give a part of the money you stole back
b) you can't decide by yourself anymore when it's convenient for you to do so and when not
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Yeah. We've already got a system set up to redistribute wealth to people who need it, and to fund and manage collective projects. Decisions about how that happens, and which projects are funded are made through election of directors by all stakeholders, who in turn recruit and appoint experts.
They're called (democratic) "governments" and the way you give money to them is called "taxes."
What the billionaries are really having trouble with is deciding how best to use their wealth to steer society in the direc
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Retirees simply can't support the government to the same level that wage-earners can. Property ownership being tied too much to continual commitment is an undue burden.
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Libertarians and conservatives think they can do a better job than the government.
In certain areas, yes, abso-lutely. In other areas, nope.
Contrast this with the sotzis, who think the gov is god and should do all things for all people.
A rebuttal? (Score:2)
More like an alpha test. Brin knows well enough to test thoroughly before bringing something out of beta [slate.com], and better if you can find out how things work for others first.
Will he make a difference? (Score:4, Interesting)
Bill Gates is combating malaria, which infects millions of people every year. He is also the biggest backer of Khan Academy.
Jack Dorsey seems to be choosing his projects much less wisely. The government is already spending trillions on Covid relief, so it seems unlikely Dorseys $100M will even be noticed. He is also promising to fund a UBI test project, but those are horrendously expensive if they are done right, and they tend to be done by activists who have already decided what the result is going to be (i.e.: That UBI is a super good idea).
Re:Will he make a difference? (Score:4, Insightful)
Since retiring from Microsoft, Bill Gates' fortune has doubled in size from ~50 billion to ~100 billion. Make no mistake, his foundation is an investment vehicle, not a charitable one.
Re:Will he make a difference? (Score:4, Insightful)
His wealth is still based on Microsoft stock. Of course he's worth more if the company's stock goes up. He can't sell off that much at once or else it would trigger a warning on the stock market. You can't sell off that much stock at once.
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If they were to liquidate their stock aggressively it would cause the stock prices to drop dramatically. Whic
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For many of them, selling the stock means they would surrender influence over the companies they founded.
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The money is going to charitable causes.
So what if it's growing, it's still funding good causes.
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Yes, Bill Gates sure did a great job... fixing his reputation. Spending all the money he doesn't need while still making more money then he could ever spend.
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Bill Gates is combating malaria, which infects millions of people every year. He is also the biggest backer of Khan Academy.
He also makes sure a lot of that money goes right back to pharma companies he owns shares in, and that he crowds out other NGOs who've been doing good work since long before he decided to be remembered for something else besides his criminal business practices.
I still refuse to believe just how effective this whole philanthrophy thing is in white-washing an image. You couldn't buy such good PR if you trie... wait... oh...
Instead of hoarding the money ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Instead of hoarding the money ... (Score:4, Interesting)
How about unionizing to achive that instead of blaming the owner for wanting more (everybody wants more, even the workers)?
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The downsides can include:
- lack of flexibility for the business so it can't compete again
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Well he could just offer a lot of the liquid capital he holds as a bonus to his current and former employees. Or something like that.
VOX populi (Score:5, Interesting)
The entirety of this article is supported by referenced links to the same parent website.In and of itself, that fact generates serious questions as to the legitimacy of this story, regardless of how much one may *want* this to be a *good8 story.
Prediction (Score:3, Insightful)
That money he donated for racial justice won't help anyone get anything like justice. I will guess it gets spent on ads and projects that have announcements and PR but essentially no real world benefit to anyone not on the organization payroll.
Racial justice is a buzzword. Individuals who need help don't need "racial" help. They don't don't need a buzzword.
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Every dollar donated to BLM online goes to ActBlue, the David Brock PAC for Dem political candidates. It's the biggest scam in years.
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Informative)
No, every dollar donated to BLM online goes through ActBlue. It is serving as a payment processor [thedispatch.com]. They skim a few percent off the top, but that basically just covers their merchant account fees.
Re:Prediction (Score:4, Insightful)
Just stop. They couldn't use Paypal, Kickstarter, Indiegogo or any of the dozen other legitimate payment processors? It's just a coincidence that all the money goes through David Brock's hands with a no-refund policy and TOS that says ActBlue can decide to spend the money on whatever they want? You cannot be stupid enough to believe that.
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Just stop. They couldn't use Paypal, Kickstarter, Indiegogo or any of the dozen other legitimate payment processors?
Just stop yourself. Of the three companies you listed, none are payment processors, only PayPal is a payment gateway, and the latter two are wholly unsuitable for this sort of thing, since they charge a 5% platform fee on top of processing fees that range from 2.9-5% + a flat rate per transaction.
I have no horse in this race. I have no idea about the validity of the BLM organization (or whatever form of group it may be) and I have no idea who ActBlue or David Brock are, but from what I recall it's not uncom
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
No. every dollar donated goes to ActBlue, and then it goes..... where?
nobody wants to look, nobody wants it accounted for. And if BLM doesn't collect it (and I'm told BLM isn't an organisation anyway, mainly by people who say that so it cannot be targetted as a group like antifa was) then they cannot collect it.
And then it gets passed to the democrat election campaigns anyway. How convenient.
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Sorry, but that is a list of donations *to* ActBlue.
