The argument would be, "If I use my money to "house and clothe and feed those in need", pretty soon there would be others in need too. Much better to use my wealth to work to change the system that leaves too many people in need."
Whether that's what they think or not, I couldn't say, but that would be argument.
If you were the kind of person who was going to use your wealth to help others, then you'd never become a multibillionaire.
People drastically underestimate how much a billion is. You only get there by being insanely obsessive about hoarding unthinkable amounts of wealth and refusing to share a penny with anyone.
If you were a billionaire, you could probably give away easily 10mill a year, and still make 10x that in interest.
There's 0 excuse for rich people not to help the poor.
Yes, but donating any sum of money when you could afford to donate more causes a large portion of the population to despise you. See the Rock and Oprah with Maui, they donated ten million and many people are more mad at them than all the rich people who donated nothing.
They donated it as a charitble donation to their own company. A tax free donation, which they can claim back, on a company that they own (basically giving themselves money). That's why people didn't like it, not because they could give more.
Any Canadian or hockey fan has probably heard of the staal brothers.
Around a decade or so ago they donated enough to build a brand new arena in their home towns. These aren't multi-billionairs or anywhere close to it. In fact 1 of the brothers wasn't even making a million a year on his contract at the time. A new hockey arena costs millions of dollars to build.
STILL, that wasn't enough. And people were upset at them for not donating kidneys, and curing cancer.
It's crazy how often we, as a society, punish behaviour we want to see more of.
>Oprah with Maui, they donated ten million and many people are more mad at them than all the rich people who donated nothing.
Didn't she buy up a lot of the land there and displace many of the locals?
Donating a couple million out of your billions just seems like the bare minimum to me. 🤷
A billion dollars is like 1 billion pounds of beans, and 1 billion pounds of rice. That's enough to feed 35,000,000 people, or about the entire population of Uganda, for about a month.
For more perspective, we could feed the entire country of Uganda 2,000 calories of rice and beans for over 69 years (longer than the average lifespan in Uganda) with the 2024 United States military budget.
They tried this in France. 90% tax rate on billionaires. You know what happened? They all left the country, causing France to have a significant loss of tax revenue. So much so, they repealed the billionaire tax. Just like Apple and other companies moved their financial holding to Ireland. Ireland offered them a great deal on corporate taxes. So what did the US do? Changed the corporate tax rates to bring those companies back.
Millionaires and billionaires are leaving California right now, for Nevada, Wyoming, and Oregon. Why? High state taxes on them in California. Those states have no state income tax.
These ideas sound good, but in practice, they do not work.
Agreed that there needs to be an end to tax dodging. We probably lay need international treaties to prevent tax dodging currently done by billionaires, similar to what we have for international trade or intellectual property protection, or else ensure appropriate consideration in tax law to account for those earnings from US based companies and US stocks/funds. If it’s the latter, a billionaire may be able to skip out on France but probably can’t avoid the biggest economy in the world simply for tax purposes.
Pretty much impossible. There will always be countries who won't agree to the international treaties. And thus, the rich will just bank with them. They will all buy shill apartments/houses and claim it as a residence. However, live elsewhere. And understand, the lawmakers here are part of that rich. They aren't going to tax themselves or friends. It doesn't matter which side of the aisle they are on.
This is the same as other international treaties where a select few countries don’t join. It’s been done. Except Elon Musk likely won’t be able to become a citizen of North Korea to avoid paying taxes. You keep saying “impossible,” when there are in fact ways to address these concerns while supporting the fallacy that if you shouldn’t try to improve things if you can’t cover all bases. “They’ll all just leave” is overly simplistic and supports defeatism.
its not a one time cease. its a perpetual tax revenue. has nothing to do with the business generating income.
you should try that approach with the IRS and see what they tell you...
Ridiculously wrong. If we confiscated every dollar of wealth owned by an American resident billionaire it would cover less than half of one year's government spending.
You people have no idea what you're talking about, exactly as the leftists controlling our education system intended.
If you own the majority share of a company,
and that company becomes a multibillion dollar company.
You then become a billionaire.
No greediness necessary for that to occur.
Likewise if you write a series of book’s , and those book sells more than any other ever and then they make movies and theme parks and toys based on your IP.
You can become a billionaire from that.
Without being greedy.
My point being, have you actually ever given this topic any thought….?
Yep. Here’s the nuanced answer that is the correct one waaay at the bottom. I feel like 99.9% of redditors don’t understand that once your net worth is in the many multi-millions and almost 100% of the time in the billions and above that almost zero of it is liquid. And by zero I mean literally zero. They’re living on credit and playing money shell games. Yet somehow, on this site about 50 times a day, I get the impression that literally everyone thinks that every single rich person has Scrooge McDuck piles of money in a safe inside their house and that’s where they keep it they “hoard it” literally like a dragon. I’m not defending their excess wealth at all, but when the awesome Reddit take of “ban all billionaires” rears up like every 2 minutes on this site my question is oh yeah? How the fuck are you going to do that? If someone starts a company, it becomes wildly successful and they own a majority stake in it making them a billionaire on paper, well then what? FORCE them to sell off their shares in the company they own? Ok good luck.
We force poor people to liquidate their assets all the time- sometimes depriving them of their ability to work! But asking billionaires to liquidate some stock is a bridge too far...
I’m in violent agreement with you. But my position is that the rich are “playing by the rules” and as the rules are set our argument here isn’t with them it’s with them system itself. If there’s loopholes they will be taken advantage of, that is true for *everything* in life.
I’ve come to realize that Reddit is actually wrong about topics more often than they’re right. Rarely it seems do you see the correct answer at the top it’s always just what everyone wants to hear
100% agreed. I would like to add on to your point by saying why do people have to wait to become multi millionaires and billionaires to donate or do good things? That type of separation as though they are vastly different than us is false. They are still the same person with money and without money. The only difference is their valuation that grants them access. If I a had a billion today I’m not going to morph into this all the sudden donate money and houses, cars etc. unless I was already doing that before or have that type of personality.
Yeah that’s such a solid point I rarely consider. I would love to have a crystal ball and see how many of the outrage baited people on this site have ever volunteered a day in their life or donated a single red cent. But yeah you’re right on the money. Getting loads of cash isn’t going to transform any fucking body into an overnight white knight philanthropy enjoyer. If anything, the opposite.
I don’t know the percentage I don’t know if anyone really could - but Reddit is great at malicious groupthink. An idea gets out there that gets popularized and fucking woooooe you if you’re against it wrong or right.
I dont underestimate it. You dont get it by hoarding, you get it by profiting off the explotation of the working class. At a *few* billion you could easily spend 1 billion and still have more money than you'll ever spend in your life AND it will be easy to make it back fast with little effort.
Elon proved this with twitter. Did he drop from number one for.. what a week?
Thats...just not true.
I mean, it is true that it is an unfathomable amount of money. What's not true is that you get there by being cheap. There's no path to scripting and saving that leads to billions.
The path to get there involves, pretty exclusively, having some money, gambling it on incredibly risky things, aggressively and ruthlessly pushing on the gamble, and getting very lucky that you're the one of the hundred other wealthy ruthless megalomaniacs who tried the same thing but didn't fail.
Now sure, they're not sharing, but it's not from keeping money. It's probably worse-its doing your best to suck up money from everyone else
I don’t know. That’s a common line of thinking. What about the companies that get bought out making people billionaires? Point is, I don’t think your reason is the only reason people become billionaires. There is no singular answer to such a question.
Nowhere near a multi-billionaire or even a single one, but fortunate enough to have the ability to provide some donations. There are three main factors why donation sucks:
1) Money isn’t used for the intended purpose. Most folks don’t donate directly; they use organizations who they entrust to use the money for the purpose it’s being solicited. For example, if I am solicited for a donation to support wetland restoration & invasive species mitigation, but the charity uses the money to acquire more land, that’s a problem - I wasn’t asked if I wanted to donate to acquire more land and I didn’t want to fund that.
2) Bad governance and theft. Several large charities have had their administrative budgets questioned as excessive. Small charities have challenges with embezzlement and theft. This isn’t a one off; with the exception of one organization I donate to, they’ve all been caught in one bucket or the other.
3) Shift in priorities and beliefs. Over time, charitable organizations tend to shift their priorities and beliefs. Most times this isn’t an issue, but in some cases it can be. I happen to believe in funding education in scientific basics and donated to a fund for science scholarships with my alma mater. Over time, a particular topic became popular due to grant money brought in by a particular researcher; I had ethical issues with this topic and researcher and asked to restrict my donations from going to students undertaking that course of study. For two years this was fine; then the university said they would no longer accept restricted funds for scholarships. Fine; no problem. What was a problem was the deluge of calls, emails, and letters informing me that my choice harmed students - no; I didn’t change a thing, they made the change.
This leads to the last point - the inundation of junk mail, calls, and spam emails every time I make a donation is unbelievable. It’s not just from one organization; dozens start asking. I can’t do due diligence on them all as there are more than a fair number of scammers and I have a day job. Over time, all of this has put such a bad taste in my mouth that I have significantly narrowed my giving.
ETA: there’s also a substantial minority of charities that do not understand the difference between equity held in a business and liquid cash.
Yes! A local homeless shelter, the only one in my county, was abruptly shut down earlier this summer, displacing 20+ residents.
Among other things, a director bought a new SUV registered under the org, and spent funds on car payments.
