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Zuckerberg To Give Away 99% of His Facebook Stock (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Facebook stock currently held by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan is worth roughly $45 billion. Today, the couple posted a letter addressed to their newborn daughter outlining plans to give away 99% of that stock so their daughter can "live in a better world." They say, "Our initial areas of focus will be personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities." The letter also includes a long list of problems that need to be solved and situations that need to be improved: human health, learning, clean energy, equality, unhealthy childhoods, and more. They go out of their way to mention that many of these will not be solved quickly, and will need investments on a 100-year scale to be worthwhile. They're making internet access another major issue: "The internet is so important that for every 10 people who gain internet access, about one person is lifted out of poverty and about one new job is created."
One percent being worth $500 million.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
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Since he's selling his stock, he's also selling management of the company. Meaning different board members etc. Facebook may go in a different direction.
Of course I commend the sentiment, but hasn't anyone ever seen Maslow's hierarchy of needs? Why do I care about personalized learning and novel sources of energy when I don't even have clean water, a stable source of food, and shelter? Egad man, just hire a few engineers and pay the locals ANY wage and build some functioning wells, sustainable farms, etc. It wouldn't even cost that much to transform most third world countries willing to accept the help and you'd DEFINITELY be remembered forever. I dunno, maybe I'm just weird.
Interesting, but I've never heard such a claim before. That also sounds like correlation but perhaps not causation. And is the person who is lifted out of poverty and/or the job created one of those 10 people who gained internet access? What type of job is created? How is someone lifted form poverty? How soon after getting internet access? Maybe it's "eventually" due to education?
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
I think people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet give away their money to charities that buy products from the companies they own (such as Monsanto, Microsoft, drug companies, etc.) which pay them dividends and probably make them richer than before while making them look good at the same time. I think Zuckerberg is doing the same. For example, make investments in Internet infrastructure to get a billion or two more people on the Internet^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Facebook, and profit from the ad revenue.
You don't make a better world by dissipating capital.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Dividing it among all current Facebook users + extra for each year you've been a member. New members are SOL.
0. Sell 5% of FB stock. Hold profits for step 3.
1. Destroy the data-mined profiles of people's lives that Facebook builds.
2. Shut down Facebook.
3. Use remainder of his fortune to fund a distributed, censorship-resistant, surveillance-resistant, easy to use social network not beholden to or run by data brokers.
If he is truly giving this money back to a foundation, which is tax exempt and accountable only to itself, is it more about charity or about power and influence. If you wanted to be charitable you could have actually made your product less expensive, or you could remit that money to the government instead which is governed by the people. Instead what he is doing is creating an alternative power structure, much in the same way that the vatican is a power structure, meant to allow his power and influence last a "100 years".
Or... you could pay Facebook's taxes with it.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I know a lot of people still with dial-up or ISDN. I have ISDN at home, and my roommate works at Facebook. There's a reason all of the Internet-related powerhouses are from the Bay Area rather than the anti-Internet Seattle area.
If you wanted to be charitable you could have actually made your product less expensive, ...
(a) Facebook is free. (b) Its users *are* the product - already given freely.
Unless you mean Facebook could sell user information and content to advertisers for less...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
He really has to do this. The company isn't growing anymore, and has not been growing for a while. All of the side projects and ostentatious giving is necessary to try to hype up this over-hyped stock. I'm sorry for FB fanboys, but this is the dark and honest truth.
From a human standpoint, his commitment is amazing, much like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been and continues to be.
I say, best of luck trying to keep FB "profitable."
Kriston
When asked to respond to the open letter, Max replied: TLDR.
I love how so many people posting here are so cynical.
Personally I don't see why his motivations are hard to believe at all as they would be pretty much the same if I was in his shoes. No one on this planet needs to own more than a few million dollars, forget about billions.
Basically the only reason I'd want to have the burden of billions of dollars is to use them to try to make the world a better place.
or you could remit that money to the government instead which is governed by the people.
Or he could realize he has already amassed enough money to do meaningful change, unlike the rest of society that needs to pool their money into the government to amass wealth of a similar scale. Now that he has this wealth, I feel there are two "best" options based on where his motivations lie:
1) He doesn't care about helping people: Start a charity to funnel money into and avoid as much taxes as possible.
