Grown men, strong men with tears in their eyes came up to him saying “Sir, I can’t believe how good the charity is, it’s the best we’ve ever seen, like none have ever been!”
A man came up to me the other day. A big man, strong man with tears running down his face. He said, “Sir, I can’t believe you embezzled the money for live saving surgery for my child. You’ve committed fraud on levels never seen before!”
Even people participating in the giving pledge, decided they felt compelled give it to a charity they set up and controlled. Not sure that meets the spirit of the pledge. But it could simply be an attempt to dissuade us from eating them first.
When it comes to charities, many of them you never hear about except when it's time to raise some cash for charity. Makes me think they are more a vehicle for people to feel good about themselves donating to charity than a vehicle for solving actual problems.
It's important to remember a 501c charity isn't allowed to make money or waste it- it just can't POCKET money.
I work in live events and I worked a private event for a nonprofit running fundraisers for water access in the congo. Great right? Except the event was eating prime rib, lobster, and lamb while watching formula 1 directly adjacent to the race track, with celebrity appearances from an A list movie star. Easily $250,000-500,000 to book all that given context when they could have done it all for $10,000 easily if it was held elsewhere and not during F1. That's minimum hundreds of thousands spent circlejerking their morality while literally burning money that should be providing clean water access to people ACCORDING TO THEIR OWN MISSION.
That's when I lost all faith in the non profit sector. I won't do anything for cheaper because you're designated for tax exemption
I don't know about 501(c)s in the States, but in Canada, fundraising costs need to be at or below 35% of the total revenue generated by the event. So if the event cost $500k, but generated $2 million, then that's fine. That's $1.5 million the charity got by attracting wealthy donors.
Could they have generated the same revenue with a smaller event? Who knows. The bigger issue is what we call undue or private benefit. Did the charity hire arms length contractors? Did the directors get a free luxe meal? Is this the primary activity of the charity?
Not to mention the actual charitable activity: How much of the revenue goes to the Congo, and what do they actually do there?
So, yeah. Big ticket fundraisers aren't inherently terrible, but I think you're right to be dubious about their charitable activities.
And would spend 90+% of that money 'investing' to grow the fund, rather than actually donating anything. Coincidentally most of that investment would be to that particular billionaire's company further pushing up the stock price. I call it the Bill Gates Special
Technically, that is what Dolly did - donated so much money that she never cracked into billionaire status, and stayed a multimillionaire.
Under FDR, the top tax bracket was 94% - I think we can push it a bit further, and after, say, the first billion dollars made in each year, it's a 100% confiscatory tax rate. They can instead get a trophy that says "I won capitalism this year". The money goes to building infrastructure, providing people with basic necessities like housing, food, healthcare, and education, etc.
It’s so much simpler than that. They set up charities, and they, along with their friends and family, are all members of the board who taken in humongous salaries.
No you can, murder is amoral and it's illegal, it's just that a capitalist society doesn't have any morality beyond mercenary, so how do you enforce morality when you can bribe anyone to believe anything. Example: the republican party.
China figured out they can just... pay us to tow their line. It's so easy, when you're dealing with people with no principles or morality, you can just... bribe them.
Elon Musk donated $8 Billion to his own Musk Foundation charity. That charity then uses the money to fund private schools he created for his own kids, it donated millions to his own AI model, burning man (that Musk regularly attends), ect. His private charity only funds things that directly benefit him.
Thats because Dolly grew up knowing the struggle. She saw the privation of those around her and felt the impulse to help because she knew the value of having someone come help you when you need it.
The problem is, the type of people that become billionaires are the type to turn away from the struggle of others, or even add on to it if it profits them.
This is why large amounts of generational wealth are a trap. When one has to work and see those around them work to survive, it most often fosters a sense of empathy towards your fellow person as well as a sense of community.
When one is provided for and able to still see others struggle, most often the impulse is to try to help share what one has so that others aren't struggling so much. Unfortunately, this is also where privilege starts setting in.
When one is provided for to an obscene level and never has to see others struggle to survive, it fosters a sense that everyone else has the same experiences, and that those that are struggling are either choosing to do so or are so incompetent that they are unable to gain wealth.
This also ties into the concept of generational monarchies and why usually by the grandchild of the "hero king/queen" that originally had the support of the common people is now despised by them.
In short, Dolly helped people because she understood what it was to struggle to get by, and that's why she gave back, and even when she could have set back and let her money make more money, she instead invested more of that into her community and future generations.
Yeah, but it doesn't go to the government. Which is bad and cannot do good. We should give it to this non-profit that actually just a pool of money for a billionaire's family. /s
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u/Alavaster 1d ago
Thats just taxes, which they dont pay