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Which billionaires are doing the most good?
- nacho2sweet 6y agoJust tax them.
- donkey-hotei 6y ago^ This.
- benbenolson 6y agoTrue gifts are freely given, not forcibly taken.
- 0x262d 6y agoPeople's livelihood and the basic functioning of society shouldn't be a "gift".
- sailfast 6y agoSure, but billionaire money can often also be the result of other things being forcibly taken from society. You're not looking for gifts, you're looking for them to pay the actual cost for what they've obtained. Examples include: Your data, subsidies from your tax dollars to create asymmetric markets, common things like water quality or environment, or legal asymmetry that allows for rent-seeking.
- munk-a 6y agoThat's sorta the crux of the matter - paying into society isn't a "gift" it's a debt. We all live together and support each other and nobody needs to get showered with glamour for doing their part according to their ability. I don't want Billionaire to feel forced to give "true gifts" through social pressures or otherwise - I'd prefer if their wealth was properly utilized through a just level of taxation.
- benbenolson 6y ago>properly utilized through a just level of taxation Why'd you need so many words to say "taken?"
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- warent 6y agoI've wondered about this. Would it be possible to have an income/asset tax such that it introduces a wealth cap of some amount which can never be reached? For example, the limit could be $30,000,000 so if you're making more than that in pretax income, your income would be $29,999,999.999 etc. with the fractional cent increasing so people could still compete on a scoreboard. Also, it seems like one of the biggest arguments against capping wealth is that it would disincentive innovation. But just about every person who became billionaires through innovation never had that intention to begin with. I firmly believe Jeff Bezos would still be running Amazon if he had a wealth cap. Mark Zuckerberg would still be running Facebook. No?
- munk-a 6y agoAn explicit wealth cap seems unnecessary so long as there are appropriately punishing taxes on wealth retention - If there was, say, a 5% wealth tax above 5 or 10 million then Gates & Bezos both would never be able to sustain their fortunes but they would remain fabulously wealthy.
- ggreer 6y agoTheir wealth is not a pile of cash or a number in a bank account, it's ownership of the companies they founded. Every year, they would be forced to hand 5% of their shares over to the federal government. If such a tax were implemented 15 years ago, all Fortune 500 companies today would be controlled by congress and Donald Trump. Also both SpaceX and Tesla would have almost certainly gone bankrupt in late 2008 as Musk would not have had the wealth to support both of them.
- rtkwe 6y agoAn annoying side effect of extreme wealth is they have a lot of money to spend finding ways around taxes. If any country ever does move to a hard wealth limit I imagine there will be a lot of rich people suddenly getting sweetheart deals on 'renting' all the things they used to own from fly by night offshore companies or something.
- boudin 6y agoI wonder on all those donations, how much will grant tax benefits meaning that those donations are actually partially paid by tax donors?
- Arainach 6y agoAre the metrics for this described somewhere? I find the top two surprising. From their numbers, Dorsey has donated $1B (26% of his current $3.8B net worth), while Gates has donated $36B (36% of his current net worth). So....Gates has donated more as a share of his net worth and SIGNIFICANTLY more in raw numbers. What justifies putting Dorsey ahead of him?
- OJFord 6y ago> Top donors this month Is the (admittedly quite small) heading. Also I noted that Brin (only one I clicked on) is in last place/#29 at $0 this month. So (and to find out was the reason I clicked) this is 'how much have these 29 billionaires donated this month'; not 'who are the top billionaire donors, all listed are big donors'.
- slg 6y agoThis almost seems like a metric chosen specifically to get Dorsey on top since he recently made a single massive donation while people like Gates have contributed a much larger amount over a much longer period of time.
- igravious 6y agoDonations this month is a meaningless metric. Total % of net worth would be the obvious metric, wouldn't it? Is this only US billionaires? There are 614 billionaires in the US according to Forbes[0], there are only 29 listed here, ~5% of the total. [0] https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/ https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/
- OJFord 6y agoYeah, %net worth would be more meaningful, but I still think monthly is odd. Why should it look bad if you donate nothing for 11 months and then drop a big one, because that's what you do every Christmas or something. Assuming accurate monthly data is even available, I think a 12mo moving average would make more sense. In addition to the %net worth you suggest.
