Just a reminder, these donations go to his own charities as a tax deduction.
this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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If the charity itself is doing proper work, that makes sense tbh. I mean, if you had billions to donate, would you give it to some random ass organisation... Or set up your own thing to do things that you personally agree with?
If the charity itself is doing proper work
I would be utterly shocked if it was.
You'll know when these billionaire charity trusts actually have an impact because they will do everything in their power to scream it in your ear.
Agreed, and I’m find with the tax deduction if the charity works they do is legit, it’s not like he is paying taxes anyway.
That's... actually a good point.
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Honestly, I’d go for the middle option: donate to existing charities that appeal to me. I don’t want to run a charity, it sounds like a massive headache.
You’re probably a different demographic. I’d guess the kind of people that become billionaires, assuming they actually want to be philanthropic, think that they can do a better job of managing their charities than existing charities would do managing their donations.
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I'm so fucking sick of all these billionaires "pledging" their fortunes. "I promise to donate all my wealth when I die" then fucking do it you cowards, die already.
They donate their wealth to avoid taxes. Basically their families control the foundations, they donate and avoid a whole shit ton of taxes their next of kin get the money from the foundation.
Adam Conover did a video on it.
Now say this about Bill Gates and watch the downvotes pour in for... some reason
Eh, Gates is older and has shown more commitment to the idea than most. I still wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him but the foundation has done some good things for a long time. And maybe with fewer self-aggrandizing press stories compared to others.
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Let's not forget, that while they "pLeDgE", they are also literally fucking their workers at the same time and expect that it all cancels out...
Yeah, i pledge to fix all that shit i fucked up...
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This is the same thing that other billionaire did with his fortune. Gave 3 billion "away" to his own charity so his kids could inherit without paying a penny in taxes.
I make under 200k and the highest bracket I hit is 51% of my salary. Warren buffet has paid less than 10% taxes on his entire fortune. They're playing us, the new cool thing is just to say it's for the climate.
Bezos pledged 40 billion (maybe 20, can't remember) I believe in 2019.
To date he has actually donated less than $200 million of it IIRC to any climate-related funds.
It's just a bold face lie, not even taking his own charity scams into account.
Edit: also side rant: I have gotten a lot of wallstreetbets armchair investors in the past saying "b-b-but muh liquid vs assets, he would crash amazon stock."
Bezos has liquidated a minimum of $12 billion per year without even a slight blip in amazon stock. PLENTY to fulfil his pledge. People don't understand the scale of sold shares. The stock market is completely speculative bs. If he liquidated every stock of amazon in a short time after an anouncement like this, investors would absolutely speculate that it would recover, the price would lower for a week or so while every hedge fund in existence rushes to buy every single stock that they have and voila, it would magically recover within a month and bozo would not be a complete lying scumbag. It would probably cause him to be audited though which is every bilionaire's nightmare because they have all done such shady things and dodges so many taxes for so many years. At least if the IRS had any balls.
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Taxes. He should pay taxes.
What good does that do when government bans books, defunds schools and persuades people to become parents against their will and then cares more about corps then citizens? and breathe
Maybe the government wouldn't do those things if they weren't in the pocket of corporations. Corporations who buy politicians so to create tax loopholes so they don't have to pay taxes....
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Unless he's donating everything tomorrow, this is all bullshit.
First off he doesn't have 124 billion. He is WORTH 124 billion, the vast majority of it being the worth of his stakes in Amazon. If he sells all his stakes in it, the Amazon worth would plummet and he'd be worth a fraction of what he's worth today.
But lets say he has a 124 billion dollars. If he gives out 10 millions every day it will still take over 300 years. In that time his worth likely would.grow faster than he's spending it so in 300 years he'd still be worth more than he is today.
All this charity stuff is bullshit, TAX THE RICH. Taxes will give honest amounts of money to governments who can then use that money for universal healthcare, universal education, universal income...
Sacrifice the profits of parasitic shareholders for the good of society, returning America to the level of taxation when it's economy was great, putting the money back in the hands of the workers that keep the economy running? The workers that will spend their money, stimulating the economy (unlike shareholders)?
No - that's impossible! Pay no attention to the 90% top tax rate implemented by Eisenhower - a goddamn Republican.
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No. The government should take it from him as taxes that he avoided. So the people can decide how best to invest it instead of over egomaniac with a history is abusing his people.
To be honest, going all toward climate change seems better than what the government would use it for. That being said, he should definitely pay more taxes.
Dude for sure is going to spin up his own charities with lofty mission statements that he “donates” to which exclusively pitch solutions that require a lot of investment in his for-profit endeavors.
Don’t mistake money laundering for benevolence.
You know he's not really giving it away, right? I bet my bottom dollar that his assets are being transferred to a fund he controls. Because the fund is categorised non-profit, it will receive max tax write-offs.
His ex-wife on the other hand, has given away butt load of money to actual charities.
Yeah if it actually goes towards climate change and "uniting humanity" that's way better than giving it to any government.
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The US government? LOL. How much of the taxes goes to fossil fuel and corn subsidies and to the military industrial complex?
The majority of our taxes goes to social programs and healthcare. Military spending is insane, but we have to keep in mind that taxing billionaires will absolutely bring benefits to the common folks.
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I'll believe that if his plan is to unify humanity under his rule.
I pledge to not post this comment...whoops, darn, oh well. I tried.
bezos is a cuntasaurus, I'll never forget when Shatner was trying to share his feelings about the genuine experience of going into space, and cuck-lord bezo not only interrupts shatner, he sullies the moment by acting like a sore winner
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lol, "Pledge" just means, I might do it, so you can write a nice fluff peace on me and then I just conveniently forget to "Pledge" x amount.
What that means is he will invest that much in energy related projects during the course of his life. He did this the last time as well. He is not giving his money away. We are just used to turd ass quality journalism.
It's all fucking BS and theatrics, it's easy to promise shit AFTER YOU DIE.
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He should divide all the money on all the people that ever worked for him and give them each a piece.
Ah, philanthropy. When you really want to fuck shit up, while keeping a clean facade.
Someone make Gates explain all his trips to Eppstein's island already!
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Isn't this the guy who wants to abandon earth and build a stupid sphere thing in space?
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