Jeff Bezos Says He Will Give Away Most of His Fortune (nytimes.com) 206
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, said that he would give away most of his money to charity, making him the latest billionaire to pledge to donate his vast fortune during his lifetime. From a report: Mr. Bezos is worth $124 billion, making him the world's fourth-richest person, according to Bloomberg. In an interview with CNN released on Monday, Mr. Bezos, appearing with his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, said they were making preparations "to be able to give away this money." He said that he wanted to give in a way that maximized the impact of the donations. "It's really hard," he said. "And there are a bunch of ways, I think, that you could do ineffective things," he said. It was the first time that Mr. Bezos announced that he, like several other billionaires, would give away the bulk of his wealth. In 2020, Mr. Bezos pledged to give $10 billion to combat climate change as part of an initiative called the Bezos Earth Fund. Previously, his largest donation was a $2 billion gift to help homeless families and start preschools.
he had ample chance (Score:4, Insightful)
up till now he mostly gave it away to himself and his insanely expensive hobbies, screwing up the planet even further.
How about he starts "giving away" by paying his workers a decent wage so they do not need to be on government-subsidized food stamps? Or is that too socialist?
If he was a decent man he would not have this issue.
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also, it would probably be a tad more convincing if he would actually give something away instead of keeping it all in his pocket and just promising he would. Hey Jeff whats holding you back? You need 100 likes on your facebook first?
Re:he had ample chance (Score:5, Interesting)
A scumbag businessman I once new -- he made most of his money suing his own customers -- many, many, years ago took a good friend of mine under wing. Like a protege of sorts. Anyhow, one of the secrets of being a scumbag businessman that was shared with me was this:
Have two businesses: one for profit, one not-for-profit. As he put it: "You've got money in this pocket and in this pocket", he said patting one side then the other, "but it's all still in your pants!"
That's what I think about every time I hear a billionaire "giving away" money. Inevitably, it's to their own foundation.
Re:he had ample chance (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, you were mentored by Larry Ellison.
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Typos happen. Now more than ever, thanks to autocorrect.
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Haven't you heard, "pledging" is all the new rage.
Attorney Grills Amber Heard On Failing To Donate $7M From Divorce Settlement to Charity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:he had ample chance (Score:4, Informative)
By all accounts Amazon workers are, actually, decently paid, it's just the rest of the job is utterly shitty. So what we actually want him to do about that is not treat his workers like shit.
Amazon has an appalling employee retention rate in its warehouses https://www.popsci.com/technol... [popsci.com] . Clearly their employees arent being compensated enough for such shitty work and are instead being treated as disposable as well compensated employees dont have such shitty retention rates.
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Dumbshit, they hire 100,000 **TEMPORARY** warehouse workers every Christmas season. They're hired knowing that it's temporary work from the beginning, and a surprisingly large number of them come back the next year again. I know of one woman who has worked 14 of the last 15 Christmas seasons, that doesn't happen if you feel that you're being abused.
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I worked at Amazon nine years, including with people who had started at the FCs and gone perm into the Corporate offices. I've also done warehouse work at Target and another location, what my co-workers described was a *lot* better than where I had worked with better pay and benefits. Having said that, warehouse work sucks everywhere, there's always a lot of turnover.
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> ... absurd ones with deductions just creates jobs for accountants.
Agreed. But progressive taxation makes sense and 90 % will be reached at some point, just maybe not on an income of a million dollars a year. Same goes for 99%.
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Um, no, progressive taxation doesn't "make sense". Why should someone who produces more be taxed at a higher rate? Why should a physician who did crazy hours in school get taxed at a higher rate than a dropout at McDonald's?
Re:he had ample chance (Score:5, Insightful)
If you make $1,000,000 per year, that tax rate won't cause you to starve, it may take a Porsche away though.
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He could buy the entire country a four year degree.
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Amazon pays warehouse workers a fair bit above minimum wage, so they wouldn't be on food stamps - the bigger issue is that working in an Amazon warehouse is likely to put a worker on long-term disability...