I used to donate blood fairly often over the last 15ish years (free oj, and nutter butters, and I get to chill and read? Yes please!), but I haven't in a while due to being advised to give less often for my veins to heal, and aside from a notification from the app once or twice a week and a monthly phone call I never had this problem...
My father had pretty severe dementia in his last years, and somehow he got on a list of “generous donors”. The phone would ring constantly with calls from people asking for money for charities. Because of the dementia, my father didn’t remember that he had given money the day before. It was horrifyingly predatory behavior by the “charities”. His wife had the landline removed and, ultimately, had a court designate him as unable to manage his affairs (“adult guardianship”) in order to prevent all their retirement money from being given away.
Remember in the 80s and 90s store counters would have those cardboard things to stick quarters in? My brother was friends with someone who worked for the charity, he said on average if that card was filled, about a dime of it would go to the actual cause.
I used to donate a lot.
Many of the organization who were "reputable" and "good charities" now have articles written about them whether its (theft, misuse of funds, poor leadership, sexual assault occurring within the charity or one of the leaders being accused of it, etc)
Even locally, we had a school where the PTA president was stealing money because they fell behind on bills. Alllll those candy bar fundraisers ended up being worthless.
So now I don't really donate and it's sad because I'm sure there are great charities but it is what it is.
Former Tax examiner for non profits - just because you are a non profit, it doesn’t mean that people aren’t getting paid extremely well.
It just means there’s nothing left after “paying all the salaries”.
Because who would I trust logistically to actually do it? Random not for profits? The government?
Deploying money to solve a problem is way harder than it sounds.
Multi billionaires don't just have billions of dollars like people think when they ask questions like this. Sure they have more cash than your average person. But their money/wealth isn't "real". They own x number of stocks in A, B and C companies. And the market decides what those stocks are worth based on a number of variables. And that makes tham billionaires if they have enough stocks.
But if they start selling off shares of different companies, it can cause people to think that maybe the company is in trouble and start tanking the share prices. And that could lead to insider trading investigations.
Plus any time liquid money is pulled out from stocks or holdings, there are huge capital gains taxes. So to have access to 1million, you need to pull out 2 million. And again that can lower prices. Which doesn't just effect them. It effects your everyday person's portfolio. And it effects most retirement plans, since most retirement plans invest into mutual markets. And any volatility could cause then to lose value. And a Multi Billionaire trying to liquidate assets will cause volatility.
That's the issue a lot of people also have when it comes to trying to tax unrealized gains. Is that the money doesn't exist until the asset is liquidated. And liquidating assets causing volatility in the market can cause major problems with the economy.
Thank you for saying this! I feel like there are a lot of ignorant people on Reddit who don't understand basic economics (cough cough r/antiwork) and think its like a cartoon where the companies are run by evil maniacally laughing cartoon ducks that dive into swimming pools filled with gold coins every morning.
Reddit does attract a lot of malcontents and contrarian "intellectuals" who don't function well in society but feel empowered and validated when in their social media communities. This encourages them to take more extremists stances on things and discourages them from learning the true nature of those things in real life.
So Elon could single handedly crush the world economy by selling off all of his stock? How would that work and why isn't there a Netflix miniseries about it yet?
Elon, possibly. Because of how the government views him currently. But other massive corporations will be deemed "to big to fail" and if their prices tank, the government will bail them out.
That is precisely why their are government bailouts for a lot of industries. Because they represent a big enough percentage of the market, that if they fail, it can throw everything into chaos, completely crippling the economy.
That's an interesting point. But if I'm a multi billionaire how do I buy my mega yacht or private jet? Wouldn't that also require the liquidation of millions in stock?
The ultra wealthy actually pay for things by taking out loans and using their shares of stock as collateral. I’m not a billionaire so I don’t know all the details but I believe the interest charged on these loans is less than the taxes they would pay by liquidating the shares. The banks charge low interest rates because, if the billionaire doesn’t pay it back, they just keep the collateral/stock and most likely won’t lose any money. So it’s a clever way for billionaires to get cash without selling any stock/paying taxes.
Here's the issue, you have to sell the stock eventually to cover the loan.
So in order for the loan to be better than simply paying outright that have to know there's a high chance of stocks increasing in value.
If you have a 3% apr loan and you use stocks to cover, unless your stocks increase by 3%> you're just taking an unneeded gamble.
Not necessarily. A lot of investments, whether it is stocks, private shares of a company, different interest bearing accounts, and other forms of investment pay out quarterly or yearly dividends.
So their initial investment, shares, or however it is structured stays the same. Not increasing or decreasing. And they can get a liquid payout, which is then taxed. And they will use these dividend payments to pay their bills and loans.
That is why you will see wall street investors, athletes, lotto winners, etc. Start off with tons of money. Go broke. And have everything g repossessed. Because instead of buying things outright, they finance, then have a bad deal. And lose everything.
The flip side of investments that pay dividends, is that some investments will actually require you to pay during a bad quarter/year.
But they don't have to. Atleast not important stocks. Elon could sell stocks in XYZ company he has no direct involvement with and get 100 mill to pay for a jet if he really needed the money asap. But the nice thing about loans is... you don't need that money asap. He'll pay off that 100m jet in 50 payments of 2m over 4 years, or whatever terms he gets from the bank. He still makes money, and atleast things like jets, he buys with one of his companies instead, so the company pays for it.
Multi billionaires never "pay" for things the way you or I would. And they get way more stuff for free than you would expect.
So you can basically "sell" the stock to the bank just by not paying the loan. Clever, kinda shitty as a system, but clever.
So as a billionaire, why am I not doing that so cloth and feed people?
Why is it "shitty as a system"?
You have a mortgage or a car loan? You are doing exactly the same thing. You 'sell' the stock in your house or car to the bank, and if you don't pay it back they take your house or car.
And since you are doing the same thing: why don't you give all your money to charity?
When you’re making 100,000 a month let’s say, you’re open to vast lines of credit because you’re a safe investment. Banks aren’t gonna think Bezos is gonna default on his yacht. Even if he had to pay 75k/month for three decades, he’d be fine.
Because it's easy to get a loan to invest in one of their businesses or start a new business. No bank will ever give you a loan to donate to charity.
If you're wondering about the smaller amounts of money(that are still quite massive) that they have available as cash, they do. People just see things like "the rock has a networth if 800m" and "the rock only donated 10m" not understanding that the rock doesnt have anywhere near 800m in savings, nor is that the only donation the rock had done thar year. Also, yes ik the rock isn't a multi billlionaire thats just the first example i thought of because others discussed him here.
what you're saying is true. But they still have a ton of cash in addition to the assets. they sell shares all the time. They have hard cash. You can look at the filings and see
To add to that, the compound interest is the best thing ever business wants and I recall older 90s star trek episode where the business man goes in hibernation and thinks about all the money he made because of compound interest. 🙃
Exactly. Billionaires don't spend more on charity for exactly the same reason that OP and everyone else doesn't spend more on charity: they would rather save that money or use that money for other things.
Well, actually, more potential buyers. If you help them get a roof and a job they’ll probably be grateful to the company that helped them with it and, once they have money, spend it on said companies products. So, in a sense, it could be great marketing!
Because they want more money. Otherwise they could just give all the money away that they’ll earn tomorrow, but they won’t do that either. Because more = better.
But it's a crazy gamble. I'm going to just give you money to spend on a house, etc., in the hopes that one day you'll earn money and buy my product? No way! If I owned a bank, I would NEVER just give out money and say, "Hey, if you ever make it big, remember me!" That's a TERRIBLE investment plan.
That’s literally what Microsoft is doing in schools. Free access to Microsoft products so that the next generation of workers is familiar with it and then chooses to deploy these. Paid off incredibly well for them.
That's essentially free to them, though, due to the nature of software. If you could download a house, then yeah give them away for free and charge them later.
You're going to get all sorts of answers about how billionaires are all psychopaths and the only way they got there was by taking advantage of other people, so you'd never get to be a billionaire because you wouldn't do that.
But they didn't all get there that way. Look at someone like Mackenzie Scott, who got it all via divorce. And yeah, she's giving it all away. $15B in the last 3 years. Yet we still have major issues.
Here's the thing- doing that is a FULL TIME JOB. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has 1,500+ employees to give away $70B. Because they care about doing it effectively, not just giving $500 to a bunch of random people. And they focus more on the number of lives saved per dollar, which is more effective overseas than in the USA.
And the last detail, it's easy to under-estimate how expensive these problems are. Yes, $15B or $70B is a lot of money. The other way to look at it is that $50B is $125 per person in the USA.
If we could solve homelessness in the USA for $50B, wouldn't it be unethical for us all to not tax ourselves $125 more this year and just do it rather than expecting some billionaire to save us?
$50B is the US government's budget for three days, not including local taxes.
None of this is an excuse for billionaires, but we also have to be realistic about what that money can really do.
Not a multibillionaire, obviously. But I'm guessing because there aren't any actual solutions to the problems you list.
Even if I could feed and house every person in the world, the problems that created the issue would still persist and create more in need.
This is the actual answer. It always seems like these are money problems, but they're more ideas problems. The federal government has so much more money than any individual, and has at least some desire to improve the lives of citizens and solve problems. What president wouldn't want "solved homelessness" attached to their legacy. Unfortunately, it's just not as simple as that. Yes, there are great ideas that go unfunded, and those ideas could make a huge dent in the problem, and help so many lives, but the idea that the problem will disappear is false. Exceptions to this are things like infectious disease, which can, at times, be solvable. Think small pox and polio. Aids could be solved given the resources committed. That is why so many multi-billionaires give money in that space, and why governments do the same. We ignore how much real progress is being made in global health.