2) He does care about helping people: Start a charity to do enact meaningful change in a much more efficient manner than giving it to the government.
In both scenarios, giving his money to a charity that he and/or people he trusts have control over is the best play.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
curing disease when in the usa you may have to go to lockup to find a doctor that will see you as soon it will be very hard to find one that will take meadcade as that will be the best you can get with your mc job after an H1B takes you job.
Or how about he gets clean drinking water to Haiti?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Like when he recieved his award
I think the question you ought to be asking yourself is how to make a free product less expensive.
Yes, he has control over the "charity". He's donating his money to himself.
I think people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet give away their money to charities that buy products from the companies they own (such as Monsanto, Microsoft, drug companies, etc.) which pay them dividends and probably make them richer than before while making them look good at the same time. I think Zuckerberg is doing the same. For example, make investments in Internet infrastructure to get a billion or two more people on the Internet^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Facebook, and profit from the ad revenue.
Um, no.
Well, YES, but no. Certainly, the misuse of charitable organizations is a thing, and a thing with a lot of tax advantages.
But you don't give away $44 billion dollars to charity as a way to hide an investment in your own company.
And you don't know anything about Warren Buffet, at all, if you believe this. He's a good guy. There isn't a trick to it, he just happens to be really good at allocating capital. He doesn't need to go searching for loopholes--he already thinks his taxes are too low.
By the time he's dead, what will 99% of his stock be worth? I'm guessing very, very, little. Yeah, right now it is still worth a lot, but that is because it is massively overvalued. It will eventually fade from popularity just like MySpace did and AOL did before that. I'd be more impressed if he said he was going to give away $44.5 billion.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
"1. Destroy the data-mined profiles of people's lives that Facebook builds."
Using Facebook is voluntary and nobody is forced to use it. If you do use it read the fine print to see what they can do with your data.
"2. Shut down Face book".
Again usage is 100% voluntary. Stop using it and Facebook is effectively closed down as far as you are concerned.
"3. Use remainder of his fortune to fund a distributed, censorship-resistant, surveillance-resistant, easy to use social network not beholden to or run by data brokers."
Why don't you use your own money to fund and build the type of network you want. Chances are you don't have the money and you probably don't have the slightest clue about how to build such a network. Standing in the corner stomping your feet demanding someone else build your ideal network is annoying. And Facebook is called a Social Network not a Private Network.
"censorship-resistant, surveillance-resistant, easy to use "
pick 2.
Letting small business advertise and get "sponsored" posts that people see, let alone letting for-profit companies actually promote events that all of the friends who have liked the page see would be a good start.
I agree that this seems like a way to take money out of the 'normal' economy and funnel it towards projects that he decides. Whether that is a bad thing or not, is a political question. And it is a big reason why the tax payers don't get a say in where their dollars get spent, because I bet some agencies would see huge increases and others would see huge decreases if that was the case.
Giving the money to non-profits is largely going to be a waste. Zuckerberg would do much better to pick another big commercial project and focus on that: space travel, asteroid mining, human cloning, nanotech, whatever.
If he financed a moon mission, apparently the spinoffs alone will give a 10x payback. That's what I've been assured here with facts and everything.
Don't get me wrong. These are all things we need to address, and it's great to see anyone, anywhere putting some resources to them. Except it won't solve these. Not that any one effort alone has to solve these things to be worthwhile. Something gun nuts still need to learn about gun control. Every effort matters of course, every step is further down the path, every life saved matters, and so on, that's not the point.
My point is this, it's what Gates, Buffet, etc. are doing and as wonderful as it is, it lacks vision.
Taking one thing and making it a reality may have proven far more inspiring and ultimately more helpful. Working with Musk to build substantive example of a hyperloop would inspire more hyperloop projects and reduce carbon emissions. Mars One, perhaps not the organization itself, but something of that mindset; $45 billion on Mars or bust.
Fuck it, let the species die on this rock.
I don't care what Zuck says, the single most important thing he can do to make the world a better place is to give the world its privacy back. clean energy, equality, talk about bullshit answers.
The "pledge" if it is ever acted upon transfers Zuckerberg's (and Wifi's?) holdings to the Zucberburg Foundation! Who is the beneficiary of the Zuckerburg Foundation? Mark Zuckerberg!