Re:he had ample chance (Score:4, Insightful)
If he was a decent man he would not have this issue.
Yeah, but decency can always be bought later by way of philanthropy.
It's also one hell of a tax deduction.
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I thought everyone knew that Amazon paid well. The complaints against Amazon are about working conditions not pay. It's kind of like the old Ford assembly lines, where they created a super efficient system that workers hated, so they had to pay really high wages (relative to others at the time) to get people to stick around. This had the effect of raising wages for other jobs in nearby areas. Amazon is doing the same thing today, churning through workers (because of the tedious work) and in the process
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How about he starts "giving away" by paying his workers a decent wage so they do not need to be on government-subsidized food stamps? Or is that too socialist?
I was about to respond that giving his money to employees wouldn't do much, but after doing the math it actually could do some good. $124 billion put into a fund paying out 4% per year increasing to inflation to all Amazon warehouse workers would provide the average worker about $5000 per year (a $2.50/hr raise for a full time worker). That is impactful for someone making around $20 per hour.
But significant change would come from changes to business practices, not charitably giving away some of the proceeds
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Amazon's employee retention rate is ridiculously low https://www.popsci.com/technol... [popsci.com] . Clearly they're treating their employees as disposable rather than paying a wage that is properly compensatory to the work they are doing.
Maybe you don't have a problem with company's that treat their employees as disposable but plenty of people have a little thing called empathy and don't like to see others so mistreated just because they operate in a different tier of employment.
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Well you're obviously not correct as going off their retention numbers clearly once the employees have started the job they're finding that they're not being compensated enough for the work that is being asked of them. You just don't get retention numbers like that from employees who feel that they are well compensated for the work.
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Article needs a more accurate headline (Score:2, Insightful)
Lol (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lol (Score:5, Informative)
This level of wealth should not be allowed. It belongs to society (ie: government) which can use it for public services and social welfare, not to a single guy.
It's not like it's sitting in a bank. He founded a company, that company became immensely successful, so that wealth is the value of those shares in the company.
You could try taxing the value of those shares directly, but now the tax bill is bouncing around with the stock market (should Zuckerberg's tax be halved because is company's stock took a dive this year?).
Not to mention, if you do that for publicly traded companies you have to do the same for private companies, but those are even harder to value, especially in the case of early stage startups.
It is best to go after it when they turn it into actual cash (assuming the government doesn't let them get away with blatant fraud [propublica.org]).
As for being able to turn that $124B into teacher salaries or something, those shares will get sold eventually, though it might be a few generations down the line, but I'm not sure someone controlling companies with a big paper valuation is really affecting the current economy.
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It is best to go after it when they turn it into actual cash
What if they never turn it into cash?
you could try taxing the value of those shares directly, but now the tax bill is bouncing around with the stock market (should Zuckerberg's tax be halved because is company's stock took a dive this year?).
Yes, it should, but only because we should have been taxing assets instead of income in the first place.
private companies, but those are even harder to value
So is my house, but the county seems to be able to figure it out.
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It is best to go after it when they turn it into actual cash
What if they never turn it into cash?
Then what? There's certainly ways to get perks from owning a bunch of a company, but economically it's a bunch of book valuation sitting around doing nothing.
private companies, but those are even harder to value
So is my house, but the county seems to be able to figure it out.
Houses are a lot easier to value (though still very tricky) and there are quantifiable characteristics (square footage, bathrooms, etc) you can use.
But a company? I'm co-founder of a pre-seed startup. What the hell is our valuation? $100k? $1m? $10m? If you started taxing us personally on that paper valuation we'd probably have to shut down.
And more im
Re:Lol (Score:5, Interesting)
You could try taxing the value of those shares directly, but now the tax bill is bouncing around with the stock market (should Zuckerberg's tax be halved because is company's stock took a dive this year?).
