Frankly, I find this is a very cynical approach to the lecture of this letter.
Most everyday Joes might not have the means to change the world but it is certain that when turn into billionaire, they rarely pledge the quasi-totality of their fortune to improve the well being of others.
If this is narcissistic, just let it be and be appreciate that for once, a great deal of money will be put to good use. The world is full of Koch Brothers, Saudi princes and European heirs to prove that most billionaires are more concerned about evading taxes rather than giving back.
Don't know about the Saudi princes however the Koch Brothers have given away millions of dollars (and I am sure there also give away money anonymously as well).
Also rest assured that Facebook also "evades taxes" in the same way that the Koch brothers do, that is by taking advantage of the US Tax Code in a legal way. And none of us have any idea what the Koch Brothers have in their wills and have not publicly announced.
David Koch, worth 44,200 million dollars, is donating literally millions?!? How generous of him to give away approximately 0.002% of his fortune here and there.
Please be serious. This comparison is laughable, the ≈ $300M listed on his foundation is literally 0.7% of his net worth.
GP wasn't determining where someone donates their money. GP was pointing out that putting the Koch brothers in that comparison is ridiculous given their net worth.
Perhaps you should not publicize press releases and webpages detailing money you allocate "altruistically", if you do not wish others to comment.
(Throughout history in many cultures, people gain status by ostentatious gifts of wealth. Of course, that means you have to tell everyone of your benevolence. And as everyone knows, Koch uses his wealth — and shows like this — to wield enormous influence in politics.)
The marginal value of money is small. If I had ten times as much money as I have now, I would stop working and travel a lot more. If then my wealth magically multiplies by another factor of ten, basically nothing would change.
One of the organizations the Koch brothers fund is FIRE, which is dedicated to free speech on college campuses. It's really hard to find fault in that. I really hate the Manichean judgment common in modern public discourse. Everyone is either a saint or a devil, depending on which side you're on.
Also, the idea of having Facebook at the cost of giving up your privacy to this behemoth, and more importantly, at the cost of this company exploiting your cognitive biases to get you to buy things hardly seems conducive to a spirit of bettering the world.
Not sure why the downvotes, your point is valid. Though it should not be a surprise, facebook business is designed as such (empty shell to be filled by the facebook used + everything shady and dirty trick in the book).
While Facebook is not doing everything it can to evade taxation in many countries, right? And let them choose what to do with the money. Why isn't Zuckerberg pledging to drive his company as a good citizen?
I would call that tax avoidance, not evasion, but no matter.
Judge Learned Hand (a real person's name) wrote, "Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes."
I agree wholeheartedly.
I imagine that were I in their shoes, I'd be fairly confident that I could do more good for the world by private philanthropy, directed to causes that I felt compelling, than by fueling general government spending/avarice around the world.
> I imagine that were I in their shoes, I'd be fairly confident that I could do more good for the world by private philanthropy, directed to causes that I felt compelling, than by fueling general government spending/avarice around the world.
I think that is beside the point. These companies are violating the spirit of law, not the letter of the law, when they avoid taxes. Take for example, the recent Pfizer/Allergen merger which happened merely for tax-avoidance reasons. It's legal, but it's totally uncalled for and it's clear to see why: a lot of what Pfizer stands on is from NIH-funded research, it's from us the tax-payers. Pfizer should have played fair by paying back, so NIH can fund even more studies, so that more people are employed, so that academia has more breathing room, etc.
There are clear interpretations and case law that state that faithful adherence to the letter of the tax law is fine. How is one to interpret the "spirit" of the law when the spirit inferred by one reader is at odds with the text of the law as acted upon by someone else? It's (relatively) easy to show compliance with the letter of the law. It's (essentially) impossible to show compliance with all possible spiritual interpretations thereof.
The Internal Revenue Service (of the US) writes:
Avoidance of taxes is not a criminal offense. Any attempt to reduce,
avoid, minimize, or alleviate taxes by legitimate means is permissible.
The distinction between evasion and avoidance is fine yet definite. One
who avoids tax does not conceal or misrepresent. He shapes events to
reduce or eliminate tax liability and upon the happening of the events,
makes a complete disclosure. Evasion, on the other hand, involves
deceit, subterfuge, camouflage, concealment, some attempt to color or
obscure events, or making things seem other than what they are.
Did this Dutch company purchase product/services from this Irish company?
Did these two companies merge and the surviving company was the non-US company?
Did this executive receive stock options on such-and-such date?
Those are all relatively easy questions of fact.
Should the surviving entity of the merger have been the US company? (According to whom? Or on what basis? To what end? Which benefits the investors the most? What did the shareholders vote to do with their company? Why should someone else judge that what they did was "legal but improper"?)