- 6y ago
- simonswords82 6y agoSurprised to see jack above bill
- OJFord 6y agoIt's monthly. I'm not sure how confident the author can be about getting accurate data that quickly, or how significant it is even if it is accurate. A moving average of last 12 months, if you really can get monthly data, would make more sense to me.
- kemiller2002 6y agoI don't like rankings like this. I'm not saying all of them, but at least a few made their money off of the backs of others, being ruthless in business, etc. How gracious of them to give money to people they hurt in the first place. I'm glad they are doing good, but let's not pretend they were completely altruistic. Also, a number of these people donated money years ago to avoid taxes, and the money was invested and growing. Its good we have it, but the "we gave away all this money" is an insignificant impact to them for multiple reasons.
- qqssccfftt 6y ago> I'm not saying all of them, but at least a few made their money off of the backs of others, being ruthless in business No, that's all of them. You don't become a billionaire by being nice and non-exploitative.
- ggreer 6y agoWhat? I can think of several off the top of my head. J. K. Rowling became a billionaire by writing the Harry Potter books. Oprah Winfrey became a billionaire through her brand as a talented talk show host. Michael Jordan became a billionaire thanks to his basketball skills. None of those are even remotely exploitative.
- qqssccfftt 6y ago> J. K. Rowling became a billionaire by writing the Harry Potter books. And the hundreds of marketing people and the editors? > Oprah Winfrey became a billionaire through her brand as a talented talk show host. And everyone who makes her shows work? > Michael Jordan became a billionaire thanks to his basketball skills. And his coaches and trainers? Without these people, none of those billionaires would've made it.
- gamblor956 6y agoThat's all true, but when you say "off the backs of others" that generally means by unfairly exploiting the labor of others without giving them anything back (see every dictionary, or https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/live-off-the-backs-of-someone https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/live...). In the examples you have cited, all of those people were paid for their labor. In the cases of Winfrey and especially Jordan, many of those people were paid extremely well for their labor.
- door19 6y agoNo one should have a billion dollars
- yogthos 6y agoI think a better way to put it is that nobody should have a billion dollars more than another person. The wealth isn't the problem if it's distributed evenly. The problem has always been inequality. It would be a fantastic world where everyone could do anything they wanted and have as much agency over their lives as possible.
- zozbot234 6y ago> The wealth isn't the problem if it's distributed evenly. Isn't that what these billionaires are doing? Giving their money away. The more billionaires donate, the closer we get to your world where everyone has as much agency over their lives as possible. (Including the donors, of course.)
- ilikehurdles 6y agoAre they? Is wealth inequality decreasing? Those are rhetorical questions, of course. The answers are no, and no. If billionaires overall do tend to donate significant portions of their wealth, then the fact that wealth inequality is increasing in spite of that practice is hard evidence that individual charity is an ineffective means of lifting people out of poverty. If the converse is true -- that they aren't donating their wealth -- then that too suggests that something like a state is necessary to force their hand.
- zozbot234 6y agoIn all seriousness, the way wealth inequality is measured wouldn't tell you that in the first place. You'd have to look at consumption inequality, which would include stuff like Larry Ellison's yachts (on the "high inequality" side) and perhaps poor people's final consumption resulting from these donations (on the "low inequality" side).
- retrac 6y agoI'm assuming this isn't factoring in the harm they're doing. How much do Bezos's donations to homeless services offset his union-busting? Is there a formula for that?
- 0x262d 6y agoWell in Seattle, their homeless charity money is less so far than the money they have spent against the politicians trying to do anything about homelessness besides passively asking for business to "be responsible".
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 0x262d 6y agoSomeone downvoted this. If they disagree they should source it. Amazon spent $1.5m on the city council elections in 2019, I believe about $300k in 2018, and $300-400k in 2017 on the mayoral race. The rate at which they spend on such things is rapidly increasing as the Tax Amazon movement has gradually gained steam. Meanwhile they are "estimated" to spend "up to" $2m on Mary's place annually, in the future. Let me know when that happens and when their political spending drops down, but I'm skeptical and so far they have spent more on political spending against anyone who suggests taxing them.
- malandrew 6y agoTrying to do something about homelessness and actually doing something about homelessness are two different things. Many of the policies that those trying to do something about homelessness in Seattle are trying to implement are similar to those policies that were enacted in San Francisco that made homelessness worse such as rent control.