Not to mention, if you do that for publicly traded companies you have to do the same for private companies, but those are even harder to value, especially in the case of early stage startups.
It is best to go after it when they turn it into actual cash (assuming the government doesn't let them get away with blatant fraud [propublica.org]).
While you do make some good points vis a vis the fluctuation of the market, making it problematic to tax the "potential" value based on the current market price, you're also missing a large part of how the ultra wealthy actually use those assets.
When Bezos wants to buy a new mansion he doesn't cash in his stocks to get the cash to buy it, that would trigger Capital Gains he'd have to pay income taxes on. Instead he borrows the money from a bank while putting an equivalent amount of assets up as collateral. Because he's taken on new debt, it's not considered income so he doesn't pay any Capital Gains on it - he still owns those shares, they're just set aside as collateral.
He buys his mansion and when it comes time to pay off the loan, instead of cashing in shares to cover the cost of the loan (which would trigger Capital Gains) he simply lets the loan default allowing the bank to keep the assets while allowing him to write off the loss of assets against the debt being covered. He acquired tens of millions of dollars to buy a new mansion and paid his debts back to the bank, all without triggering Capital Gains.
To any rational person looking at this, he basically sold those shares to the bank. But because the whole transaction is done up as a loan and a loan default, under tax rules he's clear and - depending on how good his accountants are - he actually lost money and is now entitled to a tax rebate!
I don't care about taxing the pretend value of the markets, but when you take loans and then not pay it back despite you having gained liquid assets in exchange then it is a sale and should be taxed as such. The only reason we can't do the same is because our assets are typically tied up in the few large purchases (houses, cars, retirement savings) which we can't afford to default on and, if we did, our credit rating would hit the floor preventing us from ever borrowing again.
It's only those who have an overabundance of assets who can get away with this, and it's a loophole we desperately need to close. The only way I'd agree they don't have to pay taxes to take a loan out against their assets is if they later convert assets to pay off the loan, meaning they hit the Capital Gains regardless of how they do it. Hell, I'd get rid of Capital Gains altogether - whether you sell your shares or you borrow against them and don't pay it back - it's all income to me, and you should be taxed as such.
TL;DR: Regardless of how you convert your assets to liquid funds, you should be taxed on it.
Uh... It doesn't work that way (Score:4, Informative)
Happen to have a citation on this being how it works?
He buys his mansion and when it comes time to pay off the loan, instead of cashing in shares to cover the cost of the loan (which would trigger Capital Gains) he simply lets the loan default allowing the bank to keep the assets while allowing him to write off the loss of assets against the debt being covered. He acquired tens of millions of dollars to buy a new mansion and paid his debts back to the bank, all without triggering Capital Gains.
Because, guess what, when the bank takes the collateral, it does count as a sale. Hell, default on debt these days and the forgiven/written off amount can be counted as ordinary income, taxed on an even higher basis than dividend/capital gains.
What I did read the scheme is, rather than pay capital gains taxes by cashing in your investments, you take a loan. The interest rate on the loan is much less than what the tax would be. You then just make the minimum payments(yes, you have to pay taxes on the money pulled to do this, but it's less than pulling for the amount of the loan would have been). You do this literally until you die.
Then the tax bill hits, but it was going to hit anyways, and there's various levels of avoiding much of the tax hit in the inheritance tax rules. And you're dead, so you don't really care.
It's like how for upper middle class and higher people, it makes sense to keep your house mortgaged to the hilt - the interest is tax deductible, and the interest rate is low enough that you make much more money on average even in safe investments.
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You take two readings. One on June 30th, the other on December 31st. Average the two to get a value to be taxed.
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Commie spotted.
Your ideals lead to poverty, persecution and death.
Re:Lol (Score:5, Insightful)
Your ideals lead to poverty, persecution and death.
If you are from the USA it is YOUR ideals that lead to poverty, persecution, and death.
Look around you.
Hardly any other country in the whole world has such levels of desperate poverty. Just look at the streets of any major US city.
