Salesforce founder Marc Benioff has donated a fortune to right capitalism's wrongs, and he thinks his fellow billionaires should too. Why can't we just be grateful?
Ostensibly the conclusion of the article: I guess it's because billionaires shouldn't exist. Maybe if we taxed wealth appropriately, charity wouldn't be needed at all. Check this one out:...
Ostensibly the conclusion of the article:
Whatever else is true, Marc Benioff does more good in a day than most of us will muster in our lifetimes.
I guess it's because billionaires shouldn't exist. Maybe if we taxed wealth appropriately, charity wouldn't be needed at all.
They cite that the lifetime giving for the 50 people on that list "Exceeds 173 Billion." That's all well and good, but if taxed appropriately that number given to society would be a lot higher. I tallied up the current net worth of about ~20 people on that list before I got sick of it....$800 billion.
If we collected taxes properly, nobody would have reasonably been able to exceed 500 million, resulting in ~790 billion to distribute to the rest of society, likely the workers and consumers who were inevitably gouged for them to rise to the heights they did.
Is this even true though? Anand G has his line "before doing good, first stop doing harm". Why concede that was Benioff does with his day is so valuable?
Whatever else is true, Marc Benioff does more good in a day than most of us will muster in our lifetimes.
Is this even true though? Anand G has his line "before doing good, first stop doing harm". Why concede that was Benioff does with his day is so valuable?
Some charities are a lot better than others. Transferring private wealth to the government might be better than giving it to, say, Harvard, or some other rich school (since they don't need the...
Some charities are a lot better than others. Transferring private wealth to the government might be better than giving it to, say, Harvard, or some other rich school (since they don't need the money). But I don't think the government does a better job of international aid than Bill Gate's charity.
I don't have a good handle on Benioff's donations but he did apparently give $100 million each to UCSF and Oakland children's hospitals, and that seems somewhat better than government spending on average. (Particularly since wasteful defense spending drags down the government average a lot.)
Private charities are at least doing different things than the government and that diversity seems important. Neither private charity nor government spending can substitute for the other and I don't think we should try. Government spending is often held up by politics and we probably shouldn't put all our eggs in that basket.
Suppose there is a wealth tax and its main effect is to encourage billionaires to ramp up their charitable donations since it avoids the wealth tax. Maybe that's good? I'm not sure, I don't know what billionaires would do on average, but it seems likely to be positive.
If someone makes a billion dollars and gives most of it away to good causes, and you call them a billionaire, then I think it's probably good if that kind of billionaire exists.
But the majority of the charities you mentioned only need charity because government funding has been slashed dramatically in face of ever-decreasing taxes on the wealthy. International aid is...
But the majority of the charities you mentioned only need charity because government funding has been slashed dramatically in face of ever-decreasing taxes on the wealthy.
International aid is probably the trickiest. But then, even with my proposed wealth cap of 500 million, anyone over 10 million could easily afford to drop several million a year on a useful charity.
Honestly I largely see billionaires as mustache-twirling middle-men. Most of the time they get their money simply from managing to entrench themselves in the right places at the intersection of...
Honestly I largely see billionaires as mustache-twirling middle-men. Most of the time they get their money simply from managing to entrench themselves in the right places at the intersection of resources, workers, and government rather than providing any actual value to society. The margin of other peoples' work that they take is incredibly disproportionate to how much useful work they actually do.
Billionaires don't invent and make things, the people they hire invent and make things. If billionaires paid their value-generating workers closer to what they were worth we'd probably mostly be doing better, with less general poverty and more economic activity. But instead of equitably compensating their workers - the people who are largely actually responsible for creating the value associated with their material wealth - they've become hoarders.
I posted an article about this last month that I thought was good, its main idea was that billionaires are generally people that find a way to be in control of "very important tollbooths" in the...
I posted an article about this last month that I thought was good, its main idea was that billionaires are generally people that find a way to be in control of "very important tollbooths" in the economy: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/what-is-a-billionaire
Yes it is true that if we had a better government then it could do a lot of things. But politics being what it is, that seems like a theoretical argument without practical implications? Maybe...
Yes it is true that if we had a better government then it could do a lot of things. But politics being what it is, that seems like a theoretical argument without practical implications? Maybe after a couple of decades of good, stable leadership I would feel differently though.
As it is, I think if instead of some billionaire funding a good cause, they send the money to the federal government and we rely on Congress to do the right thing, that adds indirection and instability. A private organization should probably look to diversify funding sources so it doesn't have to worry about being cancelled by Congress. We can see how this played out with Planned Parenthood deciding not to take federal funds. It's good that they had the option.