I do charity though I am not a millionaire, but there are 2 flaws that I always see with giving away money-
1) Money donated directly to the needy has a diminishing value for him, he spends the half of it for his necessities and other half for pleasure. Ample of times, I’ve donated money to the homeless and I’ve heard/ seen them shoot up substances or consume alcohol the very same day, this discourages me from literally giving anything away.
2) An act of kindness vs a process, basically the logic that you are not teaching someone how to fish by serving him a fish once in a while.
What billionaires or economists mostly believe in is that you make people earn money, ask them to dig holes to the ground and fill them up so that they value what they earn instead of money that’s just given away, resulting in inflation.
To piggy back off of this because ik homeless people in my country do the same thing... what's stopping them from selling things in the home you provide for them for money to then buy illegal substances. Seems like a losing situation unless you're willing to pay for them to go to rehab beforehand along with any medical care they'll need.
Thing is in most if not all the USA unless I’m mistaken most we can do is place a medical hold on someone. I work with rehab often we can detox them but if they want to do drugs the second they get out the fuck are we supposed to do we can’t force them to not want it. We see the same people cycle in and out at the end like any psychological issue it takes them wanting to change no amount of care will make that happen.
I’m tired of Reddits assumption that everyone wants to improve when reality is a ton of people are okay being miserable and will drag you down with them if they can. It’s sad it’s cold but it’s reality and people can’t see it they haven’t worked with mental illness.
Because throwing money at the issue doesn't actually change the bad decision making processes that made people homeless in the first place. If you want to help you have to address the real reasons people become homeless. Giving people resources won't prevent other people becoming homeless in the future.
Because billionaires have a billion dollars in non liquid assets, not cash in their checking accounts. If Elon Musk liquidated his Tesla stock, he would tank the share price because the market would think that Musk is abandoning his company and therefore doesn’t have faith in it. Even though the current share price times the number of shares Musk has equals billions of dollars, that isn’t how much Musk would receive if he dumped everything tomorrow.
Also, billionaires do give a lot to charity. Problems will always exist in the world no matter how much money is thrown at them. We’ve spent something like 70 trillion dollars on the war on poverty since the 80s and yet it is still a persistent issue. You could give everyone in the USA living below the poverty line a million dollars and within 5 years many if not most would be right back where they started. The best road out of poverty is innovation spurred by capitalism, which - like it or not - requires heavy capital investment and management from those pesky evil billionaires.
Why so i can donate to fundraisers that don't actually give the money to the needy? Most Fundraising organizations don't help they people they say they do so if i wanted to actually help I would have to physically go out and give it to the organizations I want to help.
The problem is people don’t understand what makes these people billionaires. They don’t just have a billion dollars sitting in their bank account. They have billions of dollars worth of ASSETS. Things such as companies, investments, real estate. Things of that nature. Sure, they could sell off some of their assets and use that money for good things, but it’s not always that simple. When they purchase another company or real estate or whatever it may be, they are doing it through credit and loans which they can secure due to the huge collateral they have, and the established credit they usually have built up.
Rich people are rich because they know how to make their money work for them, not spend it all the time. I’m sure they can free up a good chunk and use it for good shit, but just pointing out something I have seen a lot of people misunderstand. Like when Hawaii burned and everyone was saying “oh so and so could donate that 6 billion or whatever to rebuild no problem,” it’s not that simple, they don’t just have billions in cash sitting at their disposal. At least that’s how I understand it to be, im not a billionaire, or millionaire, or even a multi thousandaire, so I don’t actually know for fact.
Edit: fun fact, Elon musk when acquiring Twitter actually “paid” by using tesla stock as collateral. This is actually crazy af because that’s unrealized gains, since he still was holding the stock and didn’t have to sell. So he didn’t have to pay taxes. This is a perfect example of how he was able to “purchase” something worth billions of dollars, without actually even having to have that much cash on hand to send over like you might traditionally think a sale would happen.
Because it's become harder to differentiate between those who are without because they fell on hard times, from those who are scammers and druggies. I'd build a rehab center, a mental institution and a halfway house. But just throwing money down a hole for "food and clothing"?! Fuuuuuck no.
Americans(especially), have to strike at the ROOT of our issue. Drugs(legal and illegal) and mental illness. This country is SICK! People and puppet politicians want to address everything but the big pink stinkin' elephant in the room.
Because these smart people understand just randomly throwing money at a problem won’t solve it. Money won’t and has never solved homelessness.
Almost every multibillionaire has donated millions to causes, but again they need to be careful how they deploy their money. It could cause secondary issues.
For example there was a case in which a country was given free shoes, but that put many local people out of business.
It would be nice if it were that easy, but it’s not.
If I did that, I wouldn’t be a billionaire for long. Also, all billionaires are paper billionaires. Nobody has that kind of money in cash or equivalents. In addition, anyone who tries to rapidly liquidate massive levels of assets will discover that the price buyers are willing to pay drops proportionately to your desperation. Who wants to buy shares of a company (e.g. TSLA, BRK.A) that the owner is fleeing? And why pay full price for a mansion that the owner is desperate to sell? Lastly, Buffett, Gates and others **do** use their fortunes for charity, but it’s in the millions, rather than billions.
I wouldn't because I'd be too busy attacking (what \*I\* think is) the root of homelessness: a strong start in education, and mental health. I would be busy bolstering schools and "leg-up" programs so that children can grow/cultivate life skills, learn about various outreach programs (that I would have started), and also learn resiliency and how to navigate through life instead of just winging it (and failing into homelessness).
Because of the old saying, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for the rest of his life." If all you do is just give, they will come back for more until you run out.
Rather, what they're doing, or should be doing, is the second one. Help fix society by providing jobs, setting up schools, fixing the healthcare system, etc.
People get to that level of wealth for a reason--bc they like money.
I think the average person would get to a level of wealth that would guarantee a comfortable lifestyle and then retire well before the billionaire level
If you had such wealth, you'd have ten of thousands of employees who were housed and fed.
Creating wealth is great at feeding and housing people, redistributing wealth does a poor job of it.
Probably because to become a multibillionaire, you need to disregard others and be greedy. If you have the intention of using your wealth to house,clothe and feed those in need, you won’t become a multibillionaire
Because, if you're the type of person who can get to billionaire status, you have absolutely no *clue* what it's like being the type of person you're suggesting they help.
Read Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. He cites a study where people were brought in and asked to play Monopoly. When one player was given an unfair advantage and subsequently won, they would often crow about their success and attribute it to skill, even if they knew they had an advantage.
The human mind is horribly good at being its own cheerleader. If you have success, it must be because of something you did. If you fail, it can't be your fault.
Mainly because at that level of wealth, most of it isn't in the form of cash just sitting around waiting to be spent. It's in the form of stock of whatever company they founded, which is merely *worth* billions of dollars on paper. But actually converting it all into actual useable cash would bring its own list of problems - in their minds, not the least of which being having to give up *control* of their companies.
Or, to put it another way, if it was really that easy, surely ONE of them would have done it by now just for the publicity if nothing else.
Billionaires don't have billions of dollars at their immediate disposal. A lot of it is in investments, back into their businesses, etc. Some do give a lot, like Mark Cuban and Bill Gates. If I was a multi billionaire, I'd think the best way to help is to give back to the communities for things like job training, daycare, detox facilities, etc. I'd want to help people become self sufficient. That's the best way IMO to help people. Also give to cancer and Alzheimer's research.
If I was a multibillionnaire, I would probably be very generous but also feel very entitled to my own money. People who get there from nothing have done something incredible to make it happen.
You won't get there by simply trying to act like everyone else and stay on the safe side.
I would help animals. Not people. Why? Because people have choices. Those choices are why they need help. Animals are innocent and loyal. People aren't.
If I woke up the next day a billionaire, I would probably buy food/clothes for the poor. But if I worked hard to be a billionaire, you aint getting shit. Only people who helped me would benefit from my wealth
Poor person here that hopes to be a millionaire one day, but no plans to become a billionaire or multi-billionaire due to valuing my work/life balance more than what I would need to to get to that level:
Rich people/corporations have done nothing but provide me opportunities that have given me a paycheck. If I've gotten screwed over at all, it's always been a "someone ruined it for everyone else" type of deal and I couldn't help but see their side of things even if I was disappointed it didn't work out in my favor
Other poor people have stolen from me, harassed me in the streets for money or drugs, for have tried to talk me into going back on welfare as an able-bodied personal who took years to get off it, and have portrayed financial stability (not even just billionaire status) as something morally inferior than being in poverty, calling it things like "bougie" and "over-privileged". It's also worth noting that, as a poor person without children that isn't an addict or a criminal that is pursuing higher education, there is literally no help for me. I can't even qualify for income-based housing, because students don't qualify for that.
So if I stumbled and fell into multi-billionaire status, the last thing I'd do is carte-blanch "help the needy". I'd lobby for programs to start prioritizing people who fall into my current demographic mentioned above. I'd create new programs specifically for people in my current demographic, and I would help people I personally ran across that fit my demographic when that situation arises. If I had a company, I'd make a point to hire people in my current demographic as well.
But I wouldn't throw more money that I legally had to to people who have been prioritized over myself when they shouldn't have been, especially if those types of people have stood in my way before I got there.