Hardly any other country fires and cancels professionals for saying perfectly reasonable things - which are, moreover, protected by your precious Constitution. (Only they're not).
As for death... the USA has been at war for 227 of the 245 years it has existed. Well over 90% of the time. I defy you to find any other nation of which that is true. All the more appalling since the USA is physically isolated from military threats, so all its wars have been wars of aggression.
Since 1945 the USA has been continually at war (always "abroad", of course) and has killed many, many millions of people who had done nothing to deserve such a fate. Just picking the low-hanging fruit, at least 3 million Korea, at least 3 million South-East Asia, at least 3 million in Iraq... and those are just the big, headline holocausts.
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You are ignorant and wrong. You've never been to major city in third world, it is hell compared to USA poor sections of cities. In the USA poor people can get food card, housing assistance, healthcare.
All the countries that confiscated wealth from the successful turned into poverty stricken hell holes.
Yes the USA has massive problem with making wars of choice, but communist countries declare war on their own, persecuting, killing, putting in concentration camps minorities (racial, sexual, gender) and do s
Re:Lol (Score:4, Interesting)
You are ignorant and wrong.
Can't wait for this one
You've never been to major city in third world
Right away you start in with an imperialist bullshit categorization that was, like slavery, designed to justify shitting on brown people.
it is hell compared to USA poor sections of cities.
When I went to TJ 25 years ago, the poor had built themselves towns made of scrap materials, and were staying warm and dry. Here in the USA, when they do that we just tear them down. When I went to Panama and CR, I barely saw any homeless, so either they're chipping and shredding them or they're letting them find places to live.
Yes the USA has massive problem with making wars of choice, but
But WHATABOUT some other shit? Thought so.
Here's a nickel, kid, go buy yourself a real argument.
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You've never been to major city in third world
Right away you start in with an imperialist bullshit categorization that was, like slavery, designed to justify shitting on brown people.
It's "imperialism" to notice that there are vast amounts of poverty in third world cities?
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> All the countries that confiscated wealth from the successful turned into poverty stricken hell holes.
The USA post 2nd world war seems to really contradict that.
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If you are from the USA it is YOUR ideals that lead to poverty, persecution, and death.
Look around you.
Hardly any other country in the whole world has such levels of desperate poverty.
LOL, have you traveled at all? Send me a postcard from Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, or South-East Asia about all the prosperity you've found. For all of the shitty things about America, people are still banging down our doors to get here.
Just look at the streets of any major US city.
Again, have ever been to Bangkok? Delhi? Nairobi?
Hardly any other country fires and cancels professionals for saying perfectly reasonable things - which are, moreover, protected by your precious Constitution. (Only they're not).
I guess you'd have to define "reasonable", because I see people fired and ostracized across the West all the time for wrongspeak. You can quite literally be arrested in the UK now for "giving offense" [theverge.com].
As for death... the USA has been at war for 227 of the 245 years it has existed. Well over 90% of the time. I defy you to find any other nation of which that is true.
Can't really ar
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Again, have ever been to Bangkok?
I agree with you there are worst place than USA but as a side note, regarding homeless population, Thailand has an unexpected low number. Probably because of their family oriented lifestyle. If you want to see homeless people I recommend SF not Bangkok.
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Again, have ever been to Bangkok?
I agree with you there are worst place than USA but as a side note, regarding homeless population, Thailand has an unexpected low number. Probably because of their family oriented lifestyle. If you want to see homeless people I recommend SF not Bangkok.
You mean the most leftist city in the biggest leftist squat of a state in the US? Yeah, I see your point.
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"Hardly any other country fires and cancels professionals for saying perfectly reasonable things"
More than a few countries "vanish" those people. So I guess you're pedantically correct, while being thematically off.
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Since 1945 the USA has been continually at war (always "abroad", of course) and has killed many, many millions of people who had done nothing to deserve such a fate.
