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Bezos Earth Fund Grants $400M for Greening Underserved Urban U.S. Communities
- ShamelessC 3y agoCongratulations! You did it! https://youtu.be/lI5w2QwdYik https://youtu.be/lI5w2QwdYik
- kevmo 3y agoBe better if he just paid taxes.
- boeingUH60 3y ago> Bezos’s annual reported income during these years of $832 million put him only at number 15. He paid an effective tax rate of 23.2%; as we’ve previously reported, Bezos had so little income in a couple of recent years that he was able to pay $0 in federal income taxes in those periods. https://www.propublica.org/article/americas-top-15-earners-and-what-they-reveal-about-the-us-tax-system https://www.propublica.org/article/americas-top-15-earners-a...
- JimtheCoder 3y agoI always like how good old Warren Buffett is calling for high earners to be taxed more, yet he never seems to show up on any of these high earner lists...
- lotsofpulp 3y agoHow is that inconsistent?
- JimtheCoder 3y agoBecause the narrative being developed around him is that he is such a selfless guy, humble midwestern values, wants good for America, yet he structures his affairs in a way that he pays as little tax as possible and would be largely unaffected by increased income tax...
- lotsofpulp 3y agoFrom my understanding, his income would be from capital gains, and he does advocate for increasing capital gains tax rates.
- OtherShrezzing 3y agoHe doesn't tend to show up in the lists because he pays himself relatively little (compared to other billionaires). Between 2014-18 he had income of $125m, and paid tax of $23.7m[1]. That's still lower than the average American absolute tax rate, but way higher than most other billionaires. So he's a bit less of a sensational headline than his contemporaries. His wealth growth of $24.3bn is untaxed through those years, he presumably left those assets in Berkshire Hathaway where he'd personally not generate a tax bill for them. Eventually Buffet, or more likely his inheritors, will sell the Berkshire Hathaway assets, and should pay a monumental tax bill on them. [1] https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trov...
- istjohn 3y agoWhy would they ever sell anything when they can just use them as collateral for loans and avoid ever paying taxes.
- colechristensen 3y ago>as we’ve previously reported, Bezos had so little income in a couple of recent years that he was able to pay $0 in federal income taxes in those periods. This is the part people are bothered by. Regardless of why, billionaires should never be paying $0 in federal income taxes. Our tax code and the people finding loopholes in it should not do this. Executives should not be able to be "unpaid" for years because they're getting tax advantaged stock deals. Nobody should be able to have that much wealth and have a year with no taxes. If you are the human at the end of the line of ownership that ultimately benefits from assets, you should be charged ordinary income as you extract from those assets. The only people who should owe $0 in federal taxes are those earning less than a full time minimum wage salary during that tax year, with no exceptions for folks who magically seem to find millions of dollars to spend during a year that they "earned" $0.
- pfannkuchen 3y ago> paying $0 in federal income taxes > a year with no taxes These are two very different things, and the former does not imply the latter.
- voisin 3y agoBut then it wouldn’t be discretionary and make headlines. Won’t someone think of the billionaires’ egos?!
- megaman821 3y agoWhat are the unpaid taxes he owes? Tax evasion is a felony, go turn him and collect your reward.
- factorialboy 3y agoTax avoidance is not a crime. Evasion is. All these billionaires know how to skirt the rules.
- oh_sigh 3y agoHave you ever taken a tax deduction? Why are you avoiding taxes if so?
- megaman821 3y agoThey aren't skirting anything. If you want to get rid of charitable deductions then advocate for that. People are attacking billionaires because the have unpalatable policy positions.
- londons_explore 3y agoAll the billionaires pay lots of money to advisers who will arrange their finances for them. I bet most billionaires couldn't even name half the companies they control, because they're all shell companies for shuffling funds overseas.
- squeaky-clean 3y agoIf they're skirting the rules, that's just called following the rules. Why should we expect billionaires to file their taxes suboptimally? The rules are what need changing.