The real issue is simply that the US is relatively uncompetitive as a corporate domicile (on a rates and particularly on a "worldwide income basis") Attempts to patch the system without addressing this root issue are unlikely to succeed in a clean and sustainable fashion, IMO.
Can you clarify which law (or IRS rule - I don't mean to be pedantic here), specifically, you feel Facebook is violating the spirit of?
Most common tax avoidance strategies are possible due to very deliberate policies in each of the relevant jurisdictions. Its fine to claim that there is something wrong with the laws in question, but I haven't been able to identify one that strategies like the "double-dutch" violate the spirit of.
Agreed. I'd rather have my taxes being spent on worthwhile endeavors instead of half going to blow up strangers on the other side of the world. $435 hammers to line Dick Cheney's pockets? No thank you. A large portion of my taxes going towards curing cancer? Have some extra.
Well, military spending is half of discretionary spending, but it's nowhere close to half the federal budget. I'd rather these billionaires and corporations be paying into the commonweal and helping us to pay for the social programs and infrastructure we need that are chosen by the will of the people. Instead they get to choose whatever priority is important to them, which are sometimes helpful (malaria) and sometimes disastrous ("education").
Your question is a good response to the framing of this philanthropy as "giving back". Indeed, if the point of it is to give back, why not simply mold your corporate behemoth into something kinder and gentler.
I don't think this sort of thing is about "giving back" however. I think it's something more ambitious than that: to "do something", do something transformative for the future.
Though Zuck's manifesto isn't well thought out yet, I'm stoked that he's committed to doing something with that $45B. Because hoarding up billions of dollars into family dynasties is pretty much doing nothing.
If the wealth is held as stock then there is no "money" for the bankers to do anything with. At best he can borrow money with the stock as collateral and then allow bankers to invest that.
> Most everyday Joes might not have the means to change the world but it is certain that when turn into billionaire, they rarely pledge the quasi-totality of their fortune to improve the well being of others.
> If this is narcissistic, just let it be and be appreciate that for once, a great deal of money will be put to good use. The world is full of Koch Brothers, Saudi princes and European heirs to prove that most billionaires are more concerned about evading taxes rather than giving back.
I'm not so sure that's true. The ultra-rich actually donate a huge amount of money. Just last July a Saudi Prince announced he was donating over $30 billion to "philanthropic causes". And back in 2012 a bunch of them pledged to give away "half their wealth."
And those are just a couple of the bigger examples I found in 2 minutes of web search.
Also, I've never heard of anybody volunteering to pay more taxes. Everybody tries to pay less, so it's silly to fault the rich for doing it just because they're saving more in absolute terms.
The more I think about the letter, the more I'm reminded of the poem Ozymandius. Are you familiar with it? The crux of the poem, up for interpretation, is that all empires are led by men of great confidence and eventually they return to dust over time. You know, like MySpace did before Facebook.
As my mum used to say "It's easy to shit when your butt is full".
How hard is it, really, to give away 99% when you're still left with enough to comfortably sustain 5+ lifetimes? Bill Gates said it well here: http://imgur.com/gallery/YDuoHdr
That said, I hope that if I ever get into a position like that, I too will be able to look beyond my personal greed and desire to increase the high score.
> Are you an American? Well sir, your butt is full and you're keeping it all to yourself.
Quite a few Americans live payday to payday. Some work many part time jobs to make ends meet. Do they in absolute dollar terms make more than someone in Africa? Yeah they do. Does it help them if they still can't pay rent? Is that supposed to make them feel better that they make more dollars per month than someone in Burkina Faso?
What do you suggest that they somehow go live in Africa, and commute to US, then share the extra wealth for the betterment of mankind.
> "How hard is it?" You tell me.
Pretty darn hard.
Here is some sauce, because someone will ask for it anyway:
I've only been through that CBS link, but it's almost comically awful; a good reminder of why you should avoid nearly every story about a complex issue from a media outlet. As a representative line:
"Mayors in 29 cities say more than 1 in 4 people needing emergency food assistance did not receive it."
But at any rate, you completely misunderstood the parent's comment, which alludes to the fact that any American with enough disposable income to be browsing HN is in a rarified stratum of wealth globally, and has plenty of opportunity to donate it to the less fortunate.
Nope. Born in Yugoslavia (communist/socialist), raised in Slovenia (ex-socialist), now in the US for ~8 months. Don't even have my status fully resolved yet.
Right now I can barely keep up with rent and building some savings. At current rate it will take me 46,875 years to save up as much as Zuck will have left over after the 99%.
There are people in America who are within the top 1% of global wealth but struggle to feed themselves, or to keep themselves healthy, or to shelter themselves, etc.
> There is extreme lack of poverty in the U.S. There is no reason for anyone to go without food.