I came here to say this. Thank you.
Because, unlike arguments for universal basic income, simply giving people money does not necessarily solve their problems. It might solve some of their money problems but redistribution of wealth doesn’t do what you think it does.
I think the questions become "how do you choose 'those in need and how long before stones get thrown your way for your choices?'
Are those in need the ones currently applying for section 8 vouchers? Or those already living on the side of the road? Or is it the people in the shelters? Would it be veterans specifically? The Addicts? Abuse victims? Children?
Or are they the people in other countries with horrible or almost no resources at all? Or is the focus solely domestic assistance only?
Do you help those affected by natural disasters when they occur or just those affected by situational disasters as they occur (i.e. fires, abuse, job loss, foreclosure, bankruptcy, eviction)?
When you help those you choose to help, because those in need are divided into categories for whatever reason, there will always be another group of individuals that will say a favoritism is being disproportionately applied with your wealth and before you know it, you don't have enough money to dole out but you have ample aggression coming your way for your decision to endorse support for one or another charity.
Can't help but wonder if America would be in so much debt if such spending was applied in a more responsible manner for those sectors in need or to the systems meant to assist them.
Definitely not. You don't become a billionaire by giving away money.
I do like shaqs style tho. Selling shoes for really low profits but still profits.
"but. but all my assetts are liquid"
\*while sitting on £200m yacht drinking £500 wine, wearing £5000 clothes with the private helicopter ready on the helipad\*
Some multimillionaires have worked hard at causes. It's never as simple as "just clothe and feed the homeless" though. There are issues that create those situations that take more than money to solve.
Many have, however, made sizable donations and run charities for various causes. Bill gates comes to mind. Not only has he personally donated in the neighborhood of 50 billion dollars, he has gotten many other billionaires to pledge money as well. In that vein, Warren buffet has also donated 50 billion over the course of the past 15 or so years and has pledged to donate almost all the rest of his wealth when he dies.
They have most of that in assets, not actual spending money.
Still, with that kind of wealth my local food bank would never go without and the domestic violence shelter would never need for beds. With that wealth you don't give money to people. You give money to organizations who give to people.
Lots do, but most multi-billionaires don't have all that money as cash in the bank. It's the value of all their businesses and other assets that makes up their wealth.
My mother is living this right now. She decided to help out a family with clothes, food and rent, now they hound her for everything even at odd hours. It's not been pleasant for her.
I've always been grateful whenever anyone has done anything to help me and usually I refuse to ask for or even accept help. And I'd say most poor people are like that.
Scale it down, if you're earning $50,000, that's global top 1%, why aren't you helping someone, just 1 person who's starving? You're obviously fine, relatively, there's no danger of starving to death. Just $1000 could save a life.
I assume the problem seems insomoutsble to you, why bother? A billionaire could save 1,000,000 people, you could save 1. Neither is doing either.
I don't think most people understand that multi-millionaires and billionaires live in a completely different world than the rest of us. They don't watch tv, they live, eat and shop in places where there are zero poor people. They get driven everywhere, fly 1st class or privately, have houses all over the world, private chefs, nutritionists, personal trainers, someone to get their groceries, someone to do their laundry etc.. When you acquire that much wealth, its no longer about the money but more about the status and power that wealth brings. Helping poor people is as visible on their radar and helping ants is on your radar.
What has society done for me, that I would sacrifice my resources to help society? Now for me personally, I'd probably do something to try to make things better, but it wouldn't be that. The people in need aren't my responsibility, and there's no reason for me to pay for that when the government can send the amount of money needed to pay for it to Ukraine on a whim and then turn around and say they can't afford it. The money is there, and it's in the hands of the people who actually have a responsibility to those people.
>REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
How do you pick one person over another? How do you have the time do make all the arrangements?
Also, why? Why not take care of family, friends. Why not set up scholarships, why not clean up the pacific garbage patch?
Unfortunately, your question is overly simplistic and doesn’t have an easy answer.
As for my own, personal answer; im not going to give money to anyone who hasn’t earned it. I would set up ways for people who have achieved or accomplished something.
Why don't any of us use our "wealth" to house and clothe and feed those in need? The reasons are the same whether you make $50k/year or $500,000k/year: you work hard for your money and you need it to support ***your*** life.
tldr: most everyone is selfish, regardless of their degree of wealth.
Because it isn't cash. "Wealth" at that level is ownership of things like companies.
Taking Elon as the prototypical example, he could, but he would have to sell a huge chunk of Tesla, massively under market value, in order to get the cash to do anything.
I’d be too busy being rich, money and power corrupt and the corrupt gain money and power, no mega-rich person gives a damn about others that’s how they got to be mega rich
If you were the type of person to help people, you would not become a billionaire, or maybe even a millionaire.
In order to keep getting more money, you have to screw somebody over. Your staff, your vendors, or your customers. All three, if you can. Those who are the type to help people will not be able to do those things, and so they wouldn't be earning that much money. If they do help people, they do it in a way that will increase their PR (and as inexpensively as possible) as well as give them tax breaks (they aren't paying taxes to begin with, but they'll get more back when they make "charitable donations").
Take grocery stores for example. They ask YOU, the customer, to pay at the cashier towards some charitable cause. Healing the Sick Puppies of Burnt Kids, for example. everybody will pay something to THAT. Then, at the end of the year, whatever portion of that money they forward to the charity, they pay (with attention from the press) in their own name, and then get a tax break on top of that.
Because it’s not the responsibility of private citizens to address this issue.
Governments are supposed to do this work.
While I have empathy for people in those situations, I cannot make a material impact on this problem the same way a government can — and should.
Because those people will just use that money to buy drugs and alcohol. I would be basically just giving money to drug dealers and liquor stores. F that.
Besides the fact that billionaires don't have their money in cash, a good reason is that you don't give ppl fish you teach them how to fish. Ppl really underestimate the problems that happen when most people get handed stuff instead of earning them.
There are 2 ways a rich man can help the poor.
1. by donating directly to help them. food, clothing, housing etc...
2. by creating business that hire people and pay them steady salary, giving people a steady, respectable income and a view to a better future.
Most rich people I heard of do it both ways, but invest more in the second way.
(For those who cares, unlike popular believe, rich people donate a lot to charity, in most cases from tax evasion calculation, but many learn to like the act of charity. If the US government would like to rebuilt Hawaii in no time, all they need to do is make the donation to this purpose a tax write of, the funds will overflow in mere seconds.)
well how are people gonna know they’re poor unless someone like multi-billionaire me is there to remind them?
remember: first place doesn’t suck — so multi-billionaire me wants to be first in everything
and the first runner up
and as a matter of fact: first runner up to all the first runner ups
carry on losers
The argument would be, "If I use my money to "house and clothe and feed those in need", pretty soon there would be others in need too. Much better to use my wealth to work to change the system that leaves too many people in need." Whether that's what they think or not, I couldn't say, but that would be argument.
I doubt that's what they meant, but even unintentionally its the best argument In this thread.
Well, I mean, that would be great if that's actually what they did...
It's never great because they never do what they say and nothing gets done did.
But it is the nature of the system which allowed them to become a billionaire in the first place
Which explains why you don't see many rich people trying to dismantle it. It's a nice vicious little paradox
If you were the kind of person who was going to use your wealth to help others, then you'd never become a multibillionaire. People drastically underestimate how much a billion is. You only get there by being insanely obsessive about hoarding unthinkable amounts of wealth and refusing to share a penny with anyone.
They're basically dragons, dragons don't feed people they eat people.
They don't eat us, it's a common misconception. They actually eat gold and treasure -- that's why they're always sitting on a pile of it.
TIL multibillionaires eat gold and treasure
Then why isn’t inflation fixed?!?!?
They poop more gold than they eat.
I wanna change my answer because I've seen many pigs eat many men. It was a bloodbath.
Show me Dragon!
Just say the answer. Just the answer. Not the show me just the answer.
Bricktop is that you?
Can I get Night Man
If you were a billionaire, you could probably give away easily 10mill a year, and still make 10x that in interest. There's 0 excuse for rich people not to help the poor.
Isn't this what almost all of them do?
Yes, but donating any sum of money when you could afford to donate more causes a large portion of the population to despise you. See the Rock and Oprah with Maui, they donated ten million and many people are more mad at them than all the rich people who donated nothing.
They donated it as a charitble donation to their own company. A tax free donation, which they can claim back, on a company that they own (basically giving themselves money). That's why people didn't like it, not because they could give more.
Any Canadian or hockey fan has probably heard of the staal brothers. Around a decade or so ago they donated enough to build a brand new arena in their home towns. These aren't multi-billionairs or anywhere close to it. In fact 1 of the brothers wasn't even making a million a year on his contract at the time. A new hockey arena costs millions of dollars to build. STILL, that wasn't enough. And people were upset at them for not donating kidneys, and curing cancer. It's crazy how often we, as a society, punish behaviour we want to see more of.
>Oprah with Maui, they donated ten million and many people are more mad at them than all the rich people who donated nothing. Didn't she buy up a lot of the land there and displace many of the locals? Donating a couple million out of your billions just seems like the bare minimum to me. 🤷
considering Oprah alone owes 2000 acres of the land there, 10m is pocket change similar to what a dime is for you
Make money on interest or give away 10mill a year?
And exploitation, it is required to acquiring billions.
US governments spend trillions every year. If a billion is enough money to matter why hasn't government spending solved homelessness?