So John Zyskind can send $100 to ActBlue, and that goes to... erm...
right, so lets have a look at donations *from* ActBlue to something with the name Black in the title - and I do not see any recipient called "Black Lives Matter" or a variation of that.
There is a Black Progressive Action Coalition (C90017997) that's the closest I could find, and it received $0.
so if only you could think for yourself and have done this before posting, but thanks for the lin
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Yeah, want to get that kind of justice for real? Start a law firm, hire the best lawyers you can find, and pay them half again more than the going rate, but with the condition that they have to spend 50% of their hours doing pro bono criminal defense work. Repeat in every major city. The goal should be to raise the median competence of public defenders be comparable to that of the DAs that are prosecuting the case. That's the only way to (approximately) guarantee that trials are decided based on the qu
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They could just lobby to repeal or limit the laws in the first place. Every law some busybody wants is a law that eventually gets used against minorities. Every prohibition on conduct gives police a reason to mess with people they don't like. Every traffic law is an opportunity for police to make a driving while black traffic stop that puts lives and safety at risk.
Gun laws are a good example. I keep pointing out that it's not middle-aged rural white guys serving time on a gun charge. Something like 90
Where do I sign up? (Score:2)
</humor>
Make giving genuinely fashionable again (Score:2)
The rich want praise. The robber barons of old built many useful public projects like libraries and were proud of the legacy.
Billionaires (Score:3, Insightful)
Once you get into "billionaire" status, sorry but your morals are broken anyway.
You could give away the interest on that money (which would be 10's of millions) and suffer no loss whatsoever. Your kids would still be billionaires, and would their grandkids and so on.
A billion is such an incredibly enormous amount of money that people who have that lying around could literally do anything. They could give away 99.99% of their entire wealth, and STILL live a millionaire lifestyle. It's that ridiculous.
It's an absolutely sickening amount of money. It's a thousand times more money than some decent people will earn collectively in their entire working lifetime.
You can't teach morality to people who have that amount of money and just sit on it. That they have it available to themselves, in any form, and decide to hoard it, avoid tax on it, or just sit on it means that they are knowingly choosing to be amongst the most selfish people in the world. A sum of money that could seriously dent millions of people's problems, or give hundreds of thousands of people a lifestyle they've never experienced, the effects of which would last for the rest of their life.
Above a certain value, there should be a 100% tax rate. One billionaire is nowhere near as taxable as a thousand millionaires, and a thousand millionaires is far better for the country/world as a whole.
They're rich enough to own entire portions of the globe. And we have to teach them to maybe give some money back to the systems that help others do things like eat, live and clothe themselves?
Re:Billionaires (Score:4, Interesting)
And what exactly are you going to do with the money when you cash out? Hookers and coke are all fine, but there are practical limits to how much you can actually consume. You can't really spend billions other than by outright giving it away or by wasting it by doing bad business. If you buy something like a villa or something you don't actually decrease your net worth any, all you do is convert one form of asset into another.
Re:Billionaires (Score:4, Funny)
Hookers and coke are all fine, but there are practical limits to how much you can actually consume.
Citation needed. I volunteer to personally go establish just what such an upper limit might be, in the unlikely case it exists.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
This is the correct way to do things (Score:2)
Burdened by their wealth (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh boo hoo. Not as burdened as I feel by my student debts, I imagine.
Quickly? (Score:2)
Well, if it's all 100 Dollar bills, it weighs over 11 tons, so not that quickly.
Easy Solution: Corporations are Considered "People (Score:2)
If corporations want to be consider individuals in the eyes of government (for lobbying) , the corporations need to pay individual income tax rates as the cost for that privilege.
Otherwise, fuck off with your tax breaks and STFU!
Corporations are not people.
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I'm very conservative but do recognize the income/wealth gap to be a serious problem that if left unchecked will eventually destabilize society. Perhaps a heavy estate tax should be considered. I don't think we should confiscate the wealth people have earned legitimately but there's no reason their children should inherit billions for merely existing. THOSE are the people to fear, trust-fund kids who have never worked a day in their lives or had to deal with normal people suddenly having enough money to f
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No one can legitimately generate 10 million dollars a year of value. You can't, I an't.
OK, but I want to hear your explanation for why not.
Re: Robin Hood Thought Experiment (Score:2)
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So, the surgeon who saves the life of this CEO should also get $10M?
And what about the teacher who educated the CEO? Also $10M?
And the worker who built the road that allowed the CEO to get to the meeting? Also $10M?
The thing is that the CEO doesn't live in complete isolation from society. They use the social infrastructures in their benefit.
They didn't single-handedly saved the company $100M. It was a team effort and they should split the gains between the rest of the players.
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What an arbitrary number. Why not $8 million? Why not $80 million? Let's just all pull numbers out of thin air to feel better.
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What did Jack Dorsey possibly do to earn that kind of money, and did he do it at others' expense? What has he produced? What contribution to society has he made?
He arguably made a large contribution towards getting our current president elected, when he built his platform.
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He arguably made a large contribution towards getting our current president elected, when he built his platform.
I'd argue that should be grounds for seizing his entire fortune.
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You're not even trolling are you, you're just a nasty human lacking in caring for other humans and are massively ignorant and stupid.