Well, yes. But really, you have to realize that the USA desperately wants to be the "knight in shining armor". Even if they have to invent WMD as an excuse. Or destroy the government of Libya, for whatever reason - however crappy things were in Libya, after US "help" things were infinitely worse.
Then you have things like CIA rendition, and GITMO. Done by any other country, they would count as war crimes. Done by the USA? It's somehow all ok...
On the positive side, US wars are currently at a low ebb. Acc
Re:Lol (Score:4, Interesting)
"Libya: From Africa’s Richest State Under Gaddafi, to Failed State After NATO Intervention"
https://www.globalresearch.ca/... [globalresearch.ca]
"In 1967 Colonel Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa; however, by the time he was assassinated, Gaddafi had turned Libya into Africa’s wealthiest nation. Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy on the continent. Less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands".
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Hardly any other country in the whole world has such levels of desperate poverty. Just look at the streets of any major US city.
I'm assuming this is meant as a joke because it is a statement so absurd it almost defies belief. On the contrary, there are few other places in the world where you'll find homeless who are obese, or flush with enough cash to regularly purchase drugs or both. The poorest Americans live like kings compared to actual poor countries. I strongly suggest looking outside whatever echo chamber you live in and doing research on what life is actually like in poor countries where people live on a few dollars per mont
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Just picking the low-hanging fruit, at least 3 million Korea, at least 3 million South-East Asia, at least 3 million in Iraq... and those are just the big, headline holocausts.
100 million citizen slaves have died under communist socialism in that time, but hey, who's counting the efforts of countries trying to curb that kind of harm, right?
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Lying troll spotted.
Wealth redistribution is not inherently the extreme of communism.
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What the hell are you even asking? An extreme would be communism, is that answering your question?
We practice wealth redistribution in this country and we are not living in a communist system by a long shot.
Re:Lol (Score:4, Insightful)
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This level of wealth should not be allowed. It belongs to society (ie: government) which can use it for public services and social welfare, not to a single guy.
I have zero love for Jeff Bezos, and certainly wouldn't work for him. But his wealth does not "belong to society". You don't get to make that call, Monsieur Robespierre.
Re:Lol (Score:4, Insightful)
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I have zero love for Jeff Bezos, and certainly wouldn't work for him. But his wealth does not "belong to society". You don't get to make that call, Monsieur Robespierre.
No, society does. And when they have nothing to eat, the liberal and conservative alike will find themselves with one hand outstretched, and in the other a torch or pitchfork. The only difference will be whether they are surprised that events have come to such a pass.
It's a tax deduction scheme (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, he'll "give" it away, all the while still avoiding paying any taxes since his "donation" will be tax-deductible.
Re:It's a tax deduction scheme (Score:4)
I don't think you understand how deductions for charity and donations work in the tax system. Mind you, neither do I. But if you think you can donate your way into "no taxes", I think you're probably wrong.
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Most people who throw this charge around don't understand how a deduction works. It counts directly against profit/gains/income and since your tax is never 100% of your income, you will always lose more money via donation than you "gain" in tax savings. i.e. You make $100,000 and would end up paying $18k in tax but you donate $18k to charity and now owe tax on $82k which might be ~$14,760. You ultimately have in your pocket $67,240 instead of the $82k you would have if you had made no donation at all.
Are th
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You'd think wrong [irs.gov]. Donating to a non-profit gets you a nice tax deduction on what you donate. And, if properly run and registered, the non-profit doesn't pay taxes on the income. Oh, and if it is a private foundation (or one of many other kinds), there isn't anything stopping you from sitting on the board and directing how those funds are spent.
Non-profit status may make an organization eligible for certain benefits, such as state sales, property, and income tax exemptions; however, this corporate status does not automatically grant exemption from federal income tax. To be tax exempt, most organizations must apply for recognition of exemption from the Internal Revenue Service to obtain a ruling or determination letter recognizing tax exemption.
Adam Ruins Everything, Season 3, Episode 7 explains it niceley. Here's the relevant clip [youtube.com].