This is nothing more than a tax evasion scheme and not at all cleaver about it.
Actually, Zucky plagiarized HillyBilly's Clinton Foundation down to the ... except for the acknowledgements.
Ha ha What a Mo-mentium Schmuck.
If you wanted to be charitable you could have [...], or you could remit that money to the government instead which is governed by the people.
Just to be clear, you are suggesting that money given to the government will go towards the needs of the people. That's what you're saying... yes?
Hypothetically speaking, a $1 million mutual fund well-invested can return roughly 7% over a long period and require 0.5% in management fees. Assuming 2.5% inflation, that amount would provide $50,000 per annum in perpetuity.
If you disagree with the numbers you can use other numbers, but the central point is the same.
$45 billion could be set up as a fund that supports 45,000 people in perpetuity.
Hypothetically, he could set up a system of "mini" Nobel prize awards given to people who do interesting research. For comparison, that's about the number of PhD candidates in the US.
We keep hearing about how little post graduate researchers are paid, how they can't have a family or any kind of life on their research stipends.
Instead of giving big lumps of money for particular areas of research, he could set up foundation grants that support *individuals* who have potentially interesting research ideas.
Just a thought. In any event, I don't think Mark reads slashdot anyway.
Stop using it and Facebook is effectively closed down as far as you are concerned.
Oh, how naive you are. You are apparently unaware of how Facebook actually operates.
How much more progress could we make if we dedicated half of that money to research on batteries, nuclear power, solar power, space travel, stronger materials, or room temperature super conductivity?
At least half of it should go to the sciences imo.
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> 1) He doesn't care about helping people: Start a charity to funnel money into and avoid as much taxes as possible.
This is his stock. He's already paying 40% income tax plus 15% double FICA on his -salary- either way. The stock income is long term capital gains, taxed at 15%. Which means that for every $100 he gives away, he saves $15 on his taxes.
So let's do the math. He could either:
Gross gain: $45 billion
Tax: $7 billion
Net he keeps: $38 billion
Or:
Gross gain: $45 billion
Give away: $44.8 billion
Net he keeps: $200 million
Would you rather have $38 billion, or $200 million?
Giving away a million dollars in order to not pay the 150,000 tax on it would be STUPID! You don't give away lots of money in order to avoid paying a much smaller amount in taxes.
Giving the money to non-profits is largely going to be a waste. Zuckerberg would do much better to pick another big commercial project and focus on that: space travel, asteroid mining, human cloning, nanotech, whatever.
It's a fine idea, but it's missing a key ingredient: the drive and capability of the person spearheading the project.
Mark is not well known as an innovator, a leader, or even a creator.
I'm not saying that this is bad in any way, or that this is some sort of deficit in his character, I'm just saying that he's *probably* not the right person to pull off a big commercial project. Compare with Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, or Richard Branson.
And it's *highly* unlikely that he can find the right person to run such a venture, assuming that Mark would fund it.
And that assumes that Mark is even *interested* in running a big commercial venture. He might just want to settle down, and not devote the rest of his life to some aspiring goal.
Picking and piloting a commercial venture is one way to change the world, but I just don't see Mark as that sort of person.
> (a) Facebook is free. (b) Its users *are* the product - already given freely.
The price of using facebook is not denominated in dollars, it is denominated in the loss of privacy and ultimately in the loss of personal autonomy as that private information is exploited to gently coerce you into doing as facebook and their paying clients wish.
I suggest that Mark and Priscilla buy themselves a pair of hand held battery powered atmospheric CO2 meters and carry the meters around for about a week and observe the numbers. How much would it cost to simply stop the CO2 concentration from increasing for just one month? Would bringing the continuing global increase in CO2 numbers to a halt increase or decrease the value of the backing Facebook stock? Suppose we design a charitable CO2 concentration increase cessation project that does not harm the value of Facebook stock. What would that project do? Suppose we say that a performance parameter of a CO2 concentration stall project shall be that the quality of life of all participants increases? Sounding too hard? Sound like nobody has ever done such a thing before? OK then scale the project down to a modest community.
The nice thing about Mark and Priscilla's stock holding is it is not principally encumbered by a dependency on interest income. The future value of Facebook depends on finding our social path to an equitable and fair low carbon dioxide emission society.