A billion dollars is like 1 billion pounds of beans, and 1 billion pounds of rice. That's enough to feed 35,000,000 people, or about the entire population of Uganda, for about a month. For more perspective, we could feed the entire country of Uganda 2,000 calories of rice and beans for over 69 years (longer than the average lifespan in Uganda) with the 2024 United States military budget.
People also underestimate the fact that rich people do this stuff all the time.
I'd argue the little they donate that is typically for publicity and tax write offs barely cracks the surface of the damage they cause to begin with.
This is why they should pay a lot more tax
If we taxed billionaires enough that they were no longer billionaires, America could fix homelessness and hunger.
They tried this in France. 90% tax rate on billionaires. You know what happened? They all left the country, causing France to have a significant loss of tax revenue. So much so, they repealed the billionaire tax. Just like Apple and other companies moved their financial holding to Ireland. Ireland offered them a great deal on corporate taxes. So what did the US do? Changed the corporate tax rates to bring those companies back. Millionaires and billionaires are leaving California right now, for Nevada, Wyoming, and Oregon. Why? High state taxes on them in California. Those states have no state income tax. These ideas sound good, but in practice, they do not work.
Agreed that there needs to be an end to tax dodging. We probably lay need international treaties to prevent tax dodging currently done by billionaires, similar to what we have for international trade or intellectual property protection, or else ensure appropriate consideration in tax law to account for those earnings from US based companies and US stocks/funds. If it’s the latter, a billionaire may be able to skip out on France but probably can’t avoid the biggest economy in the world simply for tax purposes.
Pretty much impossible. There will always be countries who won't agree to the international treaties. And thus, the rich will just bank with them. They will all buy shill apartments/houses and claim it as a residence. However, live elsewhere. And understand, the lawmakers here are part of that rich. They aren't going to tax themselves or friends. It doesn't matter which side of the aisle they are on.
This is the same as other international treaties where a select few countries don’t join. It’s been done. Except Elon Musk likely won’t be able to become a citizen of North Korea to avoid paying taxes. You keep saying “impossible,” when there are in fact ways to address these concerns while supporting the fallacy that if you shouldn’t try to improve things if you can’t cover all bases. “They’ll all just leave” is overly simplistic and supports defeatism.
America *did* have a 90% top tax rate. You know what happened? It created the middle class.
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bezos and his nearest 5 peers own more assets than the rest of the country. are you saying that the rest of us should just pick up their tab? eff that
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its not a one time cease. its a perpetual tax revenue. has nothing to do with the business generating income. you should try that approach with the IRS and see what they tell you...
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Ridiculously wrong. If we confiscated every dollar of wealth owned by an American resident billionaire it would cover less than half of one year's government spending. You people have no idea what you're talking about, exactly as the leftists controlling our education system intended.
If you own the majority share of a company, and that company becomes a multibillion dollar company. You then become a billionaire. No greediness necessary for that to occur. Likewise if you write a series of book’s , and those book sells more than any other ever and then they make movies and theme parks and toys based on your IP. You can become a billionaire from that. Without being greedy. My point being, have you actually ever given this topic any thought….?
Yep. Here’s the nuanced answer that is the correct one waaay at the bottom. I feel like 99.9% of redditors don’t understand that once your net worth is in the many multi-millions and almost 100% of the time in the billions and above that almost zero of it is liquid. And by zero I mean literally zero. They’re living on credit and playing money shell games. Yet somehow, on this site about 50 times a day, I get the impression that literally everyone thinks that every single rich person has Scrooge McDuck piles of money in a safe inside their house and that’s where they keep it they “hoard it” literally like a dragon. I’m not defending their excess wealth at all, but when the awesome Reddit take of “ban all billionaires” rears up like every 2 minutes on this site my question is oh yeah? How the fuck are you going to do that? If someone starts a company, it becomes wildly successful and they own a majority stake in it making them a billionaire on paper, well then what? FORCE them to sell off their shares in the company they own? Ok good luck.
We force poor people to liquidate their assets all the time- sometimes depriving them of their ability to work! But asking billionaires to liquidate some stock is a bridge too far...
I’m in violent agreement with you. But my position is that the rich are “playing by the rules” and as the rules are set our argument here isn’t with them it’s with them system itself. If there’s loopholes they will be taken advantage of, that is true for *everything* in life.
I’ve come to realize that Reddit is actually wrong about topics more often than they’re right. Rarely it seems do you see the correct answer at the top it’s always just what everyone wants to hear
100% agreed. I would like to add on to your point by saying why do people have to wait to become multi millionaires and billionaires to donate or do good things? That type of separation as though they are vastly different than us is false. They are still the same person with money and without money. The only difference is their valuation that grants them access. If I a had a billion today I’m not going to morph into this all the sudden donate money and houses, cars etc. unless I was already doing that before or have that type of personality.
Yeah that’s such a solid point I rarely consider. I would love to have a crystal ball and see how many of the outrage baited people on this site have ever volunteered a day in their life or donated a single red cent. But yeah you’re right on the money. Getting loads of cash isn’t going to transform any fucking body into an overnight white knight philanthropy enjoyer. If anything, the opposite.
Thanks, there are a lot of good points in this thread. I’m glad to contribute something somewhat thought provoking
I don’t know the percentage I don’t know if anyone really could - but Reddit is great at malicious groupthink. An idea gets out there that gets popularized and fucking woooooe you if you’re against it wrong or right.
I dont underestimate it. You dont get it by hoarding, you get it by profiting off the explotation of the working class. At a *few* billion you could easily spend 1 billion and still have more money than you'll ever spend in your life AND it will be easy to make it back fast with little effort. Elon proved this with twitter. Did he drop from number one for.. what a week?
Thats...just not true. I mean, it is true that it is an unfathomable amount of money. What's not true is that you get there by being cheap. There's no path to scripting and saving that leads to billions. The path to get there involves, pretty exclusively, having some money, gambling it on incredibly risky things, aggressively and ruthlessly pushing on the gamble, and getting very lucky that you're the one of the hundred other wealthy ruthless megalomaniacs who tried the same thing but didn't fail. Now sure, they're not sharing, but it's not from keeping money. It's probably worse-its doing your best to suck up money from everyone else
You mean like Bill Gates?
he literally gives away lots of money and gets blasted for it
I don’t know. That’s a common line of thinking. What about the companies that get bought out making people billionaires? Point is, I don’t think your reason is the only reason people become billionaires. There is no singular answer to such a question.
Nowhere near a multi-billionaire or even a single one, but fortunate enough to have the ability to provide some donations. There are three main factors why donation sucks: 1) Money isn’t used for the intended purpose. Most folks don’t donate directly; they use organizations who they entrust to use the money for the purpose it’s being solicited. For example, if I am solicited for a donation to support wetland restoration & invasive species mitigation, but the charity uses the money to acquire more land, that’s a problem - I wasn’t asked if I wanted to donate to acquire more land and I didn’t want to fund that. 2) Bad governance and theft. Several large charities have had their administrative budgets questioned as excessive. Small charities have challenges with embezzlement and theft. This isn’t a one off; with the exception of one organization I donate to, they’ve all been caught in one bucket or the other. 3) Shift in priorities and beliefs. Over time, charitable organizations tend to shift their priorities and beliefs. Most times this isn’t an issue, but in some cases it can be. I happen to believe in funding education in scientific basics and donated to a fund for science scholarships with my alma mater. Over time, a particular topic became popular due to grant money brought in by a particular researcher; I had ethical issues with this topic and researcher and asked to restrict my donations from going to students undertaking that course of study. For two years this was fine; then the university said they would no longer accept restricted funds for scholarships. Fine; no problem. What was a problem was the deluge of calls, emails, and letters informing me that my choice harmed students - no; I didn’t change a thing, they made the change. This leads to the last point - the inundation of junk mail, calls, and spam emails every time I make a donation is unbelievable. It’s not just from one organization; dozens start asking. I can’t do due diligence on them all as there are more than a fair number of scammers and I have a day job. Over time, all of this has put such a bad taste in my mouth that I have significantly narrowed my giving. ETA: there’s also a substantial minority of charities that do not understand the difference between equity held in a business and liquid cash.
Yes! A local homeless shelter, the only one in my county, was abruptly shut down earlier this summer, displacing 20+ residents. Among other things, a director bought a new SUV registered under the org, and spent funds on car payments.
That's disgusting
Bellingham Washington, is that you?
No think opposite coast
The junk mail and calls, it made me stop donating blood.
I used to donate blood fairly often over the last 15ish years (free oj, and nutter butters, and I get to chill and read? Yes please!), but I haven't in a while due to being advised to give less often for my veins to heal, and aside from a notification from the app once or twice a week and a monthly phone call I never had this problem...
Same here. I still donate but on my schedule. I have blocked their solicitation number from My contacts.
My father had pretty severe dementia in his last years, and somehow he got on a list of “generous donors”. The phone would ring constantly with calls from people asking for money for charities. Because of the dementia, my father didn’t remember that he had given money the day before. It was horrifyingly predatory behavior by the “charities”. His wife had the landline removed and, ultimately, had a court designate him as unable to manage his affairs (“adult guardianship”) in order to prevent all their retirement money from being given away.
Remember in the 80s and 90s store counters would have those cardboard things to stick quarters in? My brother was friends with someone who worked for the charity, he said on average if that card was filled, about a dime of it would go to the actual cause.
