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@jeffowski Good post, not related to billionairs, but otherwise a good post I wish more people understood.
@freemo — the existence and allowance of billionaires fall hand in hand with homelessness and hunger.
@jeffowski Incorrect, though it is a common perspective and I understand that you believe thqt to be the case.
That isnt to say that billionairs do no wrong, they do, right along with people at any income level.
On average richer people donate a much larger percentage of their ownings to help the poor that middle-class well off people, but a pretty big margin.
So yes, and they **do** donate more, statistically speaking. The problem is not wholly theirs to bear however.
@freemo — I think someone famous once said that with great power comes great responsibility.
Being a billionaire would grant the vast majority of the population an unimaginable power to change lives with money alone.
Again, it’s always a white Northern European guy that is defending the status quo because they are insulated from the problems incurred by their morally bankrupt views and philosophy.
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> Again, it’s always a white Northern European guy that is defending the status quo because they are insulated from the problems incurred by their morally bankrupt views and philosophy.
Oh, who is that? I am not white (im native american), and I'm not norther European or even European... Thanks for that racist remark though, really shows your true colors.
@freemo — the attitude of the colonizer from a native person? Just shows you have affluence truly corrupts.
Well I guess thats one way to respond to you finding out your comment was racist nonsense.. just double down on it.
Welcome to the mute list.
@freemo — you defend billionaires. Go suck off Elon Musk.
@jeffowski @freemo the church of Jeff doesn’t understand why envy is a sin.
Usually when someone starts spewing racist garbage in response to an otherwise polite difference of opinions its a pretty good indication that "understanding" is really one of their strong suits.
@freemo @justinerickson — you live in the Netherlands where they accept the highest wealth disparity on the planet of any nation. You argue points of the very regular Germans, Dutch, Danish collective that fight against whatever message is being expressed. Can’t help it if they fit a very specific stereotype and keep representing as such. See my feed. I talk about this phenomenon regularly.
Dat blijkt in Nederland niet uit collectes. Collectanten halen in wijken met een lagere welstand veelal aanzienlijk meer op per huishouden dan in welvarender wijken.
You are refering to door--to-door collections, not overall donations. Also I wasnt talking specifically of the Netherlands but rather world-wide statistics. I dont know the numbers specific tot he Netherlands.
It looks kind of flat to me (see graph 11 in https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/almanac/statistics-on-u-s-generosity/ ), perhaps the numbers would be different if the data were more granular at higher income levels but 2-3% seems to be the number above ~ 50k/yr in the us.
sadly I dont have anything more recent on hand, but attached is the actual data normalized properly for AGI and only looking at individuals, not corporations. AS you can see super wealthy contribute more than double, in terms of % of income, than the well-to-do middle class.
Thanks, good to know. The graph I had didn’t go that high.
@Gbudd @freemo @jeffowski As it should be! They’re sitting on BILLIONS of dollars! They should be giving away 90% of it, not 10%! Smh
@Gbudd @freemo @jeffowski Exactly this. The lucky middle class (me) mostly have no idea what it’s like to be properly poor. The stress that comes with that - with not knowing when the next crisis is coming that could make you homeless again? I can’t imagine it. Universal basic income now, no billionaires now.
@freemo $10m and up is a huge range though. Wonder how distributed a further breakdown would show that single average number to be. That seems to be the IRS's cutoff of income bracketing as well, so probably no way to expand it more.
The question is why there is a gap and then apparent climb in percentage, and I imagine it's a combination of cost of living needs vs. donating as well the definite advantage of giving away a maximum tax deductible amount when one has it to give to reduce tax burden overall.
The trend does continue higher up the range last I looked at this a few years back.
We can only speculate ont he reason. but cost of living makes little sense since the lower bracket is quite well-to-do. Doiing it for tax purposes would in almost all cases cost you more than you get back, so that makes little sense in most cases too.
For anyone who has friend circles who are rich, as I do, it seems obvious why,. rich people are generally creators and doers, they see problems, like poverty, and they want to fix it. Its quite common for them to be involved in the process well beyond the money
@freemo @jeffowski Everything they have is stolen. What difference does it make if they give some of it back to their victims?
Also not true.. i am sensing some pretty fundemental misunderstanding of how wealth works. It sounds like you probably beleive the common fallacy that wealth is a zero sum game. That someone can only have wealth by taking it from someone else.
@freemo @jeffowski Nope. I understand wealth perfectly well. Wealth is capital, that is productive property to some people are denied access, private property. Capital earns money through the forcible appropriation of other people's labor. Which is why property is theft, as is wealth.
You say you understand it, then your explanation proves you dont. Since you dont seem willing to learn ill just leave it there. Thanks for the conversation, best of luck to you.
It is always someone elses fault, or the fault of some group other than the person who takes issue...That is not a coincidence, it is also the root of the problem.
it always comes off as a conspiracy theory. The hilariously part is the left calls right wing conspiracy theorist but they seem to be the ones who come up with it or believe in them the most.
Neither the left nor the right have any shortage of conspiracy theory nonsense.
@freemo @lonelyranger@shitposter.club — thank you for demonstrating who has the power to act and who doesn’t.
It is not a failing of a poor person with no power to use the only power they have in their voice, versus the powerful/affluent person who HAS power but doesn’t take action (or worse, use that power to maintain the status quo where they keep their power and money to the detriment of others).
@jeffowski No one said anything about poor people... I refereed specifically to well-to-do middle class in my one example.
If your going to make up things I didnt say and then argue against those your just wasting my time.
@freemo — it is a much greater moral failing of a billionaire not using that power to feed and house people than a worker going paycheck to paycheck not volunteering.
Voltaire: "Everyone is guilty of all the good they did not do."