I cannot speak about specific situations, but public policies usually take longer to dismantle because: there are more people invested that actually have a say in it - even if they're not heard...
I cannot speak about specific situations, but public policies usually take longer to dismantle because:
there are more people invested that actually have a say in it - even if they're not heard enough. Public money belongs to everyone.
to defund a government project some bureaucracies and rites must be followed. This is less true about private investments.
I'm going to play devil's advocate and say that if we effectively capped wealth at $500m then those billionaires would probably never bother collecting enough gross income to result in that extra...
I'm going to play devil's advocate and say that if we effectively capped wealth at $500m then those billionaires would probably never bother collecting enough gross income to result in that extra $800 billion in tax dollars.
I believe that our tax code should make it extremely hard or impossible to amass that much wealth. However I think such policy would do more good by way of forcing more corporate wealth to be spread around to the workers.
Maybe. But these people are obsessed with money and need to be #1. They want to see the number go up. Once the impossibility of becoming a billionaire is the new norm they'll still reach for it.
I'm going to play devil's advocate and say that if we effectively capped wealth at $500m then those billionaires would probably never bother collecting enough gross income to result in that extra $800 billion in tax dollars.
Maybe. But these people are obsessed with money and need to be #1. They want to see the number go up. Once the impossibility of becoming a billionaire is the new norm they'll still reach for it.
If they get close to the cap and start purchasing, that means their making more income continually, which would get taxed on its way in at much higher rates (on the order of 95% plus). Paired with...
If they get close to the cap and start purchasing, that means their making more income continually, which would get taxed on its way in at much higher rates (on the order of 95% plus).
Paired with a wealth tax, getting above 10 million should be difficult.
BTW think we're on the same side here, just details need worked out.
Which in turn would mean additional income for the vast majority of people, and tax revenue will rise from that. I agree, it shouldn't be a hard cap, rather a soft cap that scales in difficulty...
Which in turn would mean additional income for the vast majority of people, and tax revenue will rise from that.
I agree, it shouldn't be a hard cap, rather a soft cap that scales in difficulty every X million after 2.
And personally...I advocate elimination of money in favor of non-transferable Labor tokens...but that's a big post on it's own.
Presumably that additional income for most people would be taxed at a lower rate than if it went to the former billionaires. But however it shakes out, this is still a massive gain for the middle...
Presumably that additional income for most people would be taxed at a lower rate than if it went to the former billionaires. But however it shakes out, this is still a massive gain for the middle and lower classes and would create a lot more positive economic mobility.
Remember how companies used to provide housing, food, transportation, literally everything for their CEOs and executives? This was back in the 60s where the upper tax rates were much higher....
those billionaires would probably never bother collecting enough gross income to result in that extra $800 billion in tax dollars.
Remember how companies used to provide housing, food, transportation, literally everything for their CEOs and executives? This was back in the 60s where the upper tax rates were much higher.
You're absolutely correct that they will find ways to sustain a similar lifestyle while reducing actual income, but you know what this also did? It provided jobs to all the people who were supporting the lifestyle of these CEOs and executives.
The problem right now is that many of these ultra rich individuals are NOT living the same lifestyle and these same jobs don't exist. Not to mention the extra tax wealth that's not being generated that can then be diverted to stuff like science and technology (how do you think NASA got the funding to put us on the moon? Their budget today is abysmal) and infrastructure and actually putting that tax money to work.
Ostensibly the conclusion of the article:
I guess it's because billionaires shouldn't exist. Maybe if we taxed wealth appropriately, charity wouldn't be needed at all.
Check this one out: https://www.forbes.com/top-givers/
They cite that the lifetime giving for the 50 people on that list "Exceeds 173 Billion." That's all well and good, but if taxed appropriately that number given to society would be a lot higher. I tallied up the current net worth of about ~20 people on that list before I got sick of it....$800 billion.
If we collected taxes properly, nobody would have reasonably been able to exceed 500 million, resulting in ~790 billion to distribute to the rest of society, likely the workers and consumers who were inevitably gouged for them to rise to the heights they did.
Is this even true though? Anand G has his line "before doing good, first stop doing harm". Why concede that was Benioff does with his day is so valuable?
This. Giving back a fraction of his wealth as a side-gig to fix a fraction of the harm he's done at his day job is no cause for celebration.
Some charities are a lot better than others. Transferring private wealth to the government might be better than giving it to, say, Harvard, or some other rich school (since they don't need the money). But I don't think the government does a better job of international aid than Bill Gate's charity.