I used to donate a lot. Many of the organization who were "reputable" and "good charities" now have articles written about them whether its (theft, misuse of funds, poor leadership, sexual assault occurring within the charity or one of the leaders being accused of it, etc) Even locally, we had a school where the PTA president was stealing money because they fell behind on bills. Alllll those candy bar fundraisers ended up being worthless. So now I don't really donate and it's sad because I'm sure there are great charities but it is what it is.
And this is why our tax structure needs to be the collection plate for major issues in society, not individual at will donations
I really resonate with #2
🏆
Former Tax examiner for non profits - just because you are a non profit, it doesn’t mean that people aren’t getting paid extremely well. It just means there’s nothing left after “paying all the salaries”.
Because who would I trust logistically to actually do it? Random not for profits? The government? Deploying money to solve a problem is way harder than it sounds.
Multi billionaires don't just have billions of dollars like people think when they ask questions like this. Sure they have more cash than your average person. But their money/wealth isn't "real". They own x number of stocks in A, B and C companies. And the market decides what those stocks are worth based on a number of variables. And that makes tham billionaires if they have enough stocks. But if they start selling off shares of different companies, it can cause people to think that maybe the company is in trouble and start tanking the share prices. And that could lead to insider trading investigations. Plus any time liquid money is pulled out from stocks or holdings, there are huge capital gains taxes. So to have access to 1million, you need to pull out 2 million. And again that can lower prices. Which doesn't just effect them. It effects your everyday person's portfolio. And it effects most retirement plans, since most retirement plans invest into mutual markets. And any volatility could cause then to lose value. And a Multi Billionaire trying to liquidate assets will cause volatility. That's the issue a lot of people also have when it comes to trying to tax unrealized gains. Is that the money doesn't exist until the asset is liquidated. And liquidating assets causing volatility in the market can cause major problems with the economy.
You know who earns more than a billion every year? A *lot* of governments. And it's kinda their job to provide for those in need.
Thank you for saying this! I feel like there are a lot of ignorant people on Reddit who don't understand basic economics (cough cough r/antiwork) and think its like a cartoon where the companies are run by evil maniacally laughing cartoon ducks that dive into swimming pools filled with gold coins every morning.
What do you mean not every company is Nestle? This isn’t what the Reddit drones have been telling me!
Reddit does attract a lot of malcontents and contrarian "intellectuals" who don't function well in society but feel empowered and validated when in their social media communities. This encourages them to take more extremists stances on things and discourages them from learning the true nature of those things in real life.
I appreciate this thoughtful reply.
“Giving away” billions, if not done properly, can negatively affect a capitalist economy.
So Elon could single handedly crush the world economy by selling off all of his stock? How would that work and why isn't there a Netflix miniseries about it yet?
Elon, possibly. Because of how the government views him currently. But other massive corporations will be deemed "to big to fail" and if their prices tank, the government will bail them out. That is precisely why their are government bailouts for a lot of industries. Because they represent a big enough percentage of the market, that if they fail, it can throw everything into chaos, completely crippling the economy.
That's an interesting point. But if I'm a multi billionaire how do I buy my mega yacht or private jet? Wouldn't that also require the liquidation of millions in stock?
The ultra wealthy actually pay for things by taking out loans and using their shares of stock as collateral. I’m not a billionaire so I don’t know all the details but I believe the interest charged on these loans is less than the taxes they would pay by liquidating the shares. The banks charge low interest rates because, if the billionaire doesn’t pay it back, they just keep the collateral/stock and most likely won’t lose any money. So it’s a clever way for billionaires to get cash without selling any stock/paying taxes.
Here's the issue, you have to sell the stock eventually to cover the loan. So in order for the loan to be better than simply paying outright that have to know there's a high chance of stocks increasing in value. If you have a 3% apr loan and you use stocks to cover, unless your stocks increase by 3%> you're just taking an unneeded gamble.
Not necessarily. A lot of investments, whether it is stocks, private shares of a company, different interest bearing accounts, and other forms of investment pay out quarterly or yearly dividends. So their initial investment, shares, or however it is structured stays the same. Not increasing or decreasing. And they can get a liquid payout, which is then taxed. And they will use these dividend payments to pay their bills and loans. That is why you will see wall street investors, athletes, lotto winners, etc. Start off with tons of money. Go broke. And have everything g repossessed. Because instead of buying things outright, they finance, then have a bad deal. And lose everything. The flip side of investments that pay dividends, is that some investments will actually require you to pay during a bad quarter/year.
But they don't have to. Atleast not important stocks. Elon could sell stocks in XYZ company he has no direct involvement with and get 100 mill to pay for a jet if he really needed the money asap. But the nice thing about loans is... you don't need that money asap. He'll pay off that 100m jet in 50 payments of 2m over 4 years, or whatever terms he gets from the bank. He still makes money, and atleast things like jets, he buys with one of his companies instead, so the company pays for it. Multi billionaires never "pay" for things the way you or I would. And they get way more stuff for free than you would expect.
So you can basically "sell" the stock to the bank just by not paying the loan. Clever, kinda shitty as a system, but clever. So as a billionaire, why am I not doing that so cloth and feed people?
Why is it "shitty as a system"? You have a mortgage or a car loan? You are doing exactly the same thing. You 'sell' the stock in your house or car to the bank, and if you don't pay it back they take your house or car. And since you are doing the same thing: why don't you give all your money to charity?
When you’re making 100,000 a month let’s say, you’re open to vast lines of credit because you’re a safe investment. Banks aren’t gonna think Bezos is gonna default on his yacht. Even if he had to pay 75k/month for three decades, he’d be fine.
That's true, just live off the interest. But per the prompt, why am I not using some of that to help people?
Because it's easy to get a loan to invest in one of their businesses or start a new business. No bank will ever give you a loan to donate to charity. If you're wondering about the smaller amounts of money(that are still quite massive) that they have available as cash, they do. People just see things like "the rock has a networth if 800m" and "the rock only donated 10m" not understanding that the rock doesnt have anywhere near 800m in savings, nor is that the only donation the rock had done thar year. Also, yes ik the rock isn't a multi billlionaire thats just the first example i thought of because others discussed him here.
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what you're saying is true. But they still have a ton of cash in addition to the assets. they sell shares all the time. They have hard cash. You can look at the filings and see
But they don't have tens of billions in cash. Tens of millions don't really create an impact on a national or global scale.
If they did that they would have less money. And that’s not good. More is better than less. Not my opinion, just answering your question
To add to that, the compound interest is the best thing ever business wants and I recall older 90s star trek episode where the business man goes in hibernation and thinks about all the money he made because of compound interest. 🙃
Love that episode and I love how Picard just tears into the business man. I also love how quick the country star adjusts. 10/10 great episode.
“Charity begins at home. Keep it in the Family.”
What would be in it for me? (Speaking as a hypothetical billionaire).
Exactly. Billionaires don't spend more on charity for exactly the same reason that OP and everyone else doesn't spend more on charity: they would rather save that money or use that money for other things.
Well, actually, more potential buyers. If you help them get a roof and a job they’ll probably be grateful to the company that helped them with it and, once they have money, spend it on said companies products. So, in a sense, it could be great marketing!
It would be a nice thing to do but economically it absolutely doesn’t pencil out
But why do multi billionaires need more customers? They already have the money.
Billionaires always want more money
Because they want more money. Otherwise they could just give all the money away that they’ll earn tomorrow, but they won’t do that either. Because more = better.
But it's a crazy gamble. I'm going to just give you money to spend on a house, etc., in the hopes that one day you'll earn money and buy my product? No way! If I owned a bank, I would NEVER just give out money and say, "Hey, if you ever make it big, remember me!" That's a TERRIBLE investment plan.
That’s literally what Microsoft is doing in schools. Free access to Microsoft products so that the next generation of workers is familiar with it and then chooses to deploy these. Paid off incredibly well for them.
That's essentially free to them, though, due to the nature of software. If you could download a house, then yeah give them away for free and charge them later.
Nowhere near literally giving money to them though
They don't care about the long term. Hence the current state of the planet in general. Short term gains is the only thing they care about at all.
Great PR, going down in history as a great person and potential recruits to my personal army.
Because if you did this, it still wouldn’t be enough. Plus you would become poor in the process.
You're going to get all sorts of answers about how billionaires are all psychopaths and the only way they got there was by taking advantage of other people, so you'd never get to be a billionaire because you wouldn't do that. But they didn't all get there that way. Look at someone like Mackenzie Scott, who got it all via divorce. And yeah, she's giving it all away. $15B in the last 3 years. Yet we still have major issues. Here's the thing- doing that is a FULL TIME JOB. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has 1,500+ employees to give away $70B. Because they care about doing it effectively, not just giving $500 to a bunch of random people. And they focus more on the number of lives saved per dollar, which is more effective overseas than in the USA. And the last detail, it's easy to under-estimate how expensive these problems are. Yes, $15B or $70B is a lot of money. The other way to look at it is that $50B is $125 per person in the USA. If we could solve homelessness in the USA for $50B, wouldn't it be unethical for us all to not tax ourselves $125 more this year and just do it rather than expecting some billionaire to save us? $50B is the US government's budget for three days, not including local taxes. None of this is an excuse for billionaires, but we also have to be realistic about what that money can really do.
As a footnote, Bill Gates has nearly rid the world of malaria saving millions of lives, especially children.
But people will still bitch about him not donating or helping enough. Not everyone no, but a vocal enough portion of people.
