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.
im sure its doing something like 'raising awareness' like all those breast cancer charities do where none of the money goes to actually helping people with breast cancer and straight into some ceo's pocket that makes 300k a year
It's not a charity. It's a way to stay in control of all of your money and not pay taxes on it. You pay yourself and your children salaries from it. You have it contract with your profitable businesses. You get to use that money to decide what the world's ideology is. You get to use it to own a segment of science itself by being where researchers need to go if they want funding. That's what Bill Gates did with public education the last 10 years. This is how NGOs that go on to hire death squads in South America are created. And in the meantime you spend a few decimal points on a press blitz to make yourself look like a saint.
All the while Amazon keeps using the streets we pay for, the USPS we pay for, the GPS we pay for, and on and on. That money should be taxed and returned to us and we should get to decide what it’s for.
Solving inequality through taxation in a capitalist system is like being on a boat with a gaping hole in its hull and using spoons to throw that water back in the ocean. The best it can do is slow the inevitable and inspire false hope
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.
If the charity itself is doing proper work
Bill Gates spends his charity money lobbying for privatized education and Eugenics programs.
Also paying hush money to Jeffery Epstein.
So...
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.
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...
One night I went through Gates’ “Giving Pledge” and I compared the wealth of the people who signed on in 2010 (when they started doing this pledge to give more than half their wealth to charity thing) to their wealth now. The average increase in wealth in those 12 years was like 170%, and the total combined wealth of the 50 or so signees had gone from like 250b to almost 700b. I wanted to make an effort-post with the data and more comprehensive analysis, but I got too busy and mad about it lol.
It’s crazy how profitable “charity” is for the ultra-rich
Like, imagine if Elon Musk actually did spend all the wealth he got from profiting off of the shitshow of COVID and solved climate change. He'd be hailed as a hero and the left would be stuck eating their hats for decades to come. But no, he would rather own the libs because they convinced his daughter to join their side.
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....
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.
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.
The US government? LOL. How much of the taxes goes to fossil fuel and corn subsidies and to the military industrial complex?
pledges
That weasel word is tiresome.
unify humanity
Coming from a techbro vampire, that term is especially creepy.
Unify how? 
UNIFY HOW? 
Moving $124B from the "Fuck Around Fund" to the "Fuck Around Fund (Tax Exempt)"
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
I'll believe that if his plan is to unify humanity under his rule.
If he doesn't do it, don't give him credit for doing it. If he does, be sure it's not some incestuous Nonprofit moneylaundering scheme like those foundations usually do.
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.
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.
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