I don't have a good handle on Benioff's donations but he did apparently give $100 million each to UCSF and Oakland children's hospitals, and that seems somewhat better than government spending on average. (Particularly since wasteful defense spending drags down the government average a lot.)
Private charities are at least doing different things than the government and that diversity seems important. Neither private charity nor government spending can substitute for the other and I don't think we should try. Government spending is often held up by politics and we probably shouldn't put all our eggs in that basket.
Suppose there is a wealth tax and its main effect is to encourage billionaires to ramp up their charitable donations since it avoids the wealth tax. Maybe that's good? I'm not sure, I don't know what billionaires would do on average, but it seems likely to be positive.
If someone makes a billion dollars and gives most of it away to good causes, and you call them a billionaire, then I think it's probably good if that kind of billionaire exists.
But the majority of the charities you mentioned only need charity because government funding has been slashed dramatically in face of ever-decreasing taxes on the wealthy.
International aid is probably the trickiest. But then, even with my proposed wealth cap of 500 million, anyone over 10 million could easily afford to drop several million a year on a useful charity.
Honestly I largely see billionaires as mustache-twirling middle-men. Most of the time they get their money simply from managing to entrench themselves in the right places at the intersection of resources, workers, and government rather than providing any actual value to society. The margin of other peoples' work that they take is incredibly disproportionate to how much useful work they actually do.
Billionaires don't invent and make things, the people they hire invent and make things. If billionaires paid their value-generating workers closer to what they were worth we'd probably mostly be doing better, with less general poverty and more economic activity. But instead of equitably compensating their workers - the people who are largely actually responsible for creating the value associated with their material wealth - they've become hoarders.
I posted an article about this last month that I thought was good, its main idea was that billionaires are generally people that find a way to be in control of "very important tollbooths" in the economy: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/what-is-a-billionaire
Yes it is true that if we had a better government then it could do a lot of things. But politics being what it is, that seems like a theoretical argument without practical implications? Maybe after a couple of decades of good, stable leadership I would feel differently though.
As it is, I think if instead of some billionaire funding a good cause, they send the money to the federal government and we rely on Congress to do the right thing, that adds indirection and instability. A private organization should probably look to diversify funding sources so it doesn't have to worry about being cancelled by Congress. We can see how this played out with Planned Parenthood deciding not to take federal funds. It's good that they had the option.
The problem with depending on the good will of billionaires is that it’s a gamble. Policies last much longer.
Depends on the program. Some are always in the crosshairs for funding cuts.
I cannot speak about specific situations, but public policies usually take longer to dismantle because:
I'm going to play devil's advocate and say that if we effectively capped wealth at $500m then those billionaires would probably never bother collecting enough gross income to result in that extra $800 billion in tax dollars.
I believe that our tax code should make it extremely hard or impossible to amass that much wealth. However I think such policy would do more good by way of forcing more corporate wealth to be spread around to the workers.
Maybe. But these people are obsessed with money and need to be #1. They want to see the number go up. Once the impossibility of becoming a billionaire is the new norm they'll still reach for it.
If they get close to the cap and start purchasing, that means their making more income continually, which would get taxed on its way in at much higher rates (on the order of 95% plus).
Paired with a wealth tax, getting above 10 million should be difficult.
BTW think we're on the same side here, just details need worked out.
Which in turn would mean additional income for the vast majority of people, and tax revenue will rise from that.
I agree, it shouldn't be a hard cap, rather a soft cap that scales in difficulty every X million after 2.
And personally...I advocate elimination of money in favor of non-transferable Labor tokens...but that's a big post on it's own.
Presumably that additional income for most people would be taxed at a lower rate than if it went to the former billionaires. But however it shakes out, this is still a massive gain for the middle and lower classes and would create a lot more positive economic mobility.
Remember how companies used to provide housing, food, transportation, literally everything for their CEOs and executives? This was back in the 60s where the upper tax rates were much higher.
You're absolutely correct that they will find ways to sustain a similar lifestyle while reducing actual income, but you know what this also did? It provided jobs to all the people who were supporting the lifestyle of these CEOs and executives.
The problem right now is that many of these ultra rich individuals are NOT living the same lifestyle and these same jobs don't exist. Not to mention the extra tax wealth that's not being generated that can then be diverted to stuff like science and technology (how do you think NASA got the funding to put us on the moon? Their budget today is abysmal) and infrastructure and actually putting that tax money to work.
Extremely relevant (and fun) podcast:
https://srslywrong.com/podcast/202-billionaire-bon-voyage/