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Chuck Feeney: a billionaire who gave it all away
- jackdh 9y agoWow what a man
- announcerman 9y agoWhy would you do this?
- tudorw 9y agoWhy not! You live, then you die, none of us get to take it with us.
- announcerman 9y agoWhy make money in the first place then.
- icebraining 9y agoSo you can spend it. Like, for example, on charitable causes.
- announcerman 9y agoWhy not work for charitable causes directly?
- sarabande 9y agoHis multiplier effect was higher by making tons of money and then giving it away, rather than working for charitable causes directly. For example, take two simplified cases: 1. He makes a lot of money, and as a direct result of his fortune and generosity, he can effect [1000 employees * 10 years] = 10,000 man-years of charity work 2. He works directly at a charitable institution and performs 30 direct man-years of charity work, but makes no appreciable amount of money to multiply his efforts If you're interested in a better explanation of this with regard to charity, I would check out Singer's book "The Most Good You Can Do", which is an exploration on the theory of effective altruism.
- muzani 9y agoPlus anyone making money is contributing to their work. A doctor saves lives in exchange for money. An entrepreneur solves small problems that thousands of individuals face.
- announcerman 9y agoAlright thank you, I'll give it a look.
- ceejayoz 9y agoHow likely is that to do $8B worth of good for the charity?
- rokhayakebe 9y agoDivision of Labour. That's like saying "If you work to buy a house and food, why don't just build it instead along with a garden in the back and not work?" To which the answer is it is cheaper to do what you are best at and sell the surplus to buy all the houses your new money can afford.
- tooltalk 9y agoI think I know what you are trying to say, but you are describing the idea of "competitive advantage" here.
- rokhayakebe 9y agoYou are correct, what I describe is "Comparative Advantage" not Division of Labour, although I would say CA is a result of a DL at a macro level.
- VeejayRampay 9y agoBecause he got to help a lot of people, that's the best you can hope for in the end.
- edanm 9y agoMaking money is itself a form of giving to the world. Assuming you aren't doing something illegal or something, you make money by providing goods or services that people value more than money - otherwise, they wouldn't give you money for those goods and services. You're literally creating value. You're then capturing some (but not all!) of that value you created, and rather than doing what some people do (use that value only for yourself), you're giving that value to charity.
- gorbachev 9y agoMaybe he changed his perspective over the years?
- rokhayakebe 9y agoWhy make money in the first place then. That is the wrong line of logic. Many people who have a lot of money are/were not interested in making money beyond what it would take them to have a decent life. They never made money. They made something else and that something, by consequence, generated a lot of money. For some of these guys the amount of wealth created satisfied a different need, perhaps some measure of impact, but it was never about accumulating wealth in the first place.
- dade_ 9y agoImagine having billions of dollars and all you can come up with is adding voice and video calling to a picture sharing app. I can't understand why anyone would do that, but giving away money is actually fun, though I can only imagine giving away billions... As Chuck Feeney said once, it is their call what the rich do with their money, but they will get more satisfaction giving it when living than when dead. “Besides,” he added, “it’s a lot more fun.”
- EggsOnToast 9y agoDoes anyone know what it was about the Bahamas that made the it so attractive for filing the paperwork?
- privateprofile 9y agoIt's a tax haven with more bureaucratic secrecy than taxes: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/060516/why-bahamas-considered-tax-haven.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/060516/why-bahamas-...
- justonepost 9y agoThis is exactly why I believe income tax is stupid. It's people like this who should be lifted up on our shoulders by our economic system and taxed 0%. They are the real leaders of us all. A high consumption tax that punishes buying stupid things like super cars and private yachts would help do this. “the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor” - what a great thing to say. Where are these great men?
- 6t6t6t6 9y agoAre you familiar with the term "progressive taxes"? Consumption tax is the same for multimillionaires and for people who have 3 part time jobs and struggle to feed their family. Then, imagine that you put a massive consumption tax for cards, for instance. What happens when the car of the 3 jobs guy is broken? Also, how do you decide which products are the products that rich people buy and which are the products for "the poor"?
- icebraining 9y agoAlso, how do you decide which products are the products that rich people buy and which are the products for "the poor"? Congress did that by price - specifically, by imposing a 10% Luxury Tax cars over $30k. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxury_tax#Luxury_tax_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxury_tax#Luxury_tax_in_the_U...
- ChrisBland 9y agoNot agreeing with OP but have studied this and want to provide color to it. Most of the proposals I've seen that promote a consumption tax deal with that by giving cash back to everyone in the form of refundable tax credits or block grants (yearly or monthly). They would figure out what the middle income person / family would consume, tie that to the CPI for those (breads, meats, consumables) and come up with the refundable tax credit amount to cover that persons estimated consumption tax.
- cdancette 9y agoWhy would you let them accumulate an unreasonable amount of wealth if you then expect them to give it back to poor people? Why not limit the wealth in the first place to ensure that everyone get its share? And do you really expect every millionaire / billionaire to do this? I'm afraid numbers are against you, that's why this appears in a newspaper: it's a rare event. Finally, why let a few rich guys decide where the money goes? I think it would be better if the money was given to the government, so that the people can decide where the money will be useful. I'm not sure all of this guy's money went to good causes (you can check his Wikipedia page).