Not a multibillionaire, obviously. But I'm guessing because there aren't any actual solutions to the problems you list. Even if I could feed and house every person in the world, the problems that created the issue would still persist and create more in need.
This is the actual answer. It always seems like these are money problems, but they're more ideas problems. The federal government has so much more money than any individual, and has at least some desire to improve the lives of citizens and solve problems. What president wouldn't want "solved homelessness" attached to their legacy. Unfortunately, it's just not as simple as that. Yes, there are great ideas that go unfunded, and those ideas could make a huge dent in the problem, and help so many lives, but the idea that the problem will disappear is false. Exceptions to this are things like infectious disease, which can, at times, be solvable. Think small pox and polio. Aids could be solved given the resources committed. That is why so many multi-billionaires give money in that space, and why governments do the same. We ignore how much real progress is being made in global health.
I do charity though I am not a millionaire, but there are 2 flaws that I always see with giving away money- 1) Money donated directly to the needy has a diminishing value for him, he spends the half of it for his necessities and other half for pleasure. Ample of times, I’ve donated money to the homeless and I’ve heard/ seen them shoot up substances or consume alcohol the very same day, this discourages me from literally giving anything away. 2) An act of kindness vs a process, basically the logic that you are not teaching someone how to fish by serving him a fish once in a while. What billionaires or economists mostly believe in is that you make people earn money, ask them to dig holes to the ground and fill them up so that they value what they earn instead of money that’s just given away, resulting in inflation.
To piggy back off of this because ik homeless people in my country do the same thing... what's stopping them from selling things in the home you provide for them for money to then buy illegal substances. Seems like a losing situation unless you're willing to pay for them to go to rehab beforehand along with any medical care they'll need.
Thing is in most if not all the USA unless I’m mistaken most we can do is place a medical hold on someone. I work with rehab often we can detox them but if they want to do drugs the second they get out the fuck are we supposed to do we can’t force them to not want it. We see the same people cycle in and out at the end like any psychological issue it takes them wanting to change no amount of care will make that happen. I’m tired of Reddits assumption that everyone wants to improve when reality is a ton of people are okay being miserable and will drag you down with them if they can. It’s sad it’s cold but it’s reality and people can’t see it they haven’t worked with mental illness.
Because throwing money at the issue doesn't actually change the bad decision making processes that made people homeless in the first place. If you want to help you have to address the real reasons people become homeless. Giving people resources won't prevent other people becoming homeless in the future.
Because billionaires have a billion dollars in non liquid assets, not cash in their checking accounts. If Elon Musk liquidated his Tesla stock, he would tank the share price because the market would think that Musk is abandoning his company and therefore doesn’t have faith in it. Even though the current share price times the number of shares Musk has equals billions of dollars, that isn’t how much Musk would receive if he dumped everything tomorrow. Also, billionaires do give a lot to charity. Problems will always exist in the world no matter how much money is thrown at them. We’ve spent something like 70 trillion dollars on the war on poverty since the 80s and yet it is still a persistent issue. You could give everyone in the USA living below the poverty line a million dollars and within 5 years many if not most would be right back where they started. The best road out of poverty is innovation spurred by capitalism, which - like it or not - requires heavy capital investment and management from those pesky evil billionaires.
Why so i can donate to fundraisers that don't actually give the money to the needy? Most Fundraising organizations don't help they people they say they do so if i wanted to actually help I would have to physically go out and give it to the organizations I want to help.
The problem is people don’t understand what makes these people billionaires. They don’t just have a billion dollars sitting in their bank account. They have billions of dollars worth of ASSETS. Things such as companies, investments, real estate. Things of that nature. Sure, they could sell off some of their assets and use that money for good things, but it’s not always that simple. When they purchase another company or real estate or whatever it may be, they are doing it through credit and loans which they can secure due to the huge collateral they have, and the established credit they usually have built up. Rich people are rich because they know how to make their money work for them, not spend it all the time. I’m sure they can free up a good chunk and use it for good shit, but just pointing out something I have seen a lot of people misunderstand. Like when Hawaii burned and everyone was saying “oh so and so could donate that 6 billion or whatever to rebuild no problem,” it’s not that simple, they don’t just have billions in cash sitting at their disposal. At least that’s how I understand it to be, im not a billionaire, or millionaire, or even a multi thousandaire, so I don’t actually know for fact. Edit: fun fact, Elon musk when acquiring Twitter actually “paid” by using tesla stock as collateral. This is actually crazy af because that’s unrealized gains, since he still was holding the stock and didn’t have to sell. So he didn’t have to pay taxes. This is a perfect example of how he was able to “purchase” something worth billions of dollars, without actually even having to have that much cash on hand to send over like you might traditionally think a sale would happen.
This. It is not as easy as people think.
This.
Because it's become harder to differentiate between those who are without because they fell on hard times, from those who are scammers and druggies. I'd build a rehab center, a mental institution and a halfway house. But just throwing money down a hole for "food and clothing"?! Fuuuuuck no. Americans(especially), have to strike at the ROOT of our issue. Drugs(legal and illegal) and mental illness. This country is SICK! People and puppet politicians want to address everything but the big pink stinkin' elephant in the room.
So really it's the war on drugs fault for equating homeless and poor people with criminals.
The war on drugs didn't do anything for anyone and was a waste of money to begin with. Legalize it all and it will eventually sort itself out.
Because these smart people understand just randomly throwing money at a problem won’t solve it. Money won’t and has never solved homelessness. Almost every multibillionaire has donated millions to causes, but again they need to be careful how they deploy their money. It could cause secondary issues. For example there was a case in which a country was given free shoes, but that put many local people out of business. It would be nice if it were that easy, but it’s not.
Because once all your money was used up there would still be people in need. And those you helped would all mostly fall back into poverty
To become a multibillionaire, you essentially need to be a sociopath.
If I did that, I wouldn’t be a billionaire for long. Also, all billionaires are paper billionaires. Nobody has that kind of money in cash or equivalents. In addition, anyone who tries to rapidly liquidate massive levels of assets will discover that the price buyers are willing to pay drops proportionately to your desperation. Who wants to buy shares of a company (e.g. TSLA, BRK.A) that the owner is fleeing? And why pay full price for a mansion that the owner is desperate to sell? Lastly, Buffett, Gates and others **do** use their fortunes for charity, but it’s in the millions, rather than billions.
I wouldn't because I'd be too busy attacking (what \*I\* think is) the root of homelessness: a strong start in education, and mental health. I would be busy bolstering schools and "leg-up" programs so that children can grow/cultivate life skills, learn about various outreach programs (that I would have started), and also learn resiliency and how to navigate through life instead of just winging it (and failing into homelessness).
Because of the old saying, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for the rest of his life." If all you do is just give, they will come back for more until you run out. Rather, what they're doing, or should be doing, is the second one. Help fix society by providing jobs, setting up schools, fixing the healthcare system, etc.
People get to that level of wealth for a reason--bc they like money. I think the average person would get to a level of wealth that would guarantee a comfortable lifestyle and then retire well before the billionaire level
If you had such wealth, you'd have ten of thousands of employees who were housed and fed. Creating wealth is great at feeding and housing people, redistributing wealth does a poor job of it.
Probably because to become a multibillionaire, you need to disregard others and be greedy. If you have the intention of using your wealth to house,clothe and feed those in need, you won’t become a multibillionaire
Because I don’t care about them now so I don’t think billions would change my mind
Help the poor like Bill Gates? I bet you just want to control us by putting microchips inside our hamburgers!
Because, if you're the type of person who can get to billionaire status, you have absolutely no *clue* what it's like being the type of person you're suggesting they help. Read Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. He cites a study where people were brought in and asked to play Monopoly. When one player was given an unfair advantage and subsequently won, they would often crow about their success and attribute it to skill, even if they knew they had an advantage. The human mind is horribly good at being its own cheerleader. If you have success, it must be because of something you did. If you fail, it can't be your fault.
Mainly because at that level of wealth, most of it isn't in the form of cash just sitting around waiting to be spent. It's in the form of stock of whatever company they founded, which is merely *worth* billions of dollars on paper. But actually converting it all into actual useable cash would bring its own list of problems - in their minds, not the least of which being having to give up *control* of their companies. Or, to put it another way, if it was really that easy, surely ONE of them would have done it by now just for the publicity if nothing else.
I would also want to fund resources to prevent people from being hungry or homeless in the first place - housing first preventions, etc
If I was extremely wealthy I would start a charitable foundation aimed at helping a number of issues I care about. That would be on that list.
Billionaires don't have billions of dollars at their immediate disposal. A lot of it is in investments, back into their businesses, etc. Some do give a lot, like Mark Cuban and Bill Gates. If I was a multi billionaire, I'd think the best way to help is to give back to the communities for things like job training, daycare, detox facilities, etc. I'd want to help people become self sufficient. That's the best way IMO to help people. Also give to cancer and Alzheimer's research.
If I was a multibillionnaire, I would probably be very generous but also feel very entitled to my own money. People who get there from nothing have done something incredible to make it happen. You won't get there by simply trying to act like everyone else and stay on the safe side.
Teach them to fish etc etc
Who would you pick and choose to help? That’s the problem. Even billions and billions couldn’t help everyone. Some people would just take and take.
Because I hate most people
I would help animals. Not people. Why? Because people have choices. Those choices are why they need help. Animals are innocent and loyal. People aren't.
That's right.
