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Jeff Bezos Announces $2 Billion Philanthropic Effort To Help Homeless Families and Start Preschools in Low-income Communities (nbcnews.com)
Rick Schumann writes: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie on Thursday announced a $2 billion philanthropic effort aimed at helping homeless families and starting preschools in low-income communities. Bezos, believed to be the world's richest man, with a net worth of more than $160 billion, announced the new program on Twitter. "We're excited to announce the Bezos Day One Fund," he wrote. The fund will be split between the Day 1 Families Fund, which Bezos wrote will "issue annual leadership awards to organizations and civic groups doing compassionate, needle-moving work to provide shelter and hunger support to address the immediate needs of young families." The Day 1 Academies Fund "will launch and operate a network of high-quality, full-scholarship, Montessori-inspired preschools in underserved communities," Bezos said. Bezos said that the preschools will be directly operated by the organization and "use the same set of principles that have driven Amazon." "Most important among those will be genuine, intense customer obsession," Bezos wrote. "The child will be the customer." Bezos quoted the poet William Butler Yeats: "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."
Half of the recipients probably will be Amazon employees.
He could give his employees decent salaries. That would help.
If these extremely wealthy folks would take a smaller salary and bay better or employ more, would homeless be as bad as it is today? Im sure its been worse throughout history but today we have the ability to end hunger and provide adequate shelter and meet most medical needs.
Yet wr keep fighting wars to protect these bery rich folks and wallstreet.
Maybe its not that simple but seems to be.
Proper toilets for a start instead of making your workers go in bottles.
Have you even seen the state of American education, youth culture, and society? Your schools are churning out stupid people. American education is a slide, launching kids over a ledge, straight into debt and the very peculiar type of American ignorance and stupididy.
and "use the same set of principles that have driven Amazon."
So slave labor, minimum wage, shit working conditions...
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Lets make everything Haiti.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
There is plenty of opportunity right in Seattle. Go nuts.
This is great. Now other people in need can benefit from Bezos' magnanimity, just like his warehouse employees do.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
That's true, so true! The only true philanthropy is that by the kind, benevolent, and omniscient government officials redistributing the wealth confiscated at gunpoint from captive taxpayers. Right?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This is about 8 days pay for him. That sounds like a lot (8 days pay for me is around $1800 bucks) but if I give $1800 to charity that's a big impact on my life. When you're pulling in $260 million a day it's hardly noticeable.
I'm fed up with ultra rich trying to buy us off with token charitable donation in the hopes we don't demand they take care of their workers. He can start by paying his employees enough that they're not living in the parking lot of his warehouses (excuse me, "fullfillment centers") and they can get off food stamps. Then let's see him give enough to charity that it actually impacts his quality of life.
As it stands I feel like we're being made to go begging to the rich for the basic things needed to run a country and a society...
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Make America grate again!
Nobody is taking "all the money from the rich" you fucking apologist faggot, go choke on a rich cock you slimy cocksucker.
Should have been: "Most important among those will be genuine, intense customer loyalty"
He's opening a bunch of indoctrination schools. Great. Heaven forbid those poors should get a real education. This man is pathetic, just another would-be American aristocrat throwing his money around. Truly sad.
That was probably the first time I've ever felt sick after reading something.
Choose communism.... everyone could be POOR together!
Isn't that much better? /s
you'll still be an asshole.
Just a slightly less rich one.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
What a holier-than-thou prick.
Maybe he should direct that money toward his underpaid employees that sleep in cars and parking lots.
The better-educated our children become, the less likely they will be to work for Amazon.
If Bezos paid his warehouse slaves a livable wage, there would many fewer poor. But then he wouldn't be worth $163B...
Think of it this way, you could give EVERY SINGLE AMAZON employee (all 563,000) a one time bonus of $177,500, and Bezos would still be worth $63 Billion dollars.
How much does a king need?
Nobody is taking "all the money from the rich" you fucking apologist faggot, go choke on a rich cock you slimy cocksucker.
