Remember when Jeff Bezos, who is worth 181 billion USD donated 690k to stopping Australian fires? Yeah, me too.
McKenzie Scott is literally proof that these fuckers can donate HUGE sums of money to EVERYTHING and still live a comfortable life…. But nooO someone HAS to justify the pitifully small donations the richest men on earth make every year for their tax write-off
Some also important context (this is June 2021, after her second round of grants was announced), as well:
[image description: tweet from Dan Price, the Seattle business owner who doesn’t take a massive salary and pays everybody at his company really well: “Two years ago, she had $36 billion. Since then, she has donated $8 billion - more than anyone in the world. She is now worth $60 billion. I think people struggle to understand just how fast wealth accumulates for the super-rich. She literally can’t give it away fast enough.”.]
She’s trying to singlehandedly redistribute the wealth she took back from Jeff Bezos and is failing at it because the economy is built so that wealth travels from the bottom, accumulates at the top, and then stays there. She literally cannot give her money away fast enough.
Think about this. This is our current capitalist economy at work. It is working as intended and designed by those who benefit from it.
Her story is incredibly revealing of how and where the system is failing.
It also means that we can, indeed, tax the hell out of billionaires and they will not suffer at all.
In his keynote address at the International Festival of Authors, wildly successful and powerful agent Andrew Wylie, in his latest public salvo of anti-Amazon rhetoric, compared the retail giant to Islamic terror group ISIS. This may seem like it crosses the line, but it’s certainly not out of character, especially when you look at the public history of Wylie’s statements on Amazon.
In2013: “Amazon and Bashar Al-Assad, have way more in common than anyone in the publishing world would admit. And both of them collude with the US Government!”
2012: “Amazon wants to knock the publishing industry in the head with a shovel, tie it up, drive it to the top of the Fiscal Cliff, and push it off.”
2011: “Make no mistake, we’re facing a Fukuskima-esque catastrophe, and Amazon is the one buying up all the lead underpants.”
2010: “If it was up to Amazon, the entire ocean would belong to BP and the Chilean miners would rot underground. Free Assange!”
2005: “Amazon has too much ambition. And they want to blow up ALL the levees.”
2001: “More like Amazon-Quaeda.”
1996: “Make no mistake, there’s only one mail bomber you need to worry about. And that’s Amazon.”
1980: “The goddamn Russkies have nothing on Amazon. At least communism is morally good in theory.”
April 10, 1970: “You won’t have to look far to figure out who really broke up the Beatles, and her name ain’t Yoko.”
1950: “That’s right, I’d rather Russia have the bomb than those godless heathens at Amazon. You can quote me on that,”
1942: “(something wildly racist about Japanese people)”
1929: “Al Capone is like Amazon, but with scruples!”
April 15, 1912: “Amazon’s buying stock in icebergs right now, mark my words.”
1888: “If my time in England taught me one thing, it’s this: Amazon is as courteous to its vendors as Jack The Ripper was to his.”
1773: “If you told me that tea was sold by Amazon, I’d dive into the harbor, scoop it up, and throw it back in again.”
August 24, 1572: “Huguenots? Sounds an awful lot like "Amazon”.“
1095: "To quote the Pope, Amazon is a Seljuq-Turk-like distributor.”
218 BC: “Amazon doesn’t need drones. It’s got elephants, and it hears the Alps are lovely this time of year.”
Pleistocene: *grunts and gestures that say “fuck Amazon and the mammoth it rode in on”*
“More than half of economic income generated by closely held businesses does not appear on tax returns and that ratio has declined significantly over the past 25 years.”
“From 2014 to 2018, the 25 wealthiest Americans grew about $400 billion richer, according to Forbes. To an economist, this was income, but under tax law, it was mere vapor, irrelevant. And so this group, including the likes of Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett, paid federal income taxes of about 3.4% on the $400 billion.”
“On average, the rate of income tax that people pay climbs as incomes ascend into the top 1%, but when you get to the range of $2M-$5M, that trend stops.
After that, average tax rates actually drop the further up in income you go.”
I LOVE space and I LOVE space exploration. What I do not love is gilded plutocrats rocketing off into space just for kicks and clout. It’s a grotesque display of inequality. A space race between billionaires is morally unjustifiable in the face of a suffering planet.
My friend told me the best example to explain the vast difference between a million and a billion
“A million seconds ago was last week. A billion seconds ago we were still dealing with the Soviet union.”
This is why when we talk about “rich people” who aren’t paying taxes or who are wasting money, we’re not talking about the person who makes 1 or 2 grains of rice worth of money a year. We’re talking about the person who makes the giant fucking Costco sized pile of rice.
The tiktok is from spring 2020. His current net worth is 188 billion
If you’re the kind of person who would do that, you never become Bezos in the first place.
My Dad owned a business my whole life. It was profitable, but it didn’t expand. I ask him once why he never grew it, and he said it’s nearly impossible without climbing on someone’s back–your vendors, your customers, your employees. Particularly that last one. You don’t wait until your business is big to be a good human being. The very first time you have to choose between your own profit and your employees health insurance, you choose the later. You give maternity leave even though the government doesn’t make you. You dock your own salary to not lay people off during a recession. You have adequate staffing and reliable hours. Anybody who says you can’t run a retail business on a normal, reasonable, predictable schedule you know in advance is full of shit. My Dad did it for 35 years (always have one more person than you think you need, and 98% of your staffing problems vanish). It’s just not maximum profit. If you don’t prioritize extracting profit from every corner of your business, you never become rich enough to give billions away.
(One of the things my father is proud of is that by the time he retired they hadn’t needed to take a help wanted ad in 30 years. Turnover was low, and when a spot opened, referrals filled it.)
Obligatory reminder that our society can’t function if we just rely on all capitalists to act like this person’s dad. Nice people in power doesn’t justify the existence of power, because there will always be more ruthless people trying to outcompete or take over and even nice people die eventually. The fact that people like this person’s dad don’t succeed is an indictment of the system from top to bottom
If we want to stop abuse of systems we need to design systems that are resistant to abuse. Worker’s coops and collectives, union shops, etc. One person using their flamethrower to host a barbecue doesn’t justify giving away flamethrowers to everyone, and it doesn’t justify letting that person keep their flamethrower either. Not as long as grills exist
I LOVE space and I LOVE space exploration. What I do not love is gilded plutocrats rocketing off into space just for kicks and clout. It’s a grotesque display of inequality. A space race between billionaires is morally unjustifiable in the face of a suffering planet.
dont you think its weird. dont you think its weird that the space race last time was two of the biggest powers in the world. and now its a handful of rich men. dont you think its weird they can afford that. dont you think its bad that rich men can afford the same things as the government.
dont you think its weird that while the world is suffering and poverty is everywhere, where there’s wars and climate change and human pain and homelessness. the same month I’ve watched people die on the news from unbearable heat and unprecedented flooding. that a rich handful of men are going to space, causing more carbon emissions. dont you think its weird that instead of putting their vast amount of money to use for good they’re using it to find a way off the planet theyre destroying.
dont you think its really fucking weird.
“dont you think its bad that rich men can afford the same things as the government.”
I agreed with this post from the start, but that’s the line that really put things in perspective and made me go “oh shit”.