- spencerflem 3y agoYes- that's why people in the comments keep griping about how little tax he has to pay
- 3y ago
- nullecksor 3y agoWhat is with this 'help me, but not like this' attitude? Of all taxes paid, where will the government allocated funds go? Its not like the government is running out of money to not fund this.
- princevegeta89 3y agoTaxes -> Uncle Sam -> Some Politician Pockets -> Dumbass projects, pointless initiatives [sometimes fueled by lobbying] -> Maybe some of it finally towards underprivileged communities with a 25% chance? Donating directly to the communities removes all this mess and gets money where it needs to go.
- gizmodo59 3y agoWe all want to do it that way then.. I will choose my own ways to spend the tax dollars as I see fit? Too bad we don’t live in such a society
- bee_rider 3y agoIt would be quite interesting to see what got funded, if they let us pick projects to fund while doing our taxes. It might even be a worthwhile experiment to do; let tax payers decide how to allocate, say, 10% of their taxes.
- SantalBlush 3y agoWhile graft certainly exists to at least some degree, the conclusion still doesn't follow from the premise.
- dgb23 3y agoI’m a huge fan of long lasting infrastructure like schools, internet, green energy, public transport etc. this stuff always pays off for future generations.
- throwawayqqq11 3y agoI guess your ridiculous caricature of government spending is a product of a failing educational system. This is also one of the problems, that will never be fixed aslong as taxes are kind of negotiable for ones above the citizenship/law and people get distracted by this kind of altruist-washing (which can also be a way to dodge taxes). > Taxes -> Uncle Sam -> Some Politician Pockets -> Dumbass projects. The issue you highlight is not taxes per se but the political sphere, which can be solved seperately. Rejecting taxes and not acknowledging the root problem _makes you part of the problem_ and useful for the ones profiting from it. OT: Its ridiculous, that ppl _who voted for 1 of 2 corrupt parties complain about their stolen votes_. This kind of idiocy could also be a useful product of a failed educational systems maybe combined with Murrica-first delusions.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 3y agoYes, but we need to change the rules to get that. IMO a wealth tax would be difficult to avoid.
- LOLTITTIES 3y agoIn the (great) scenario that Bezos spends his money to do good, he likely spends his dollars more efficiently than the government does.
- kthejoker2 3y ago"His" doing a lot of lifting in this comment. And I strongly disagree with the premise we should let our capitalist and genetic lottery winners solely determine what problems society needs solving.
- lol23456 3y ago[flagged]
- CrzyLngPwd 3y agoMeh, it would just go to the military. At least this way he gets to feel good about it.
- 23B1 3y agoGreenwashing. $400M is about what AMZN spent on the totally-unwanted LOTR reboot.
- deanCommie 3y agoIt's bigger than that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Corporation_of_New_York https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Corporation_of_New_Yo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Foundation And now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Philanthropy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Philanthropy (not significant enough yet to warrant it's own page) A classic move by exploitative billionaires to launder their legacy. But what's the alternative? NOT doing it? We should support it, and shame the billionaires that DON'T. do this.
- k4rli 3y agoDefinitely hard to trust their philanthropy. This was also a nice watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH4uh8cHuto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH4uh8cHuto
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago> But what's the alternative? Taxing the crap out of them in some way that passes constitutional muster, and if necessary changing the constitution?
- caturopath 3y agoThat doesn't mean that $400MM is a small amount of money, it means the LOTR reboot was an expensive TV show or whatever it was. It is a large amount of money.
- kyleblarson 3y ago[flagged]
- DrFlipper 3y ago[flagged]
- virgildotcodes 3y agoShit on the people that all of society has been collectively shitting on for generations, classy. Those peasants better be thankful for their breadcrumbs!
- DrFlipper 3y ago[flagged]
- erulabs 3y ago"I'm sure the communities will respect these spaces." doesn't really read like "These spaces won't be taken care of not because the community doesn't value them, but because other people are racist towards that community which will hurt their garden in... ways". It reads like "I don't think these communities can handle running a garden or keeping a green space nice".