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Hence 'donations' in quotes. He'll figure out a way to make into some sort of tax deduction to reduce his taxes.
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It'll be donated as shares in his company. No taxes on giving shares to a non-profit. Even if you control the non-profit, which he likely will.
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In principle this is not a terrible thing. But it does allow a few very powerful and wealthy people to unsurpassed the democratic process. The priorities though often noble are not necessarily those of the people. Of course the basis of alll this is that a few wealt
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Don't forget him and his family will be a trustee of the charity he gives it to, oh, and the charrity will probably be carefully registered for political purposes, here is a video of a previous billionaire doing the same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Basically he'll likely create his own SuperPAC.
What kind of "give away" (Score:5, Interesting)
Is this the kind of "give away" practiced by bill gates, who has controlled his foundation's investments in a way that profits him (he's now worth more than he was before founding it) or the real kind?
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Is this the kind of "give away" practiced by bill gates
Let's hope so. The Gates Foundation has done wonderful work. That it's done so without burning much principal is even better because it will be able to do even more good in the future. I hope the Bezo Foundation is run just as well.
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The Gates Foundation has done wonderful work
Has it really? It hasn't wiped out a single disease, because you have to adopt strong protections for big pharma IP in order to get vaccinations, so there are whole countries where they're not interested. (they don't want to get into a situation where the WTO will summon satan all over their country if they manufacture drugs without permission in order to save the lives of their citizens.) And educators have continually stated that the foundation's influence on education is uniformly harmful, so... what has
Re:What kind of "give away" (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think you really understand what it takes to "wipe out" a disease. It's the kind of BS statement made by someone who doesn't understand how hard it is to eradicate a disease. Similar to folks who claim that we haven't "cured cancer" because there's too much profit in palliating cancer.
You also may or may not understand that Foundations are typically investments and often continue to grow. There's nothing that says you have to spend the money faster than it grows and, in fact, a good Foundation does continue to grow...and that's a good thing. It's self sustaining and can continue to do good work without further injections of money even after the founder's death. A Foundation that loses money year over year eventually dies off. So yeah, I'll take a Foundation that can last for 100 years, like the Carnegie Foundation, rather than one that ends after 10.
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I don't think you really understand what it takes to "wipe out" a disease.
In fact, I do. But that was his stated goal, so it was a lie from the beginning. I don't think you know how to recognize obvious lies, or that the people who tell them are liars. But then, bill gates has been a liar for longer than any of us have even known who he was, why change?
Re:What kind of "give away" (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, that might be his goal, but that doesn't mean a) it's a lie or b) he hasn't worked towards the goal just because he hasn't succeeded. Our goal is also to eradicate cancer but just because we haven't succeeded doesn't mean we don't try.
We have lots of goals we haven't yet achieved. Fusion. Cancer cures. HIV cures. Eliminating heart disease. You name it. That those things have yet to be achieved doesn't mean people aren't genuinely trying.
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So, back to his original question. What do you think the foundation has actually done that has done some good? As he said, the educational initiatives were actively harmful. The attempt to wipe out disease by cozying up to Big Pharma? What?
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Let's see... spends billions on actual goals, and still has money to continue to do so indefinitely... where's the down side?
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Wait, what? (Score:2)
He's getting divorced again?
Meanwhile (Score:3)
Can't say about him... (Score:3)
But it's obvious Lauren Sanchez has been giving it away for a while - since well before Mackenzie divorced him. /rimshot
What he doesn't spaff away.. (Score:2)
on suborbital rockets.
Right.... (Score:4, Insightful)
So Jeff "Need more yachts" Bezos says that "in the future" he will give away his money? Right... that is not happening. And even if he "gave" to "charity" we all know those are for tax purposes only and go to charities owned by themselves.
Elon too... (Score:5, Funny)
Elon is also giving away his fortune... except he's not doing it via charities, but via Twitter.
