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Who is doing the most good in the world, and how?
(kbin.social)
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this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
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Ehhhh, I'm going to have to disagree on this. She's obviously better than her ex-husband, but when you have that much money, the amount of interest/dividends it generates would likely offset her tax-deductible donations.
Also, if she has US$36.2 billion and has donated US$3.8 billion in 9 months, that would be like someone who has $100,000 donating $10500. Except you can't generate much money from interest on $100,000. The average person donating 10.5% of their assets is praise-worthy, but there are millions of people who do that without CNN articles praising their philanthropy.
I'm looking for the people who are really helping, not dodging taxes and generating publicity for themselves.
Donating a 10th of your net worth in less than a year is huge. And it only offsets her taxes by as much as she donated. Best case scenario is she sold stocks, made a profit of $3.8 billion or less, and then didn’t pay any income taxes on those stocks. But either she was awarded those stocks and taxes would have been paid taxes when she received them (meaning, even if she didn’t pay the taxes herself, that she would have less total money now) or she bought them cheap and sold high, meaning more of the total amount is profit.
So even if she didn’t get taxed on the $200k she lived on that year, taxes for that $200k still would have been paid on the assets already.
The only exception for this is basically for income-like money that is in the lower tax brackets, which is an advantage that most people have and that impacts lower-income people a lot more in terms of total percentage of taxes paid.
If every billionaire donated 10% of their net worth each year to worthy causes, we’d be in a much better place. Not as good a place as if we didn’t have billionaires in the first place, but that’s not because of the billionaires - it’s because of the system that allows them to exist in the first place.
She’s also pledged to donate a full 50% of her net worth. That’s far more than she could ever benefit from in tax breaks.
You ask for good news to help you feel better and then when I try to offer some you criticize it? You’re certainly not one of the helpers. Mr Rogers would not be proud of you. Go back to doomscrolling then.
It wasn't actually to help me feel better, I was hoping to offset some of the doom that is very widely covered by providing some much-needed attention for the people who are putting in real effort. I also hoped to learn about new people who I could support, because they don't receive coverage from their public relations spokespeople putting out media releases that are pasted into articles by journalists.
Criticism of your suggestion is not an attack on you. I'm sorry that you felt it necessary to try to insult me for expressing a difference of opinion, and I hope your day improves.
I don't care why someone does good, as long as it is something. Also, donating 10% of your income in one year is a huge donation.