Who don't have a clue how much the government will double and triple dip in taxes then blow it all in wasteful spending.
There's some truth to the premise of the movie "Brewster's Millions". After a certain point, spending money is not easy to do. If Zuckerberg is keeping half a billion to support his family, the other $45 billion won't make any difference to him. He can still live more extravagantly than most other multi-millionaires.
By giving away what is basically his surplus, he gains positive publicity and maybe a bit of personal satisfaction. That's probably worth more to him than keeping the money in the bank. It wouldn't even affect his Forbes ranking since he has already said that he will still effectively control the donated Facebook stock.
But I don't begrudge him his notion of philanthropy anymore than I begrudge the NBA stars their philanthropic foundations. They all get their publicity, tax benefits, etc. It's their money, so they get to decide what to do with it. The one criticism that I have is that I don't think much of Zuckerberg's priorities. Curing a widespread third-world disease like malaria a la Bill Gates is an impactful thing. Increasing internet access is not even a first-world problem and will do not much for people who worry about basic necessities. The one philanthropist that I really admire is Andrew Carnegie, who used his gifts to build over 2500 libraries in the world, many of which are still operating after a hundred years.
You are an equal nigger because you forgot to put some security around that equipment/plant. That you ought to do because the better folk who drink that water are not interested in booze or prostitutes . Just clean water.
If the Zuckerbergs give their money to organizations that help people directly, then good. But I wonder if they plan to give part of their money to lobbying organizations, including organizations that push for more immigration. From their letter to our daughter:
Can we build inclusive and welcoming communities?
Can we nurture peaceful and understanding relationships between people of all nations?
Can we truly empower everyone -- women, children, underrepresented minorities, immigrants and the unconnected?
Maybe they mean just that and nothing more, but maybe they're preparing to push for freer immigration into the US.
Very interesting... and probable.
If you want to help humanity in a more long-term way, change facebook's revenue model to Tsu's. Spread the wealth.
If he is truly giving this money back to a foundation, which is tax exempt and accountable only to itself, is it more about charity or about power and influence. If you wanted to be charitable you could have actually made your product less expensive, or you could remit that money to the government instead which is governed by the people. Instead what he is doing is creating an alternative power structure, much in the same way that the vatican is a power structure, meant to allow his power and influence last a "100 years".
"...remit that money to the government instead which is governed by the people." I am sorry, are you talking about governments on Mars?
Name a super-rich left-winger who has NOT made such a "selfless" pledge to keep his money as long as he lives, and then make sure HIS preferences continue to be shoved down the throats of the population thereafter by allocating it all to the do-gooder entities he has chosen.
The general public is supposed to say "awwwww, what a wonderful, generous guy! now I feel waaaaayyyy better giving him all the details of my life and the lives of my friends and family so he can get even richer!" without noticing that this is only the standard modern deviation from the old standard tycoon-model.
The old tycoon model was:
1. Get super rich
2. Either leave it to your family, or spend it all on yourself and leave your family little
The improved Carnegie model was:
1. Get super rich
2. Realize the public hates the super rich, so buy-back some good PR by spending some building public libraries, hospitals, etc in cities and even small towns all across the country that directly benefit the public in real ways
3. Either leave it to your family, or spend it all on yourself and leave your family little
The new Gates/Soros/Buffet/Zuckerberg model:
1. Get super rich
2. Realize the public hates the super rich, so buy-back some good PR by saying you'll give it all away to charities some day
3. Setup organizations to manipulate all the parts of society you want to tinker with but don't have the time to, and give them madison-ave-generated poll-tested good sounding names, no matter how despicable their goals actually will be (see: George Soros)
4. Arrange for some of your money to go to your organizations, and some to go to the similar orgs your gazillionaire buddies have similarly erected. Don't worry about the amounts, or when the money will transfer, the public will have already moved on to the latest Kardashian "wardrobe malfunction" pictures and they still feel good about you from your announcement
5. Resume your usual activities confident that your will have a lasting effect manipulating generations of people not yet born, long after you are dead; Those future people deserve to have their votes and preferences overridden by a long-dead jerk
6. Either leave what's left (99.9%) it to your family (remember: by not ACTUALLY giving it away when you announced, you were able to make tons more with the money during all those years you remained alive and used it), or spend it all on yourself and leave your family little
I doubt he has 45 Billion In cash. It will be worthless in 100 years from now if the money is all in Facebook stock.