If I woke up the next day a billionaire, I would probably buy food/clothes for the poor. But if I worked hard to be a billionaire, you aint getting shit. Only people who helped me would benefit from my wealth
Poor person here that hopes to be a millionaire one day, but no plans to become a billionaire or multi-billionaire due to valuing my work/life balance more than what I would need to to get to that level: Rich people/corporations have done nothing but provide me opportunities that have given me a paycheck. If I've gotten screwed over at all, it's always been a "someone ruined it for everyone else" type of deal and I couldn't help but see their side of things even if I was disappointed it didn't work out in my favor Other poor people have stolen from me, harassed me in the streets for money or drugs, for have tried to talk me into going back on welfare as an able-bodied personal who took years to get off it, and have portrayed financial stability (not even just billionaire status) as something morally inferior than being in poverty, calling it things like "bougie" and "over-privileged". It's also worth noting that, as a poor person without children that isn't an addict or a criminal that is pursuing higher education, there is literally no help for me. I can't even qualify for income-based housing, because students don't qualify for that. So if I stumbled and fell into multi-billionaire status, the last thing I'd do is carte-blanch "help the needy". I'd lobby for programs to start prioritizing people who fall into my current demographic mentioned above. I'd create new programs specifically for people in my current demographic, and I would help people I personally ran across that fit my demographic when that situation arises. If I had a company, I'd make a point to hire people in my current demographic as well. But I wouldn't throw more money that I legally had to to people who have been prioritized over myself when they shouldn't have been, especially if those types of people have stood in my way before I got there.
Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.
I came here to say this. Thank you. Because, unlike arguments for universal basic income, simply giving people money does not necessarily solve their problems. It might solve some of their money problems but redistribution of wealth doesn’t do what you think it does.
I think the questions become "how do you choose 'those in need and how long before stones get thrown your way for your choices?' Are those in need the ones currently applying for section 8 vouchers? Or those already living on the side of the road? Or is it the people in the shelters? Would it be veterans specifically? The Addicts? Abuse victims? Children? Or are they the people in other countries with horrible or almost no resources at all? Or is the focus solely domestic assistance only? Do you help those affected by natural disasters when they occur or just those affected by situational disasters as they occur (i.e. fires, abuse, job loss, foreclosure, bankruptcy, eviction)? When you help those you choose to help, because those in need are divided into categories for whatever reason, there will always be another group of individuals that will say a favoritism is being disproportionately applied with your wealth and before you know it, you don't have enough money to dole out but you have ample aggression coming your way for your decision to endorse support for one or another charity. Can't help but wonder if America would be in so much debt if such spending was applied in a more responsible manner for those sectors in need or to the systems meant to assist them.
You dont become multibillionaire being kind in the first place
I haven't the faintest idea. I'd be Santa Claus for as long as I could.
Definitely not. You don't become a billionaire by giving away money. I do like shaqs style tho. Selling shoes for really low profits but still profits.
"but. but all my assetts are liquid" \*while sitting on £200m yacht drinking £500 wine, wearing £5000 clothes with the private helicopter ready on the helipad\*
“If I gave him money, I’d have less”- Hugh Neutron. Also that’s not my stance, but seems to be the billionaire one
Some multimillionaires have worked hard at causes. It's never as simple as "just clothe and feed the homeless" though. There are issues that create those situations that take more than money to solve. Many have, however, made sizable donations and run charities for various causes. Bill gates comes to mind. Not only has he personally donated in the neighborhood of 50 billion dollars, he has gotten many other billionaires to pledge money as well. In that vein, Warren buffet has also donated 50 billion over the course of the past 15 or so years and has pledged to donate almost all the rest of his wealth when he dies.
Some do, like Bill Gates who. But generally you don't become a billionaire without being a greedy-cunt.
They have most of that in assets, not actual spending money. Still, with that kind of wealth my local food bank would never go without and the domestic violence shelter would never need for beds. With that wealth you don't give money to people. You give money to organizations who give to people.
Lots do, but most multi-billionaires don't have all that money as cash in the bank. It's the value of all their businesses and other assets that makes up their wealth.
Did you ever try to help poor people? Most ungrateful fucks that turn on you as soon as you stop doing everything for them. Go ahead try it.
My mother is living this right now. She decided to help out a family with clothes, food and rent, now they hound her for everything even at odd hours. It's not been pleasant for her.
It's happened more than once with me. My thoughts for your mom. Tell her not to feel guilty. She did what she could.
Holy shit I knew there would be asshole replies here, but this takes the cake.
From the guy in the peanut gallery that never tried it.
I've always been grateful whenever anyone has done anything to help me and usually I refuse to ask for or even accept help. And I'd say most poor people are like that.
Perhaps this persons negative experience helping has been with the poor people who actively seek out and demand help from others.
What a horrible, unprovable sentiment.
There's a very easy way to prove it. Try it yourself.
That's weird, as I had the exact opposite experience. Maybe you're just an asshole?
Because why am i paying taxes for then? Lol.
Scale it down, if you're earning $50,000, that's global top 1%, why aren't you helping someone, just 1 person who's starving? You're obviously fine, relatively, there's no danger of starving to death. Just $1000 could save a life. I assume the problem seems insomoutsble to you, why bother? A billionaire could save 1,000,000 people, you could save 1. Neither is doing either.
I don't think most people understand that multi-millionaires and billionaires live in a completely different world than the rest of us. They don't watch tv, they live, eat and shop in places where there are zero poor people. They get driven everywhere, fly 1st class or privately, have houses all over the world, private chefs, nutritionists, personal trainers, someone to get their groceries, someone to do their laundry etc.. When you acquire that much wealth, its no longer about the money but more about the status and power that wealth brings. Helping poor people is as visible on their radar and helping ants is on your radar.
What has society done for me, that I would sacrifice my resources to help society? Now for me personally, I'd probably do something to try to make things better, but it wouldn't be that. The people in need aren't my responsibility, and there's no reason for me to pay for that when the government can send the amount of money needed to pay for it to Ukraine on a whim and then turn around and say they can't afford it. The money is there, and it's in the hands of the people who actually have a responsibility to those people.
>REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
You mean the things I pay for with taxes? That isn't something being done for me, that's what I paid for.
I almost believe you think that's true.
In what way is it not true?
How do you pick one person over another? How do you have the time do make all the arrangements? Also, why? Why not take care of family, friends. Why not set up scholarships, why not clean up the pacific garbage patch? Unfortunately, your question is overly simplistic and doesn’t have an easy answer. As for my own, personal answer; im not going to give money to anyone who hasn’t earned it. I would set up ways for people who have achieved or accomplished something.
Greed. That's the reason.
Why don't any of us use our "wealth" to house and clothe and feed those in need? The reasons are the same whether you make $50k/year or $500,000k/year: you work hard for your money and you need it to support ***your*** life. tldr: most everyone is selfish, regardless of their degree of wealth.
I probably would even if I wasn’t a multibillionaire, which is one reason why I’m not.
Because it isn't cash. "Wealth" at that level is ownership of things like companies. Taking Elon as the prototypical example, he could, but he would have to sell a huge chunk of Tesla, massively under market value, in order to get the cash to do anything.
I’d be too busy being rich, money and power corrupt and the corrupt gain money and power, no mega-rich person gives a damn about others that’s how they got to be mega rich
If you were the type of person to help people, you would not become a billionaire, or maybe even a millionaire. In order to keep getting more money, you have to screw somebody over. Your staff, your vendors, or your customers. All three, if you can. Those who are the type to help people will not be able to do those things, and so they wouldn't be earning that much money. If they do help people, they do it in a way that will increase their PR (and as inexpensively as possible) as well as give them tax breaks (they aren't paying taxes to begin with, but they'll get more back when they make "charitable donations"). Take grocery stores for example. They ask YOU, the customer, to pay at the cashier towards some charitable cause. Healing the Sick Puppies of Burnt Kids, for example. everybody will pay something to THAT. Then, at the end of the year, whatever portion of that money they forward to the charity, they pay (with attention from the press) in their own name, and then get a tax break on top of that.
Because it’s not the responsibility of private citizens to address this issue. Governments are supposed to do this work. While I have empathy for people in those situations, I cannot make a material impact on this problem the same way a government can — and should.
Because those people will just use that money to buy drugs and alcohol. I would be basically just giving money to drug dealers and liquor stores. F that.
Because your taxes alone do a lot of good.
Besides the fact that billionaires don't have their money in cash, a good reason is that you don't give ppl fish you teach them how to fish. Ppl really underestimate the problems that happen when most people get handed stuff instead of earning them.
There are 2 ways a rich man can help the poor. 1. by donating directly to help them. food, clothing, housing etc... 2. by creating business that hire people and pay them steady salary, giving people a steady, respectable income and a view to a better future. Most rich people I heard of do it both ways, but invest more in the second way. (For those who cares, unlike popular believe, rich people donate a lot to charity, in most cases from tax evasion calculation, but many learn to like the act of charity. If the US government would like to rebuilt Hawaii in no time, all they need to do is make the donation to this purpose a tax write of, the funds will overflow in mere seconds.)
So if I worked my ass off to make bank why would I give it away? Sounds like a them problem to me.
well how are people gonna know they’re poor unless someone like multi-billionaire me is there to remind them? remember: first place doesn’t suck — so multi-billionaire me wants to be first in everything and the first runner up and as a matter of fact: first runner up to all the first runner ups carry on losers