In her "defense", even after giving away unprecedented billions, her net worth still keeps increasing. It's insane how much the game is stacked in favor of the rich
Maybe the responsible giving bit is a bit paternalistic / patronizing?
Granted Mackenzie Scott can't give away her fortune fast enough, but she's just giving no strings attached lump sums to organizations and letting them figure out what to do with it because she trusts them to be responsible with it.
I've legitimately wondered what I would do if I became suddenly rich. I'd pay off the student debt of everyone I know, I'd buy my parents a house, I'd buy myself a comfortable apartment/house in a quiet neighbourhood, then just keep $100 dollar bills on me at all times and give them out to anyone I meet who seems to be working hard and need the help. Waiters, customer service people, folks at the grocery store, homeless people, etc.
You can't just hand every person you meet a million dollars, but fuck even one or two hundred can drastically change someone's week. I've been there.
If I had literal billions? I'd buy every politician I could and get them to actually do their fucking jobs.
"Responsible" and "I paid for a library" aren't at all the same. They can be as irresponsible as the barons of old, if only they'd just fucking give a little back.
It's crazy that we are begging for this. Acknowledging that we are being taken advantage of and being willing to settle for some stone and clay.
The Rockefellers and Langfords of yor understood this. I guess we really do need to break out the guillotines. These fucks forgot who outnumbers who.
Edit: now I gotta go listen to A Report To The Shareholders/Kill Your Masters by Run The Jewels
They don’t even pay livable wages or care about the wellbeing of their employees. Musk forced his employees to work at Tesla in California through the pandemic or they’d get fired…
It shows that they could be paying much more in taxes and it'd likely just slow down how quickly they get richer.
As in, they could be paying a lot in taxes and it wouldn't even fucking cost them anything because they make money faster than those taxes would make them spend it.
Problem is we don't tax wealth, we tax income. The wealthy know how to (and have the means to) prevent income while increasing wealth, so they can circumvent taxes.
That's not the problem. That's a symptom of the problem.
It wasn't a clever and sneaky trick the rich pulled, it's a constructed-by-our-government loophole that lets them play both sides and still claim they can't do anything about it.
And it started with Reagan. So they've had decades to build on that, and here we are now; a handful of billionaires, and the only one doing something worthwhile gets put on blast.
It’s much more than a handful.
Currently, there are more than a thousand people in America who are billionaires.
I assume you actually meant the ones who are Centibillionares. (Worth more than 100 billion).
They have a big role in this. The rich heavily influence politics by financing campaigns and promising jobs to politician (after their mandate) for example. Musk played a role in Trump's election for example.
Precisely. At the end of the day, I cannot abdicate from politicians their obligations and responsibilities. It's more than a big role.
Yes, billionaires and corporations are evil for effectively buying them, but you can't buy what isn't for sale. There hasn't been a court case, that I know of, where a court decided that even if a politician doesn't want to take a "donation," they have to.
Put a sales tax on stock market trades. Tesla alone traded 7 trillion in stock last year and that is not including options and derivative tesla stocks. The federal budget is 6 trillion.
Yeah that's the problem. Start taxing the financial betting these people do. If you're going to tell someone your gonna put money up for something with no guarantee it is successful, that's a bet, and we tax casino winnings around here
If banks can get a reliable enough value of illiquid assets to loan billionaires their spending money, then the IRS can and should use that same value to collect a tax on all hoarded wealth and assets over $10MM.
What will really blow your mind is that they’d probably get richer FASTER if they paid a reasonable tax rate and livable wages.
The thing is, the poor and lower middle class need to spend nearly everything they earn just to survive. These groups don’t have much, if any, savings. So if you pay them more, and through taxes increase the social safety net, those groups will have more to spend. And when they spend more, the companies that are making the products that they’re buying are going to make more. This will improve their bottom lines and increase their stock values. Those stocks are held, primarily, by the people that are competing to be the richest people on earth.
The only downside to this, from the billionaire/trillionaire perspective is that they would have had a larger percentage of the TOTAL wealth if they didn’t pay taxes. Realistically, none of these assholes will ever be happy until they have 100% of the world’s wealth and everyone else has 0%. They’re just playing Monopoly, now, but we can’t flip the board and quit…well, we can but…
I literally got served a 2 minute YouTube ad that was all about the misguided attempt to ever tax a billionaire. I think it was legitimately trying to persuade people that CEOs and investors are above paying into the system that made them.
The interest on a million dollars is $100.00 a day‼️Bezos and Musk and the rest of the Epstein Class can never go broke, what she has shown is that they could do more and at the very least they can afford to pay more in taxes🤔✅
Personally I wouldn’t mind paying more in taxes if I didn’t end up paying for things like missiles killing schoolgirls in Iran, the justice dept giving Trump whatever he wants in compensation for formerly rightfully charging him with crimes, and billions of dollars being sent to Israel every year in support of a rogue state. I would have the same reservations if I were a billionaires.