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Twitter is Elon's toy, and seems he broke it. [reddit.com]
Insert Editorial Cartoon... (Score:3)
Left side is Amazon workers being dropped into a grinder
Middle is gold ingots coming out of the grinder
Right side is Jeff giving away ingots saying "See what a good guy I am?"
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just 10000 of them today, so more giving to come
Bill Gates said the same thing (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that we didn't learn our lesson from Bill Gates when he said this 20 years ago means we probably won't learn our lesson from Jeff bezos doing the same thing. It's still incredibly frustrating to watch history repeat itself in such a short period of time
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Strange how it never occured to him to (Score:5, Insightful)
How about more benefits, like paid maternity and sick leave, even for the lowest-rung people?
Or maybe more realistic delivery quotas, so his drivers don't have to break absolutely all the rules given to them in training if they want to keep their jobs for more than three weeks?
I wonder exactly what kind of charities he has in mind if that didn't get on his radar.
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Maybe medical research into giving his drivers larger bladders so they don't have to pee into bottles.
Survival of the fittest (Score:2)
If he didn't run his company on full tilt like he has and give to his employees like you're fairly and idealistically suggesting, then someone else would have and put him and Amazon right out of business.
Maybe his giving it to charity later in life is the closest thing people are ever gonna get to his dispersing his wealth back to the masses in a capitalist society?
I wonder exactly what kind of charities he has in mind if that didn't get on his radar.
The kind that will put his name all over them.
And... Ro
I'm giving away my fortune (Score:2)
When I die, I'm giving everything to my wife.
Will he "give it away" like Yvon Chouinard? (Score:2)
Color me skeptical. Adam Conover explains the scheme behind "giving away" the Patagonia fortune.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Robber Barons (Score:2)
It never changes.
Billionaire endgame. . . (Score:2)
The most effective use of his money (Score:2)
Set up a fund to get politicians elected that will pass legislation to make sure that billionaires can't exist. Tax away that capital. Even modest capital taxes (2% of wealth after the first, say, $100 million) worldwide would make a meaningful difference in the lives of average people.
This really is the guilded age all over again (Score:3)
This what Carnegie and his cronies did too.
Odd how the family fortune carried on
What a coincidence (Score:3)
Only days after Elon Musk did the same.
What about his "plan"? (Score:2)
Serious question: how? (Score:2)
Where do you put $billions, that they actually improve things in the long term? That is a shockingly difficult question. Sp,e as examples of what not to do: Don't provide food, water or medicine to poor countries. That helps in the very short term, and leads to more misery in the long term. Back in 2005, a prominent African economist begged the West to "Please Stop the Aid" [spiegel.de].
How do you fix the long-term? What about education? If Bezos wants to stay in the US, the best thing might be education. Unfortunatel
Build a university (Score:2)
It's not just those students who will benefit from a high-quality low-debt education. Every student will benefit when colleges and universities competing against those low-debt schools find ways to tighten up their own tuition and fees. The consequence is making college more affordable to millions of kids a year, and that's one hell of a multiplier.
The Expanse Seasons 7-9?? (Score:3)
If he's giving it away, could us fans of The Expanse have the rounding error it would take off of the total to produce the last three books as Season 7 thru Season 9?
If they could pull it off, that would be amazing!! (Yeah, I know about the time/story issue...)
Of course this will be self-serving (Score:2)
Also, watch closely what kind of charity gets the money. That rich douche from Patagonia set up a charity to give all of his money to, but rigged it so that it is less of a "help everyone charity" and more of
Nothing new there... (Score:4, Funny)
"Jeff Bezos Says He Will Give Away Most of His Fortune "
So is Elon Musk.
Just not voluntarily.
Distraction! (Score:3, Interesting)
Ex-employees (Score:4, Interesting)
I suggest he give 80% of his wealth to employees and ex-employees of Amazon
What about his employees? (Score:2)
It won't take much.
Re: (Score:2)
+1 Informative and +1 Insightful ! Nice post!