Not all of their money. Just more... and more.....and more......and more....and more... because there isn't enough
Nobody is taking "all the money from the rich" you fucking apologist faggot, go choke on a rich cock you slimy cocksucker.
Remember, always resort to name calling to get your point across.
IF IT APPLIES, IT APPLIES.
Poor kids from shitty schools get all the attention. But no one ever gives a shit about smart kids. Everyone just assumes the smart kids don't need any help. But think of how high they could sore if we stopped focusing on helping some poor kid from the ghetto who's probably never even going to college and started focusing on the kids who might actually cure cancer one day.
So fuck all that feel-good/virtue-signalling shit, I'm banking on the smart kids who might actually provide society with something useful someday.
Ah, who am I kidding? I'm never going to get rich. I'm just one of the smart kids who never gets to benefit from a diversity hiring or quota program.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
And yes, I'm pretty sore about it.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Bezos should read Charles Murray's The Bell Curve. These "homeless" are that way for a reason. Their DNA is not up to the task of living in a modern society. When you realize that the average IQ in sub-Saharan Africa is 65, you realize that the DNA is defective. Koko the Gorilla had an IQ of 85, smarter than most the people in sub-Saharan Africa. However, there is room for hope. The homeless can be trained to do simple tasks. They are capable of separating paper, glass, and plastic from a mixed stream of trash at recycling centers. But unfortunately the bottom has fallen out of the recycling business.
That was funny.
Of course in reality it's the other way around. Amazon and Bezos pay more taxes this way.
Whoever hands out the money doesn't pay income taxes on it. If Amazon gave the money to employees as paychecks, then Amazon wouldn't pay income taxes on it.*
What they've done instead is Bezos is giving it away AFTER Amazon already paid taxes on it and then distributed it to shareholders (Bezos). So Amazon made money, paid the corporate income tax, distributed it to shareholders, then Bezos gave away some of his portion, after the corporate tax was paid.
* Amazon DOES pay FICA taxes on paychecks, which is 7.65%. That's much less than the 22% they actually paid by taking it as profit.
I said "if", I was pointing out that even if you took all the money "the rich" have you couldn't address the problem permanently.
Ken
Er, I mean schools.
It goes in depth about these kind of charitable projects by the ultra-rich and how they influence the government and rig the economy. I actually don'r have a problem with Amazon. They provide amazing service. Just a bummer to see Bezos jump on the philanthropy theater bullshit, but then again when he's that rich, it's hard to avoid.
Bullshit, the richest pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than the poorest by a factor of magnitudes. Alvinrod loves to suck polished solid gold cocks for pennies, he doesn't even have a job obviously.
Who is praising the Kochs, Muroch, or Trump here, outside of obvious trolls?
The answer is simple. You can't have an amount of wealth that couldn't possibly be earned without drawing plenty of legitimate criticism.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The problem with public education is exactly this mentality. Somewhere down the line public schools switched from being places of discipline and learning into places of accommodation. âoeThe customer is always right.â Teachers go to work every day being tasked with more and more responsibilities in order to pick up the slack of parents who not only fail to do the bare minimum for their chidrenâ(TM)s education, these parents actively sabotage it. The moment a teacher attempts to hold a parent or student even minimally accountable for a childâ(TM)s education, the parent comes in and raises hell with administration and basically makes a teacherâ(TM)s life miserable. They do this in front of their little angels, this teaching the kid that they do not need to respect teachers, administration, or education, just continuing the cycle. Schools are feeding kids breakfast, lunch, snack, providing school supplies. Teachers are put in a position where they have to not only educate, but teach kids hygiene, be emotional counselors, therapists, etc. I personally know teachers who were buying clothes and carpooling children because the parents werenâ(TM)t doing it. What we need is a system where parents are held accountable to their childrenâ(TM)s education.
Why don't we just tax him? This is what taxes are for! Let's provide a safety net for all humans for pete's sake!
Isn't that a plank in the 2018 Republican platform?
I kid! I kid!
But smart kids already know where to make money...