To a tax-favored foundation he totally controls, which gets him a nice tax deduction. And then the foundation flies him around to events for the foundation and generally picks up any expenses he feels like, and is the receiver of "donations" from lobbyists, etc trying to buy influence with him. ie The Clinton Foundation. Nice work if you can get it.
$38M, since it's honest money not obtained by cheating while the other $162M is blood money. Besides, it's not as if one wouldn't end up receiving the $162M some other way.
You don't get to play the Almighty just because you're the 21st Century version of a robber baron.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Unless there's some push to remove the avenue of using "charity" as a cover, there's a 99% certainty that it's just tax cheating.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
"The internet is so important that for every 10 people who gain internet access, about one person is lifted out of poverty and about one new job is created."
In a call centre.
I wouldn't consider handing over my privacy "free".
In neither definition of free.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Wouldn't be simpler to just #KillAllNiggers then I won't need to lock my bicycle.
Instead of creating charities against diseases, inequality and whatnot, as they all do, maybe one of these billionaires should finally invest into the stuff that will actually save humanity as a whole. Such as large-scale investment in renewable energy and other means of dealing with climate change. Or a Space Elevator to finally start opening the solar system for humanity.
Estimated cost of a Space Elevator: 20 billion $. Zuckerberg alone could build two of them.
This always cracks me up how wage slaves erm people continually fall for this.
Foundations are the biggest tax dodge ever. In fact, since Zuck is opening up a foundation he can "donate" his shares to an organization he wholly controls who can then sell that stock capital gains tax free. The best part is he can use that f*ck all amount as a tax write off on his future earnings as well.
Then with whatever the obscene amount of money he can pay some small group of people to manage it. His daughter when she comes of age can then become a "director" or some other BS title and get paid $350,000 or more for the privilege of doing so. His family can then live off of this foundations free cash from being properly managed for the remainder of time. It's how the Rochefellers and Rothchilds continue their wealth without doing any real work.
He's smart to be doing this now before the next big dip in the market which should be coming soon enough.
Name a super-rich left-winger who has NOT made such a "selfless" pledge to keep his money as long as he lives, and then make sure HIS preferences continue to be shoved down the throats of the population thereafter by allocating it all to the do-gooder entities he has chosen.
Oh, right it's not as if super rich right wingers use their wealth to shove their preferences down the throats of the populations by supporting conservative candidates with lavish money donations and character assassins to help them dispose of political opponents (that was sarcasm by the way). If the Koch brothers want to spend their money on manipulating elections that's their choice, if Zuckerberg wants to spend his money on things you don't like that's his choice. People spend money they have on things they like, so stop whining about it.
If you wanted to be charitable you could have actually made your product less expensive
That's certainly a legitimate criticism of, say, Bill Gates. His money came from a lot of individuals (as well as corporations) who might have different priorities for their charitable donations - quite why one man gets to aggregate their money and give it away as he chooses is a bit of a moral puzzle.
In the case of Facebook, perhaps they should be paying their users for the exploitation of their personal data and allowing them to do with that money as they see fit. If I were looking for a suitable candidate to prioritise the alleviation of different human needs, I doubt that I'd start in Silicon Valley.
The correlation is probably the reverse of the one stated. With prosperity comes consumption of services, like internet access.
I do not give this guy much grief about giving away some of his money. Good for him to spend some of it on something other then another mansion he does not need. But let's also put into perspective the results he will see from giving away that money. It won't solve poverty, or even really make a significant dent in real numbers. Poverty in the world has risen not fallen and there is not reason to believe that will change. Especially with all the strife going on and all the displaced and dead because of ISIS and other sinister reasons. Giving people internet when they do not have running water, electricity, sewer system is like giving a person a squirt gun in a forest fire.
That's the real purpose. You know how conservatives alway say to get rid of the estate tax because the really rich can just avoid it but farmers and small business people get screwed? Well here is your example. Hundreds of billions that won't be taxed.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I would love to get 1% of that.
Almost a job for some of the time for nearly one person averaged over several added up.
And no space mining? Amazing!
