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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.
@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."
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.
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.
@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
Thanks, good to know. The graph I had didn’t go that high.