They can get grants, loans that they can afford because they can do math, scholarships and oh yeah jobs!
Maybe you meant you would help lazy smart kids? I wouldn't...
I submitted this story because at least he's not spending $2B on something stupid and pointless like some gigantic mechanical clock inside a mountain somewhere.
I need to build a new bike; wonder if I can hit him up for $1500? Seems like he could afford it..
Actually that's how public schools are supposed to function. Bring the mass up to a functioning level. They have to teach to the water level and raise that. If the kid is excelling they're on their own. I'm a low income parent going through this with an excelling kid. There is no room for him in classes full of kids who were never forced to learn at home.
so he effectively does. We do that so they can dodge the higher taxes on income vs capital gains. As a result the economy is constantly booming and busting thanks to stock buy backs and mass layoffs used to boost stock price. The groundwork for all this was laid out by Reagan and continued by Bill Clinton & Bush Jr (Bush Sr mostly left it alone, but he didn't help undo any of it).
I am by no means clueless. I'm fully aware of how our distorted economy works. I'm also aware of what Bezo's is doing. Bernie's been getting some traction by pointing out my tax dollars subsidize his horrendous working conditions. That his workforce couldn't function as human beings without $150 billion a year of subsidies I (and you too) pay for.
Bezo's is doing two things. First, drumming up some free press. But second and just as important, he's giving guys like you an out. See, somewhere you know that the correct solution is to force Bezos to pay a living wage and end both abuse of his workers and the taxpayers. But somewhere else you don't want to see minimum wage go up. The most common reason is you're afraid prices are going to go up and, statistically, you're probably living paycheck to paycheck (70-80% of Americans do depending on how you run the numbers). Like me you're using Amazon's borderline slave labor to buy things you need at discount to make up for declining wages.
None of this is the correct solution. It's all just more supply side economics. In the end it'll continue to chip away at your standard of living. It's a battle you will not win. What's needed now more than ever (thanks Nixon, for the slogan) is _demand_ side economics. It's either that or we, the working class, will just keep losing ground....
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Unless he puts his money into an organization that has nothing to do with Amazon, it's not going to be seen as a philanthropic activity.
Who is praising the Kochs, Muroch, or Trump here, outside of obvious trolls?
Oh I don't know, maybe those who systematiccally downmod any post critical of Trump to -1, like what happened to my previous post and will probably happen to this post as well ? But be critical of Bezos, Musk or Cook, and your post will be automagically modded +5 insightful.
The Trump supporters may be "obvious trolls", but they still do a fine job of suppressing liberal content on this site, which incidently is exactly what they accuse liberals of doing to them. Looks like hypocrisy runs rampant among trump supporters.
Like he said: "Everyone just assumes the smart kids don't need any help." They do, but you just assume that they don't. Being smart doesn't guarantee an easy life.
Bullshit, the richest pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than the poorest by a factor of magnitudes.
The poorest pay zero. What's "a factor of magnitudes" smaller percentage than zero?
They have to teach to the water level and raise that.
My boy, Chad, is going to school for football. How dare you load him up with homework that interferes with after-school practice.
And don't even think about embarrassing him in front of his classmates by making the work challenging. He is destined to be a leader, so it's up to you to keep the rest of the students down below his level.
c6gunner = busted impersonating apk w/ altering words of /. users posts https://linux.slashdot.org/com... because APK challenged you to show you did better and you can't after you tried mocking him you loser https://linux.slashdot.org/com...
APK you're a hypocrite. You ran from a challenge c6gunner put to you after you mocked him https://linux.slashdot.org/com... worse you had to alter the words of others that like, use and praise HIS work https://linux.slashdot.org/com... like a childish moron would. You with nothing to show for yourself but a fake name online no less. You're disgusting.
Smart is not the opposite of poor. You are making a huge assumption there that a poor kid can't be smart. I obviously can't speak for every school system. But even the broke as hell school system where I live has special educational tracks laid out for the smart kids to follow. Hell, they even have entire schools that are dedicated to just the smart kids. Additionally when it comes to getting into and paying for college the smart kids are by and large always at an advantage over their peers.