In fact, it seems it isn't a charity at all:
"Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have set up the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a limited liability company - not a charity or charitable trust. Legal filings show that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is owned and controlled by Zuckerberg.
A spokesperson has confirmed to Buzzfeed that as a company, the Initiative can spend its money on whatever it wants - including private, profit-generating investment."
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
That means that he will be stripped of his honors from being in the Three Comma club. No more cars with doors that open "like this" or "like this".
Or does he have worth anywhere else?
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
We are using 0 based comment lists now?.........hhmmm must be a 'C' programmer.
Since he's selling his stock, he's also selling management of the company.
He may not be selling his stock. He can donate the stock directly to his foundation, and take the tax write-off, without selling it. Then he can name himself and Priscilla as trustees of the foundation. So he can give away his stock, but still retain full voting rights and control of Facebook.
This is also speculation. But this falls in line with what Bill Gates and the other super-techno-rich are doing or are planning to do. Philanthropy is a different beast from your typical street corner charity. If I donate to a charity, I basically don't have any control over how the money is spent, whether it goes to feed the poor, save the turtles, or arm Al-Qaeda. Of course, I can refuse to donate in the future the minute I learn about the charity's shenanigans. On the other hand, something like the Gates Foundation could target specific projects and by the implicit or explicit threat of withholding future funding steer them in the direction it wants.
So while Zuckerberg might give away his Facebook shares, he could conceivably buy moral, if not actual control of some non-profit organizations whose broad goals happen to align with his vision of a better future. It would be highly cynical to compare this to a corporate stock swap, but the effect could be the same.
Sure, he will give it all to a "foundation" that he and his progeny can live off of tax free in perpetuity just like Bill Gates while employing an army of public relations teams to amplify the tiny percentage of the wealth spent on others to huge levels.
This is a win win for Z. He gets credit today for "giving it all away" without actually giving it all away today.
1381. 1793. 1917.
There is a difference between giving away your wealth and using your wealth to manipulate. Zuckerberg says that his goal is, “advancing human potential and promoting equality,” That's sounds suspitiously like manipulation, not almsgiving. It's just another way to use wealth to project, and even build, power. It might be a kindler and gentler way of doing it, but that's what it is.
At any rate, the Zuckerbergs are very vague so far about what, precisely, they plan to do, so I suppose there is a chance that they will prove me wrong.
Proverbs 21:19
They're making internet access another major issue:
So is this internet access, or is the Internet.Org access?
It's not how it's portrayed.
Like so many other rich people, if they are "giving away" so much money to an organization, then that organization is a front and it results in more control to the doners.
Everyone gives away 100% of their possessions "in their lifetime."
Why not sell it, make a ton of meth and moonshine, then stick it on the antarctic. In a ravenous fervor, all the white people try to swim to the island and those who don't kill each other for profit will freeze and drown on the way there. Now you have a perfect world!
The cronies must be enriched too!
Um, the whole island is populated by people with dark skin. DR is pretty poor in comparison to what people in the US are used to, but yeah, they live pretty well there. I personally cannot give an answer to why it is so much worse in Haiti compared to DR, but it isn't the number of people with dark skin.
When I was in the DR last Christmas/New Years, I took one of my kids out 4 wheeling, and as part of that excursion, they took us to a Haitian refugee village. It was suggested we bring candy for the Haitian children, so my son had a big bag of candy that was stored in my back pack for these kids. Before we got to the village, we stopped at an intersection with a road. While there, some (possibly) Haitian kids were around asking for the candy, so I started giving them some. One of the kids snuck up on my son, ripped the bag away from him and ran off with it. I just personally hope that that kid shared it with his fellow children, but somehow I doubt it.
This story might highlight nothing at all, but it did enlighten me a little bit. In the future, I will be more careful about holding the bag myself to prevent theft.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Did they just pick a list of "problems" out of a hat or what? There's absolutely no connection to size of a 'problem' or what about it requires 'fixing'...so just for fun here's some more 'problems & situations'...