- dragonbonheur 9y agoNot impressed. Foundations are just another way to avoid taxes for some people, especially when their finances are managed from offshore accounts in countries like the Bahamas. Often, the foundations pay their "benefactors" a salary and "donate" just enough property and resources for the "benefactors" to get by, lavishly. [1] If you want to do good, donate your company to your employees. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC9jTqhJBh4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC9jTqhJBh4
- ckinnan 9y agoDid you read the article? He's given away everything and the Foundation is disbanding.
- dragonbonheur 9y agoYup. Still not impressed. Him having to go to the Bahamas to sign everything away means he profited a lot from tax "optimization". Clear enough?
- EggsOnToast 9y agoDo you have any basis for that belief? It seems equally plausible that he wanted as much as possible going to the foundation in order to optimize its philanthropic potential.
- dragonbonheur 9y agoBasis one, served: https://www.economist.com/node/9903943 https://www.economist.com/node/9903943 Bases N, served. https://www.google.com/search?q=chuck+feeney+tax+evasion https://www.google.com/search?q=chuck+feeney+tax+evasion Peruse at leisure.
- nothrabannosir 9y agoI feel like you’re trying to equate avoiding taxes with self enrichment. That’s true if you avoid taxes to then keep the money. But if you avoid taxes by giving everything to charity, that’s not avoiding taxes anymore: those are deductibles for a reason! The question is: did he end up keeping more money now, than he would have, had he just kept everything and paid the due taxes? The article seems to suggest that, no, he didn’t. > “Chuck hates taxes. He believes people can do more with money than governments can,” Yeah, join the club.
- s_dev 9y agoIf anyone is looking for a documentary RTE (Irish broadcaster) did one a few years ago and it was decent. The institute he set up Atlantic Philanthropies has very recently closed it's door in Ireland having completed its mission. Ah found it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMcjxe8slYI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMcjxe8slYI
- IB885588 9y agoThe book on Feeney, "The Billionaire Who Wasn't", is great. Better than I expected going on. The man is fascinating.
- MuffinFlavored 9y agoWhy would you say there aren't more people like him?
- lefstathiou 9y agoDifferent people are motivated by different things (ie what gets you up in the morning may be different than what gets me up). Some do it out of inherent passion for whatever art they are pursuing, some to prove a point to others, some to prove a point to themselves. Some believe they have an obligation to humanity, others to just their family. Not my place to determine who is right in this. Whatever motivates these people often results in me being a net beneficiary of whatever they built for society that made them billionaires.
- adamw2k 9y agoIncredible human. Gates + Buffett credit him with helping come up with The Giving Pledge they so famously established. Such humility. Was honestly a sad moment when he was outed (1997, Time Magazine if memory serves me right) - felt like he deserved to give in private if he wanted to. Gives more than others but always lets someone else put their name on it (eg: Benioff Children's Hospital in SF - he was the largest single benefactor). Only other similar philanthropy I've ever seen - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-08/three-mysterious-philanthropists-fund-fourth-largest-u-dot-s-dot-charity https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-08/three-mys....
- justaguyhere 9y ago"To continue reading this article you must be a Bloomberg Professional Service Subscriber" :(
- adamw2k 9y agoUgh - Bloomberg buys Businessweek and then throws all of the content behind a paywall. Here's a better link: https://web.archive.org/web/20140514054305/http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-08/three-mysterious-philanthropists-fund-fourth-largest-u-dot-s-dot-charity#p1 https://web.archive.org/web/20140514054305/http://www.busine...
- toomuchtodo 9y agoYou could always have bought the content, and given it away for free. People need to eat and pay the rent yo. I am fully supportive of anyone who wants to Kickstart content corpus purchases and then give that to the Internet Archive for WayBack inclusion.
- ProAm 9y agoPeople complain about ads on a website and how they have to use an ad-blocker and then the complain when they put stuff behind a paywall. Can't have it both ways, people deserve to be paid for good journalism.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- known 9y agoIn 1996, Feeney and a partner sold their stakes in DFS to the French luxury conglomerate Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH). Miller opposed the sale, and before a presumptive lawsuit could reveal that Feeney's stake was owned not in fact by him but by The Atlantic Philanthropies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Feeney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Feeney
- learnstats2 9y agoHe literally made his money via duty-free shopping, i.e. his profits come through tax avoidance. Great that he gave away his billions to people he decided worthy; a shame he didn't let democratically controlled governments decide.
- Aloha 9y agoa tax avoidance scheme that those democratically elected governments aid and abet.
- stronglikedan 9y agoA lot of people feel that democratically controlled governments don't handle funds very well.
- bluntfang 9y agoThen those people should choose to not accumulate wealth under governance systems that they don't agree with.
- learnstats2 9y agoA lot of people? Or, the few people who have accrued enough wealth that they no longer need government support - and can afford to purchase a large amount of available public messaging to say this. I find it literally impossible that a single person's decision could be a better way of allocating funds than a (proportional) government's decision.
- kyleblarson 9y agoAsk any 40 something American professional who has been contributing to Social Security their entire career knowing that the system will be completely insolvent when it's their time to use the benefit about government's ability to decide how to spend money.
- stryk 9y agoIncredible. There are far too few people like this guy in the world.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- senatorobama 9y agoDoes anyone know the reasoning behind why there are Duty Free shops when entering an International airport (as a final destination)?