- smt88 3y agoIf you were being sincere, you should learn how to communicate in a way that doesn't heavily imply sarcasm. If you were being sarcastic, which you were, you should troll elsewhere. Your second comment mentioning racism actually does add a repulsive racial tinge to your commentary, which is worse than the original classist trolling.
- caturopath 3y agoWow, I'm not entirely clear what the grantees are specifically doing from reading this announcement, but I am sure there will be tons of awesome work accomplished. I do wonder exactly what the theory of change here is - this is a huge amount of money, and I am surprised it's a great way to spend it, especially when the Inflation Reduction Act just authorized so much money for similar goals. I didn't dig into the individual grants, though the ones I peeked at didn't get too specific on what that work is. Parks, trees, and community gardens are all great. My general expectation in my experience is that poor urban communities are disproportionately often in park-heavy areas (not for justice reasons, for floodplain reasons). I guess they need work to make them better? I like community gardens, but I am just shocked if folks are helping much to solve anything that matters by dedicating dozens or hundreds of millions of dollars to promoting them. I am extremely skeptical that the climate mitigations cited are very well-accomplished by the green spaces mentioned. It's obligatory to cite climate change in everything, which gets frustrating, especially because we are engaged in so few of the things that would actually help.
- bobthepanda 3y agoPoor urban communities may have parks without greenery (think urban basketball court). And generally speaking the data show the opposite with access to parks: https://theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/20/park-inequality-access-coronavirus-wellbeing https://theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/20/park-inequal... We do know that trees generally reduce the heat island effect because of evaporation, and that they improve air quality.
- bluefishinit 3y ago> The Greening America’s Cities initiative launches with $50 million for urban greening efforts in five cities–Albuquerque, Atlanta... This is ironic given that Atlanta currently has 85 acres of prime greenspace that the city is spending $90M+ to turn into a police training center: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cop_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cop_City
- b59831 3y ago[dead]
- pandacake 3y agoCop City? Oh yea, Amazon is funding that effort.
- paxys 3y agoNo amount of money is going to fix public policy and citizen apathy. The change needs to be grassroots and cultural, not pushed down by someone with $150B to his name.
- phatskat 3y agoNever attribute to irony what can be attributed to fuckery. I don’t know Bezos or Amazon’s stance on cops but I do know that corporations loooooove police - it’s where cops came from. I wouldn’t be surprised if this infusion is specifically to detract from the bad press of Cop City. Oh wait, I do know Amazon’s stance - I was lying, you see. Amazon, via Ring, has really cozied up to law enforcement. The terms of what they can and can’t do with your data have gotten looser and looser when it comes to sharing data with LE, and this includes the Neighborhood app or whatever. Crime on your street? Ring can hand over all recording data from that time from the cameras on your street without the owner’s consent. So, given this, I’d be very curious to know how much influence this will have on City (sorry about the emoji, I have an auto replace and got tired of “fixing” it). I’d also be curious to know if similar Urban Warfare centers are planned on the other four locations, as the one in Atlanta is certainly being watched closely by other departments looking to get in on the action (and tax dollars!) of simulating high speed chases and no knock raids!
- hackncheese 3y ago[flagged]
- ch4s3 3y agoIt boggles my my that any time there is an attempt to invest in the built environment of poor communities, someone always cries gentrification.
- b59831 3y ago[dead]
- TulliusCicero 3y agoThey're not entirely wrong: if you make some area nicer, people with more money still start outbidding people with less money to live there. The solution is to fix the situation with housing: * Enable vastly more housing supply so there's less direct 'competition' with people competing for housing slots * Protect tenants' rights to housing stability; if you haven't broken any rules, you should generally be able to stay in your home
- ch4s3 3y agoYes, I too am pro building more housing. It's generally the people that call restoring parks or adding bike lanes "gentrification" that oppose building more housing.
- egoregorov 3y ago[flagged]
- Havoc 3y agoQuite confused by this. Trees and parks are obviously beneficial in numerous real ways. ...but if you ask someone that is really struggling I doubt their answer as to what they need is "more trees outside my door". From my admittedly ignorant and priviledged position the answer is more likely to be "I can't apply to jobs if i don't have internet". With people that have their back against the wall you have to address the showstopper issues. That's not to say they don't deserve trees, but given finite resources, prioritize.