I'm not sure which US you're referring to but it's not one I recognise. There is massive inequality in the US that I know and the results of that are visible everywhere that I visited. Homeless people abound like nowhere else in the developed western world that I've been to (Europe, Australia) and there is a real edge of desperation to the countless number of working poor. For example, in my experience, money is a topic of conversation that pops up way more frequently in the US than elsewhere. If it's not in the context of income (usually being too low) then it's about prices and taxes (usually being too high). Americans seem to think about these things A LOT. Also, looking around, it seems to me like everyone is always hustling for the next dollar. It's sufficiently weird and alien to me that I find it remarkable.
> I'm not sure which US you're referring to but it's not one I recognise.
I'm from an African country and with that perspective I stand by this phrase:
> There is extreme lack of poverty in the U.S. There is no reason for anyone to go without food.
Name one area in the U.S. where a homeless person cannot get a meal.
My claim is simple. The U.S. is the most prosperous place on the planet, the inequality doesn't touch at least a hundred other countries. Again, inequality isn't necessarily an indicator of poverty.
> My claim is simple. The U.S. is the most prosperous place on the planet, the inequality doesn't touch at least a hundred other countries. Again, inequality isn't necessarily an indicator of poverty.
The comparisons you make are on absolute terms but the reality is more nuanced. There are almost 47 million people living in poverty in the US [1] and something like 38% of the population live paycheque-to-paycheque (up from 31% in the late 90s) [2]. Even if most of those people are food-secure (something like 90% of Americans in poverty are) those numbers should still be pretty alarming. Just because the average American has it much better than the average African doesn't mean their situation is necessarily very good.
There's a little nuance needed when it comes to poverty in the US, since it's based on a floating measure.
[the following is copied from previous comments I've made on this subject]
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/ahs/nationaldata.html
Americans below the poverty line in 2009 are more likely to have things like complete kitchens, complete plumbing, automobiles, air conditioning, and dishwashers than Americans as a whole in 1970. Put another way, if we used the living conditions of someone at the poverty line right now and used that to define the poverty line in 1970, over half of the 1970 population would be below the poverty line.
.... the definition [of poverty] is tied to CPI, which is tied to housing costs, which are more likely to include the cost of a full kitchen now than in the past especially for people near the bottom. I would argue that for someone in that position, having a full kitchen is better than not. Yet the CPI-based measure treats the cost of having a full kitchen as a negative (inflation), without treating the benefit of the full kitchen as a positive
[end copied segment]
Point being, the definition of "poverty" has some hidden inflation built in.
> There are almost 47 million people living in poverty in the US
Look at the definition of poverty and you'll agree it's certainly a form of poverty, but again compared to the majority of the planet doesn't really cut it.
Living paycheck to paycheck is generally an unfortunate choice or lack of education, but the point remains that there's a paycheck.
And I can certainly agree that the culture of credit/debt isn't the best.
> Just because the average American has it much better than the average African doesn't mean their situation is necessarily very good.
I completely agree, it's not good at all. I think this underlies my point at the beginning that we need to give even if we don't have $45B. Our ability to generate the paycheck or our ownership of assets on average outstretches the vast majority of the planet.
> Look at the definition of poverty and you'll agree it's certainly a form of poverty, but again compared to the majority of the planet doesn't really cut it.
Poverty is defined along a spectrum, not relative to some kind of global nadir.
> Living paycheck to paycheck is generally an unfortunate choice or lack of education, but the point remains that there's a paycheck.
You're misrepresenting the situation by arguing it's a lifestyle choice. When you're poor it's very hard to save much of anything. Housing, transportation and food can quickly eat up most of a weekly paycheque.
> Our ability to generate the paycheck or our ownership of assets on average outstretches the vast majority of the planet.
Nobody is arguing the US the is place to be if you have money. The point I'm trying to spell out for you is that the averages you discuss are massively skewed by huge inequality. America's middle class are no longer the world's richest and they are shrinking in number. More, America is increasingly opting for a a system of governance that is leaving more and more people behind, especially its most vulnerable.
> Americans seem to think about these things A LOT.
In my experience that's because Americans only talk about personal wealth/income by proxy. They won't talk about how much they earn, but they will talk about how much they pay for rent, or talk about taxes, etc.
It's a way to gauge how much the people you know are making in a system where the concept of pay grade doesn't exist across companies.
I'm not convinced they would be better off with it. For every American that wisely uses debt to get an education that will lead to an ROI, how many are just screwing themselves with consumer debt and degrees that don't pay?
Most everyday Joes might not have the means to change the world but it is certain that when turn into billionaire, they rarely pledge the quasi-totality of their fortune to improve the well being of others.
If this is narcissistic, just let it be and be appreciate that for once, a great deal of money will be put to good use. The world is full of Koch Brothers, Saudi princes and European heirs to prove that most billionaires are more concerned about evading taxes rather than giving back.