- 0x262d 6y agoThe left politicians I’m referring to have their hands completely tied by the centrist majority who won’t act on this, and people who profit from high rent turn around, point to the lack of political action they caused, and say it means the politically blocked proposed solutions are “unviable”. Also you’re just incorrect about rent control. SF has it in a tiny fraction of apartments. Of course rents elsewhere are skyrocketing.
- chizhik-pyzhik 6y agoseems like a contradiction
- 0x262d 6y agoI'm not sure how they can be considered to be doing much, or any, good, when effectively they are passively siphoning off profits and despite all the "good" they do, as a class they get rapidly richer every year. That has always been a conundrum behind Bill Gates' charity. Of course, it's not really a conundrum. The charity is just tax-advantaged PR or tax-advantaged complementary investment masquerading as goodwill.
- 0x262d 6y agoAlso the idea that a significant amount of billionaire wealth is moved by "inspiration" rather than naked financial calculation is incredibly naive. Unless they somehow lucked into this, they are billionaires for a reason: naked financial calculation.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ztratar 6y agoCreator here. It's all arbitrary, IMO. Idk if they're "siphoning off profits", since most of their value is in equity and Amazon, for example, isn't historically very profitable. Getting richer every year in equity value is a strange concept. I think there should be some additional taxes, but we also shouldn't expect taxes to be a real solution.
- forgot_my_pwd 6y agoIt is often the case that soft social pressure is the best way to enforce desirable behaviors amongst people. Within friend groups where there are no formally established laws or codes of conduct, there are certain implicit standards of behavior people are expected to abide by, and part of why they do is because of the threat of social ostracism. In a broader scope, in ancient societies social ostracism was often used to deal with those who violated the norms of society; in Athens ostracism was an official punishment. I'm not saying we can or should literally expel billionaires who don't put their liquid wealth towards philanthropy, but far too often we focus on formal, legal means of compelling the super wealthy to part with their money, such as through taxes that are easily avoided. Social pressure put upon the super wealthy using tools like this could be more effective than people expect. There is the threat of social ostracism, but also the reward of social approval granted to the patrons of philanthropy.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- qqssccfftt 6y agoIf I was a billionaire I would not care about being a social outcast. For starters, I could just buy friends, or buy hitmen.
- ausbah 6y agoI think informal social pressures are just as fallible as formal legal systems, a billionaire can donate everything to philanthropy where the philanthropy is controlled entirely by them - effectively subverting the point of philanthropy
- munk-a 6y ago> but far too often we focus on formal, legal means of compelling the super wealthy to part with their money, such as through taxes that are easily avoided. Taxes are easily avoided only because they're designed to be easily avoidable. Simplifying[1] the tax code costs a lot of political capital due to entrenched interests but is technically trivial - ask a seven year old to design a fair tax system and it'd be less of a trainwreck than ours. Deductible expenses need to be significantly curtailed and capped and alternative minimums could be introduced to be a stop-gap against any loop holes that were missed. Then you just start playing whack-a-mole with various tax credits to cut out targeted and unjust programs like child-credits and mortgage relief. 1. Actually doing this, not just granting a bunch of money to corporations like the GOP did.
- dominotw 6y agoPublic's perception of Warren Buffet is really puzzling to me. He seems to largely escape the scorn for billionaires, even looked at as a 'good guy'. Whats his secret? We seem to hold CEO of coke more culpable for filling oceans with plastic than coke's shareholders like buffet who profit more from it than the CEO. Really bizarre phenomenon.
- DrScientist 6y agoWell one thing - as an just an investor rather than a company owner, he doesn't get flack for the stuff 'his' companies do. Perhaps he should - he owns a large stake in Coca cola - one of the largest plastic polluters in the world. He also is a 'good investor' - ie an actual investor, helping to build conpanies over a long time, rather than a speculator. Personality - being soft spoken and all that - has probably a big part to play as well.
- dhosek 6y agoI think some of it is that he doesn't really live like a billionaire in a lot of respects, takes anti-wealth political positions (he's an opponent of California's Prop 13, for example pointing out that he pays less in property taxes for his Malibu estate than people with much more modest properties in California), is explicitly not forming a money-based dynasty in his family (he has given his kids "just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing") and intends to give away his fortune to charity. There's a pretty good summary of his views and actions in the Wikipedia article on him.