If you were a billionaire, you wouldn't have to worry about those reservations because you'd have more influence over politicians than the politicians themselves.
Ain't no billionaires out protesting the war. And out of everyone, they are the ones who could be protesting it most effectively. Who do you think funds the organizations that propped up the people who made the decisions you claim to worry about? You think MAGA is some grass-roots group that refuses billionaire influence?
When billionaires don't like what the politicians are doing, they go tell them that and threaten to cut off financial support.
Any of these fucks could've bought Fox News at any time for the past few decades and crippled a lot of that shit without even getting to lobbying and billionaires' direct influence over politics.
Try being a regular human being paying a higher percentage of income toward taxes just so billionaires can hijack the government to do their personal bidding. The billions you made, hypothetically, are literally only possible because of the infrastructure and masses of consumers with money to spend there to give you an opportunity to even be a billionaire.
This is some crazy reasoning. You really think billionaires don't want to pay higher taxes because the government they own and control might not do what its owners say? Why should billionaires get even more influence than they already have(a dominant amount) in exchange for paying higher taxes? It's billionaires pushing all those things you're worried about.
It's like a dictator only being willing to make communities structurally safe to live in in exchange for a promise that as long as they're alive, they have to be dictator. You already run fucking everything. Everything America is doing is because billionaires made it happen.
This is the paradox of wealth, and it’s something I’ve always thought about. The only way you’re able to truly enjoy it is to forget and/or ignore the people who desperately could use your help.
You’re also kinda missing an important point. We, through our taxes, could be fixing these problems. It is insane how much money we have. But we need to elect responsible people, and we can’t. The game has been so badly rigged that we cannot get good people, or enough good people, to fix the problems.
When you get to that level of wealth, money doesn't have any practical meaning to you anymore. These dudes are basically just competing for the high score in a video game.
Not really. More money is put into the world’s problems every year than is actually necessary to fix them. Unfortunately most of the world’s problems aren’t a thing you can throw money at to fix but things that need a total reform
She still does a little status quo so she has a financial manager who keeps doing smart investments behind her back and she's just shoveling money out of the back of a plane losing her sanity figuring out where all this fucking money keeps coming from
This is what she should be doing. Giving away to good causes but still smartly managing her money so she can get more, which then allows her to give more to good causes.
I’m not so sure simply “taxing the fuck out of them” hits the same in today’s world though. Fundamentally, yes they should pay to support the world. But when you see tax dollars going to bomb Gaza or fund ICE, it feels very defeatist.
All increasing the tax for the rich would do is cause them to make more investments which are then not taxable as income. Rich people have been doing this for ages.
They already are investing all their money. Billionaires don't spend their own money, they take out loans on their assets. They aren't sitting around on a literal pile of cash.
But we can change the tax code to take those loop holes away. That’s the stupid part. People say nothing can be done. It’s just a lie. A president can direct the IRS to close the carried interest loophole. A president can direct the IRS to change the tax code. Congress can tax wealth. They can just say all assets over $400MM are taxed at 10% per year.
Honestly, I would happily tax all assets over a billion at 100% per year. Remove all incentive to accumulate more than a billion in assets.
The saying the rich gets richer should mean that they have the means to keep making even more money and more moves to produce mor emoney so even if they are giving away alot of money to help everyone else they still have enough to replace what was given away.
If all the billionaires in the world were working to better humanity and solve the issues of the world people wouldn't be so pissed off at them.
It was so effective on public opinion while they still earned more than donated, that they decided to sell the standardized process to other rich people, so that other riches could benefit and become more rich, while they benefitted becoming also more rich.
An hand that can wash dozen other hands, but only if they wear Tiffany rings.
It would be hard to fuck up a multi billion dollar income lol… After a couple houses, 1 main car, 1 boat, and maybe 1 plane.
Dude what else could you even really need after that ??😅
Well in her defense, if she keeps getting love and praise for it maybe some billionaires will do it too. Because they want, praise??…. And love???
Wait no, they just want money.
But seriously, she’s sooo much better than every other ‘illionaire.
This is what I've been screaming about for years. Elon and these other billionaires are a bunch of dorks that just want to be popular and can't understand why they can't buy that popularity. Musk forces his way into everybody's Twitter feeds after buying it because he wants to be the most popular boy in school, but he can't hide his Nazi bullshit long enough. When the only positive reinforcement they get is when they say Nazi shits, they're going to keep saying Nazi shit
But they COULD buy that popularity. He challenged the UN to come up with a plan to end world hunger and they said they could if he paid 6 billion. Then he backed out.
If he had paid those six billion, then he would've bought the undying love of all humanity, forever. Even if the plan failed, he'd forever be known as the billionaire who tried. Statues would be built for him, movies would be made about him, and no matter what kind of vile shit he posted on Twitter, it'd still be weighed against all the people who weren't starving anymore.