Male pattern baldness
Hunger
disease
war
death
faster than light travel
See I can make up a whole list of 'problems' at will...beyond that...as to their list (at least the list in the summary) all of them except 'clean energy' come down to 'poverty'...fix that & all of the supposed issues/problems on that list are 'solved' or at least their only a problem on an individual scale...as for 'clean energy', it is 'solved', it's called nuclear energy. The problem isn't whether or not it exists but which interests are being catered to by the government. The supposed 'environmental movement' has done more to ruin this planet due to their childish fear of nuclear energy than any amount of industry or gas guzzling cars...
Did punctuation get outsourced too, or are you just demonstrating why you can't get a job that isn't at a fast food joint?
Yeah you would, that cracker Eddie Haskell would just sell it for meth otherwise
Holy god that is one ugly asian woman. I just threw up in my mouth a little.
I wonder if he's going to 'give away' his fortune to an entity he has control over ala Bill Gates. Or whether he'll give it away before death rather than take it with him into the afterlife. Maybe he should just give it back to the people he stole it from originally.
Unless part of that plan is to reduce the human population by 30%+. If no, then all the other efforts are in vain.
He'd give away that 99 percent as equal shares back to his employees, so that we could see how trickle down economics actually works.
Not only would that ensure all facebook employees were paid fairly, but it would increase their stake in the future of the company. Using that stock for wishy washy feel good 'save the world' programs is far less likely to do any good than doling it out fairly to all employees (doubly so if every employee gets an equal share, rather than valuing management at higher levels than line workers.)
Of course, the stereotype (the dog-bites-man case) is that it's all rich right-wingers... and there certainly are SOME, but most of the more left-leaning people who read Slashdot always seem to believe in the phony stereotype and miss that fact that the majority of the super-rich in the US are actually Democrats AND all the ones making phony pledges to give it all away are Democrats, or further left.
Kennedys ring a bell? Rockefellers? (not the old liberal Republican of the 1960s, but all the current ones). The guys running Apple, Google, Facebook, Berkshire-Hathaway? Even the Clintons with their "Clinton Foundation" and "Clinton Global Initiative".
As an obvious lefty you injected the Koch brothers, which is straight out of the DNC talking points (Harry Reid banged that drum in the Senate for over a decade) but there are a couple problems with them: [1] They're Libertarians, NOT right-wingers (they support things like gay marriage and fund many liberal causes like lots of stuff on PBS etc) and [2] unlike many of the lefties I mentioned they have not done major announcements that they are giving all their money away (the phoney PR move at the core of this story)
So, did the DNC provide you with any actual Republican Billionaire who has done the big "I'm giving away my wealth" speech while actually just preparing to gradually shift it into funds that will go on using it the way he wants it used?????
He's not paying 40% + 15% FICA on his income. Back in the 1950s when the top rate was over 90%, the federal government never actually got that rate from ANYBODY. The rich have lawyers and accountants on staff and never pay those rates; it's part of why so many super-rich Democrats like Gates, Zuckerberg, Soros, Buffet, and so-on are always calling for higher taxes (the middle class and upper-middle class get hit but the super-rich do not).
Have you never noticed how many of these guys publicly announce that they are only taking a salary of $1 per year or some such nonsense? The paltry "salary" is what gets taxed as "earned income".
Have you never noticed how many of these guys are valued based on their stocks? Zuckerberg is not sitting on a monster pile of gold coins in a vault like Scrooge McDuck or Smaug. He is sitting on a pile of stock certificates which are assigned a particular value by the market, but that's not being taxed AND he's not caching-out and converting into taxable income any time soon. You might well be showing a higher annual "earned income" than Zuck and even be paying higher income taxes.
What good is all that paper-wealth to these super-rich if they're not converting it into cash and paying huge taxes? It lets them use it to leverage other stuff and setup foundations that in-turn pay them and their friends and families and buy them stuff they need "to do their business" (stuff that gets counted as business expenses). At any given time, they only convert stuff to taxable income at the rate they need and pay taxes on THAT while the mountain of assets that are not being taxed grows faster than their "burn rate".
If you think that some "tax the rich" scheme that does not go after GLOBAL ASSETS (which NO proposal in government EVER does) will change this, then you are just the sort of ignorant dupe these people are counting on to vote for people like Obama and Hillary.
FYI, $38 billion is MORE than $162 million. You seem a bit confused on that point.
I'll give $300 million for https://www.change.org/p/indep...
Casteism
I'll take 5 million, please and thank you!!