- spandrew 3y agoEhh you're right, but they don't really have to address showstopper issues. There isn't a lot of upside value in "human issue ranking" as a scrutiny tactic to a donation. Charitable donations aren't public negotiations like they are if you're talking about gov/public funds. Just take the money on offer and build some lovely green spaces.
- nevir 3y agoTree cover has a pretty big impact on people's lives, especially in hot climates.
- kasey_junk 3y agoI’ve done volunteer work (tangentially) with one of the organizations that got a grant in Chicago. They are very much grassroots, very much from an extremely disadvantaged area, and are routinely praised by their constituents. Turns out that poor people have diverse needs and desires, some of which is access to clean green spaces.
- bombcar 3y agoMore like tree roots. Part of the problem that things like this fix is "catastrophic paralysis" where you get stuck trying to find the single most advantageous thing you can do, which often ends up being subsumed into converting money into political blathering. Whereas if you spend $400m to plant trees, you get trees (or, sadly, you get trees that die instantly because you didn't manage the project at all to verify that the trees will do something, and instead burnt it on a tree planting company that doesn't care if they survive).
- bluGill 3y agoAlbuquerque is a desert, as such greening the city by planting anything is bad. They can still use parks, but parks there need to respect nature and that means very little grass or trees. (not zero of either, but the ground needs to be mostly bare). Hopefully they don't try to force what would be the correct green for the climate of one place on another. We have too much of that already.
- TulliusCicero 3y agoA quick look on Google Maps shows some forested hills like right next to Albuquerque. Seems like some greening is viable while respecting the climate and environment.
- floren 3y agoYou have to climb quite a bit to get to true forest. Albuquerque is in scrubby desert, although you get cottonwoods down by the river. Go a few thousand feet up the Sandia Mountains and you'll get pines, cedars, aspens.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoABQ is also a former flood plain of the Rio Grande, the biggest river in the SW outside of the Colorado (though that's not saying much). The "bosque" (forest) along the river is a riparian oasis compared to parts of the city 5-8 miles away, and historically was a major agricultural area. This changed somewhat when in the 1940s the bureau of reclamation began damming the river and providing water to other areas. So while I certainly appreciate your concern, it is easy to overstate the issue (and also easy to ignore it, as has been done in the past).
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoSome overlap, it seems, with this: https://www.rei.com/action/network/campaign/outdoors-for-all https://www.rei.com/action/network/campaign/outdoors-for-all though I don't see any direct connections.
- karaterobot 3y agoStories like this make me think of this quote from C.S. Lewis: > Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities [committed by one’s enemies] in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, “Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,” or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything—God and our friends and ourselves included—as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed forever in a universe of pure hatred. Bezos is a complicated figure, and there are other causes that could also use money, but this appears to be an inarguably good thing, so let's take the win.
- ThinkBeat 3y agoThe US modern politically correct language is about obscuring things. "Underserved urban U.S. communities" To upquote Carlin: They are black. They are poor. They are hungry. They live in bad neighborhoods. They have arees have a substantial problem with crime. and often with drugs. They need money, food, opportunity, education and jobs that pay a living wage. Bezos being part of the 0.01% (?) super rich elite, lounges in his luxury ivory tower and thinks well "well what the negros need are trees and grass that will make it all so much better" No, What Bezo needs to do is start paying his workers a living wage, full health insurance, allow them to unionize. give their kids a better chance at higher education. Stop treating the workers and slave automatons that go to the bathroom far too often and get hurt on the job far too often. As long as Bezo derives his wealth in part because of his exploitation of "Underserved urban U.S. workers" he is despicable no matter how many feet of grass or trees he is sponsoring out of the petty cash drawer.
- nostromo 3y ago> well what the negros need are trees and grass that will make it all so much better This is beyond ridiculous. Rare is a comment that can offend people from all backgrounds, but here it is. Flagged.
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]