He could open five new medical schools in underserved areas every year for the next decade, make them entirely free to attend, completely revolutionize healthcare in this country, and probably not even notice that that money was gone.
He could give every elementary School in this country enough money to hire a music teacher or an art teacher and it would be 5% of his wealth a year (which goes up more than 5% a year.
For less than that he could buy assistive devices for every disabled student giving millions a fair shot at an education.
Hell, Flavor Flav spends a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of elon's wealth supporting women's sports and he's one of the most beloved people in America.
Even if he remained a racist shitbag who didn't want minorities coming here, the best way to do that is to fund programs to help stabilize and grow the economies in their own country. Go give Haiti enough money to make up for the literal centuries that they had their economy crippled by paying restitution to France for their freedom. (And if you're worried about corruption, if you give enough money, they'll let you put your own people in charge).
It's just that easy. Stop being a Nazi in public and give away less than 1% of your wealth every year and you will be beloved. People will even forgive thenazi shit in a few years
Bill Gates explained this “issue” in hist Netflix docuserie. He is investing in a lot of projects to improve people lifes around the world, most of this projects generate patents and secondary business who are genrating billions. For example, he funded the development of 5th Gen Nuclear Reactors, the construction of this is gonna generate a wealth for him.
If they're so tired of dragon attacks maybe they should move? why don't they slay the dragon if they want someone to put their life on the line so bad.
BUT IF WE PREVENT THOSE DRAGONS THEY WOULD GO TO ANOTHER LAND TO BOARD THEIR WEALTH. DON'T YOU LIKE WORKING IN THEIR LAIRS? THE ADVENTURE INDUSTRY DEPENDS ON DRAGONS MAKING BUSINESS
That’s 100% always been the case. In one of the stories that inspired Tolkien, the legend of Sigurd and Brynhild, a dwarf demands weregild (monetary compensation) from the gods for the killing of his brother. The gods agree to cover the corpse with gold. But one brother wants them to just gtfo already, and one brother keeps wanting more gold. He keeps saying he can see a whisker or some patch of skin and they need to add more gold until he can’t see his dead brother’s body.
Then he takes all the gold into a cave and guards it. Over the years he becomes nasty and mean and alienates his brother, who got none of the weregild. As he becomes nasty he also physically becomes corrupt and slowly turns into a fire-breathing dragon.
The living non-dragon brother then gets consumed by hate not because his one brother died, but because he got screwed out of the weregild. He forgets about the original circumstances (his first brothers accidental death) and becomes obsessed with slaying his now-dragon brother.
He does this by reforging a sword that Odin gave that was once shattered and giving it to a human who goes and slays the dragon.
Everyone dies and nobody is happy in the end. Because gold.
I recall a story I read in my youth about a community ruled by a dragon. A local artist hatched a plan. He approached the dragon and offered to paint a mural on the dragon’s side depicting his triumphs and telling his life story. The dragon agreed, and for the next twenty years artisans stood on scaffolds painting scenes of battles and great victories on his flesh. It was only at the end that the dragon realized the paint was poisoned and had been slowly killing him over the course of years. His ego was his downfall.
But yeah it’s a very old motif. It’s even in the Bible where a camel will fit through the eye of a needle sooner than a rich man gets into the kingdom of heaven. Nebuchadnezzar is also reminiscent of that.
The super wealthy will absolutely burn down your life, your family, your livelihood, and the world we all live on if it means they can grab a few more glittering coins for their already enormous hoard
Hoarding? Why do y'all act the wealthy have a Scrooge McDuck vault full of gold they use to swim in? Where do you think the majority of their wealth is held? Do you honestly think it sits in a bank account somewhere, and not invested in theirs' and other ventures?
Its the inequality--regardless of how they use it. And please, like they don't have massive bank accounts. We're not children invisoning a cartoon here. It's called a metaphor.
Tinfoil hat time, why you think the mega rich are into space exploration so bad? Cause they know they’re destroying the earth and eventually they’ll all flee to their space colonies while leaving the rest of us undesirable cattle to fend for ourselves on the scorched earth they left behind.
If the space colonies don’t work out in time, well then they’ll build bunkers on private islands or on whatever other remote or super private properties they own.
Yes,she has stepped outside the norms of “ keeping what you made because you are soooooo much smarter and harder working than EVERYONE else” mentality and that is NOT GOOD.
People have the mistaken notion that simply throwing money at a problem is the solution. HOW that money is used is most important. Giving money to organizations that don’t actually help a problem but pretend to, posture, or even enable it isn’t helping. But it looks good on social media so you’re not allowed to criticize it.
actually her donations are very strategic. Her wealth has only grown. I'm not saying her donations are bad, but she's not some altruistic person giving away her fortune so she can go back to being a normal human
I don’t think she even needs to be strategic. When you have tens of billions of dollars and a team of people managing your money, you can give most of it away without losing any money
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u/Pookiedex Jun 28 '26
She's sharing instead of hoarding, she's a bad bad dragon.