Just a reminder, these donations go to his own charities as a tax deduction.
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.
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.
Because of course they do. Thanks for the additional info!
And there it is...
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.
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...
Was just gonna say its always some vague cause instead of an actual concrete thing they're donating to.
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.
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....
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.
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.
I agree in principle, but the government would take the money and allocate 99% of it to the military budget rather than do anything useful with it.
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
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.
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!
Billionaire promises to do the thing that people want billionaires to do and often say they are evil for not doing
People react by dragging him
????
Let's not start patting him on the back for promises he could very easily not keep.
I hope he buys the Amazon Rainforest and names it the Amazon Amazon Rainforest, and I think there's a reasonable chance of it happening if it becomes a big social media thing.
As a private owner of the land he can stop all deforestation, allow only scientists and other specialists in the land, and also make some sick branding opportunities.
Let's push to get these promises out into action.
Man who has a history of forcing people to piss in bottles says he'll start being nice
Like yeah, let me know when he actually delivers on that
Promises mean fuckall, lets see him do it first. Its a little hard to believe coming from him specifically, whatwith the peebottles and such.
Isn't this the guy who wants to abandon earth and build a stupid sphere thing in space?
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