- dominotw 6y agoNot sure any of that offsets funding and profiting off of obesity epidemic and filling oceans with plastic. Coke is killing ppl with coronavirus by causing massive obesity crisis in america.
- asdff 6y agoHe's always been a friendly looking man, stays out of the limelight for the most part although his reputation precedes him, and gets off scott free for the simple fact that most of the public has no idea what berkshire hathaway invests in, or is really.
- DrScientist 6y agoRather misleading. For example it has Jeff Bezos donating 10 billion to a new 'Bezos Earth Fund'. However it hasn't yet issued any grants so as of today, he has merely moved money from one place he controls to another one I assume he still controls.
- ztratar 6y agoGood feedback. I'm going to make the pledges into funds count for less, and make it more obvious which $ has been pledged vs deployed.
- fmakunbound 6y agoThis is hilarious and pathetic at the same time. They should be paying tax.
- longtermd 6y ago* Donated last month * Donation amount: 0$ https://billionaireboard.com/billionaires/jack-ma https://billionaireboard.com/billionaires/jack-ma
- Yizahi 6y agoHe is probably busy banning github pages criticizing him and simply forgot to donate. We need to be more tolerant to our Great Leaders.
- atoav 6y agoThe ones who are properly taxed?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dandigangi 6y agoInteresting site but they frequently use those donations for tax purposes and moving money around in particular ways to get it back (outside of just taxes).
- ztratar 6y agoDo you have real data on that? I see that argument everywhere, but haven't found substantial proof.
- asdff 6y agoThose that take an upper middle class salary and give away the other 999.9 million dollars. Funny how much that shortens the list.
- 0xebfc 6y agoSince the angle this website introduces itself with is: "These are the world's most powerful people. Let's track their impact & inspire them to do more good" This doesn't seem like a good motivator, because doing something for the sake of reputation doesn't directly incentivize solving a problem in an effective way. And w.r.t. the title of the post, it seems like there are a few steps critical steps being omitted in the relationship between money donated and "doing good". For instance, not all organizations are as effective as others; if the motivator is to increase the $ count of donation, then what's the point in thinking about "doing good"? Can I be ranked as "doing the most good" by contributing more money than anyone else in the list, while still doing measurable damage to parts of society that aren't being included in the metric? See, if this website were neutral -- if it just showed the damn numbers without injecting it with an arbitrary value judgement, this would have been great. Instead, this serves to create anxiety to those who view it to do something for the wrong reasons. The more I think about this, the more banal this site seems to me. I'd appreciate being pointed out if I'm missing something, but otherwise this website tells me more about the mindset of the authors than anything else.
- ztratar 6y agoThoughtful perspective! This is the v1 of the site and I'm looking to improve it. - How can I make it more neutral? - Is it sometimes worthwhile to simply accelerate the deployment of capital? Can you combine the two incentives? My mindset, to be clear, is that we want more people to strive to be like Bill Gates with their wealth. Even determining who that is right now is extraordinarily difficult. Making the data public is step #1, and then figuring out how to help them leverage philanthropy effectively is step #2.
- 0xebfc 6y ago"How can I make it more neutral?" Just show the numbers. If there's something you'd like to show what the numbers mean, then be careful about explaining that. Make clear distinctions between metrics and goals. Think about all the metrics you think will tell you that you're approaching a goal; then find all the ways they will break. I already said how your metric-of-choice is broken and cheat-able. "Is it sometimes worthwhile to simply accelerate the deployment of capital?" Is this what you believe your role is? --- "My mindset, to be clear, is that we want more people to strive to be like Bill Gates with their wealth." You're going to burn yourself out by trying to find human levers to change the world. Some of us will be there to welcome you to the club, but I know some people who haven't made it. I'm not one to say whether you should hop on or jump off that train. Usually, there's something else that's going on in my life that leads me to that kind of mindset. There are contradictions in our language and value-systems, and it's total bullshit, but we chose to pretend to believe them because that's what you need to do to get in for the ride. Lots of people forget that they are pretending, and some of re-remember it in adulthood or something. So the difficulty in determining in "who that is" might be one of those contradictions popping up.
- CPLX 6y agoFor anyone interested in this topic I highly recommend the book Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas and his various media appearances and upcoming TV show on Vice as food for thought.