If you were half as smart as you evidently think you are, you wouldn't be sweating the diversity and quota hiring systems some employers use. Getting rich is a lot more about knowing how to manage your finances than getting lucky by catching a sweet job.
That's true. What Amazon has done is retain the earnings, meaning the company increases in value. That means each share of stock increases in value. Retained earnings are of course taxable profit, so the tax situation comes out the same as a dividend when Bezos liquidates some of the stock value to make a charitable contribution.
Every nibber is dumb and poor. Irretrievably so. Do you need a postcard palsy ?
Who said anything about earning? This is the 21st century. Money is "made" by either fucking over anyone and everyone who stands in your way or getting extremely lucky.
The fucked up part is that we're raising our children to be kind and courteous and telling them if they work hard they'll succeed and that's a lie. We should be teaching them ALL to be bullies because that's what it takes to "make it" in the modern world :p
We need to be sure that no child is left out of being educated on how to begin having all kind of perverted sex starting at age 7. And we sure don't want any child to miss out on hate America, love socialism studies. To think of a child not being able to learn how to put a condom on a pickle in kindergarten is deplorable.
...how about this instead?
1) Stop taking government subsidies to employ people
2) Start paying people a living wage
Corporate Responsibility is not about philanthropy, it needs to be about providing workers a wage/salary that enables them to live, and means they don't need food stamps, and to have independence and pride in what they do.
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I see c6gunner's name on the post apk put up where c6gunner impersonated apk and twisted apk's users praise https://linux.slashdot.org/com... just because apk confronted c6gunner saying "let's see you do better than I did then" https://linux.slashdot.org/com... after c6gunner tried to mock apk. Can't you read or is it you again c6gunner trying to hide your crap? I wager the latter.
Making kids "the customers" was tried in Britain. Standards have collapsed, costs have skyrocketed, the teaching profession has gone from being respected to being scorned.
Academies in Britain are amongst the worst schools. Even allowing for their efforts to rig exam rankings, they're still behind state schools. And this is to be expected, education is either about money or it is about learning. It cannot be about both. And if it is about money, it will always be inferior.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Bezos, believed to be the world's richest man, with a net worth of more than $160 billion,
It's estimated that Vladimir Putin is worth $200 billion.
https://money.cnn.com/2018/03/14/news/putin-wealth-russia-election/index.html
the poorest still pay sales tax, often when they buy food and medicine. If you go one step up from the poorest and into the working poor you'll find they pay a very high percentage of taxes. State sales tax are not usually progressive. They pay property taxes, Vehicle license taxes, the aforementioned sales tax, etc. The federal programs intended to counterbalance this ("earned income") have been cut back to the point where full time minimum wage disqualifies you. Hell, Missouri just put a work requirement in place for Medicaid but didn't raise the ceiling before you don't qualify for it. Meaning you're forced to go to work to keep access to healthcare but then lose it if you meet the requirement. The poor are well and truly fucked.
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$2 billion to low-income kids' schooling is a good thing.
It's his money, he can spend it on what he likes. I for one appreciate that he's trying to do something good with it. You can argue all day about what else he should be doing, but at the end of the day it's still his money and his decision.
If you don't like that, I suggest you campaign and vote for candidates who promise to raise taxes on the rich and/or give money to the poor. Then you can have some say over what that money gets spent on. But with the system as it is, this is as good as it gets. So can we have some appreciation please?
Bezos said that the preschools will be directly operated by the organization and "use the same set of principles that have driven Amazon."
You mean, like employee burn out?
Come one, if you want to fix education, just pay your taxes so that schools get more money.
Here in Australia, a number of well-meaning public projects have been derailed because they had loopholes that allowed gaming of the scheme by beneficiaries, or were gamed or abused by insiders. I hope Bezos includes a lot of checks and balances in this scheme.
your prescrool will not have accomplished anything if it doesn't teach reading.