- janpot 6y agoNot impressed in the least. Donating some money is easy if you own more that you can ever spend in a lifetime. Would be way more interested in which billionaires are doing the most harm.
- ztratar 6y agoI didn't want to make a site centered around shaming / punishment / anger. I think it's a valid thing to make that data public though. Lmk if you build the site.
- jsnk 6y agoThis is so cringey
- ztratar 6y agoWhat would you like to see different?
- sharatvir 6y agoThis just looks like PR for the benevolent feudal lords. Rather than "giving back", maybe these people should stop taking away in the first place.
- ilikehurdles 6y ago"Which billiaires have donated the most money this month" is a more accurate headline. That any of their donations are good enough to offset the evil of having so much wealth concentrated in the hands of a single person is pretty doubtful, or at best controversial.
- jameson 6y agoI wonder how the ranking would look like if we use the total amount donated in proportion to net worth. (not saying it's not. looks like multiple factors are involved) A person donating $10 when his/her net worth $20 is different from a person donating the same amount but the net worth of, say, $1000.
- Yizahi 6y agoAre they though? I don't want to spread baseless hate and I actually respect many of those people. But if someone would calculate total absolute positive and absolute negative for each of then I'm not sure that total would be above zero line. I talking about widespread and increasing economical inequality in all countries since last world war ans each billionaire is partially responsible for this process which I consider more negative than positive. I'm not advocating for some forceful wealth exchange but I think it is possible to at least discuss the issue.
- gorbachev 6y agoJeff Bezos should not be on any list championing charitable donations. He gives out the minimum possible for looking good on a PR release about it.
- karmakaze 6y agoI think a better metric would be which are the most effective for X. It's up to whoever put in the work to have the ability to contribute, decide what cause they support. As long as most of the top causes get support we're in good shape. If they're being ineffective toward their chosen goal, that's something I'd like pointed out.
- Simulacra 6y agoSomething feels almost PR spin about this. “No, look, see, billionaires Are doing good!” I can’t help be feel suspect about this website.
- ztratar 6y agoWhat would make it feel less like that? I was at first making it a lifetime-oriented ranking, but that felt like "shame these specific people!" I think there's a middle-ground between celebration and shame that I'm trying to hit.
- alexwasserman 6y agoI'd be interested to see this as a percentage of net worth or income as well. If a person with $1B gives it all away in one months that's about as philanthropic as you can get - much less so for someone with another $50B to spare. Tracking this on a "last month" basis with no information over time is just ridiculous too. Also, the descriptions here seem pretty varied, and highly slanted. eg. Balmer joined Microsoft when it was still a start-up, and just gets credited for the CEO years, rather than as helping grow it along the way. Sergey Brin just has "Immigrant" for the second sentence. Martha Ingram "Author of three books". Neither of those provides any insight into the value that provided. Overall that just makes the whole page look especially suspect, coupled with picking these 29 (or "About 30" as the About page puts it). There's so little rationale here it makes the whole site look like advertising for something I can't work out.
- ztratar 6y agoCreator here -- didn't know I was posted to HN! I was planning on doing a Show HN tomorrow. Oof. - Totally agree. I have all the data on doing percentages. The "score" actually normalizes across their percentage. Will add this more visibly. - The "last month" is just to give any billionaire a chance to get to the top spot. Also open to making it more.... "last 3 months" or so? We had a lifetime ranking at first, but then the site felt too static and cast a lifetime judgement on people instead of giving them the opportunity to attain a top spot. - Agreed on the descriptions. All the data was crowdsourced, so we can go through and improve these. - Suspect in terms of what exactly? We definitely launched early (as one does). Open to more feedback!
- ztratar 6y agoCreator here - didn't know this was posted! Was going to launch tomorrow lol. Anyways, here's the launch blog post: https://www.zachtratar.com/introducing-billionaire-board.html https://www.zachtratar.com/introducing-billionaire-board.htm...
- ztratar 6y agoNot sure why this post was flagged or taken down. It follows the guidelines and is something I made. Feeling quite bad about this situation.
- pasttense01 6y agoCharles Koch, ranking 24, is definitely not doing any good and instead is doing a lot of bad: he contributes massively to crazy right-wing candidates, which ends up making the world a much worse place.