Billionaire philanthropist and author MacKenzie Scott announced Tuesday she is giving $640 million to 361 small nonprofits that responded to an open call for applications.
Yield Giving’s first round of donations is more than double what Scott had initially pledged to give away through the application process. Since she began giving away billions in 2019, Scott and her team have researched and selected organizations without an application process and provided them with large, unrestricted gifts.
In a brief note on her website, Scott wrote she was grateful to Lever for Change, the organization that managed the open call, and the evaluators for “their roles in creating this pathway to support for people working to improve access to foundational resources in their communities. They are vital agents of change.”
I know general consensus is fuck billionaires, and I’m not exactly desputing that, but I work in IT for a rural school district and a donation from her foundation allowed the district to set up a foundation and now 50 of our students can attend a local community College on full scholarship each year.
To be fair, she took a billionaire’s (Jeff Bezos) money and is now redistributing $38b of his wealth. She’s one of the good ones.
It was her money too, as she was a core founding member of Amazon, but until their divorce it was locked up in shares.
It does sure seem like she wanted to give a lot of it away, probably for a long time. I’m glad his midlife crisis is helping so many people.
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But imagine he would’ve been able to gain even more interest on that 4% she stole!
This is a devastating loss.
If you look into the matter, she very much helped to earn that money. It’s hers, not taken from anyone.
Nobody actually earns that much, and I doubt that her labor directly created that much real value.
Well if we ignore all the exploitation of workers and public infastructure/resources we can say they earned their money.
The exception that proves the rule.
That’s not what that means.
I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with any usage of that phrase, correct or incorrect. People just use it to dismiss counter-evidence to their pet theories.
Why would you disagree with correct usage?
Because she is simply an “exception.” Use of the phrase would require there to be a general understanding that “billionaires are bad except when…”, but the prevailing notion is simply that “billionaires are bad.” Therefore, she is an “exception”, and a good one at that, not an “exception that proves the rule”.
edit Oops, replied to the wrong one, but leaving this here because I’m lazy. I am the rule.
I’m not sure what the tone/intention was here but I’ll take it as a normal question. I disagree because I think people use it as an easy way to improperly dismiss evidence that disagrees with their views, even when they use it correctly in a sentence.
Can you provide an example of correct usage that does this?
Iirc, the word “prove” in this context is the archaic definition “test” e.g. the proving ground. This would imply the original meaning of the phrase is in fact the opposite of how it is normally used today: "the exception proves the rule "means ‘an exception tests [whether or not it is] a rule.’ As you say, people now use it in this strange fashion where the existence of counter evidence somehow proves the point
Ooh that’s interesting
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She’s strategically working on no longer being a billionaire.
And we could do the same without the billionaires. Since they don’t create value, we can skip the part where the money goes to them, and directly support our communities. Eliminate billionaires as a drain on our society.
I see both sides of this. I agree with you in principle, but practically the US can’t get its shit together. Would you trust the government with an influx of cash? They’d probably turn it into weapons.
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The thing I like most about what she is doing unlike other billionaire philanthropists is that her money is given with no strings attached.
Sure, it’s great, but I’d rather them not have to beg for it and instead take the money they’re leaching from society by force. They should just be forced to give that money in taxes, not have the schools beg for scraps.
This is the answer. Philanthropy is great and all. But how awesome would it be if philanthropy wasn’t needed. And who tends to make philanthropy necessary? The wealthy and billionaires taking far more than their share.
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Whilst commendable, that is not the job of billionaires.
Other countries have free access to adult education. Some are even paid to attend
Sadly, I suspect some assholes will be along any moment to tell us all about how evil she is and how she’s infecting kids with 5g or some such.
Billionaire philanthropy is undemocratic and governments just need to tax better and put that GDP towards things we prioritize together as nations
But where will we get the classic “Billionaire saves orphans from orphan crushing machine” that never follows up on who built the orphan crushing machine?
Instead we’d just get the classic news headline “Imagine the worst person you can, we found that guy and he’s getting free money from the government welfare program” Which I would add barely happens to most CEOs and billionaires today (they do own most the press, after all)
She’s quite literally the opposite of those evil billionaires. She’s a shining example that should be praised and used as a model.
“But billionnaire bad cause has the money!” is how people typically respond. I don’t even think being able to get billions is bad. The number itself is whatever. Actions are what’s important. A handful of the whatever-naires aren’t steaming piles of ass, so we should support them.
I don’t even think being able to get billions is bad
Translates to
I don’t think exploiting those who work for me is bad
Everyone wants fix now! Fixes take time and resources. Often a number of small changes that work towards a larger, positive outcome. The issue I often see, if it is an issue and not my own blindness, is how so many people see the bricks and not the wall. A tremendous number of people can identify single, needed changes. Many more cannot link those changes to the necessary effort and other necessary changes that need to be made to get there. I’m certainly not smart enough to connect all the threads either. I do know, however, that alienating potential allies is a mistake. We have to work within the means that exist today, not within a dream of what we wish for tomorrow. Move towards that dream, just don’t exist within it hoping for better without accepting the resources we can use now.
Every billionaire’s priority should be to not be a billionaire anymore. She’s doing a great job so far both trying to get to that goal and being an example of what we should expect from these people.
As a side note it should not even be up to them. Billionaires should be taxed enough that it’s not possible to be a billionaire but in the absence of an effective government I’m glad she’s doing this instead.
Billionaires should be taxed enough that it’s not possible to be a billionaire
Disagree. I’m happy for billionaires to be taxed at 80% effective or higher.
100% inheritance tax on billionaires though.
Cool. Please explain how it’s possible for someone to work hard enough to deserve 1000 years worth of earning 1 million dollars a year. That’s 1 billion dollars. No one deserves that kind of money. Period. If you work hard and are very talented you should earn more than others. Fine. A billion dollars though? Not possible to work that hard or be that talented.
Cool. Please explain how it’s possible for someone to work hard enough to deserve 1000 years worth of earning 1 million dollars a year.
Invent something that 1bn people will pay. $1 for.
No one deserves that kind of money.
What is immoral about numbers greater than 10**9 specifically? Plenty of houses in Japan cost more than 1bn JPY.
Not possible to work that hard or be that talented.
Millions of Taylor Swift fans disagree with you.
HOWEVER
My initial statement was based around economics. Billionaires are very mobile and can live almost anywhere in the world. Would we prefer to tax 80% of 100 Billionaires or 100% of zero Billionaires?
She needs to deposit 10k only my bank account. That’ll take care of my rent for 6 months.
It’s crazy how little it would take to change all our lives.
Mere 2k would put me so far ahead, it’s basically 2 years worth of saving.
And then you try to comprehend what a billion is like and it’s intangible. A million we can imagine, it’s a fancy ass house. But a billion? I simply can’t imagine how much money that is.
ya know the difference between a billion and a million?
About a billion.
20 fancy ass houses in every single state in the USA. I’d never thought of it that way until now and that’s obscene.
A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 32 years.
Coffee break, vacation, career, two thirds of the time humans have been around: thousand, million, billion, trillion
(Roughly)
She needs to be my sugar mommy. That will take care of my whole life.
I’ll take that, too
Welcome to the family
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What
She’s into furries? Lol
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Always open your mind to other’s situations. You probably don’t have 4 roommates, but they might. 😉
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Never again.
A lovely human being. She made the right life choices.
Bless
Did you just cast a spell?
Holy moly everyone get to the AOE!
Ok there’s probably a negligible chance you’ll get the reference of “Temp at bank 5 min”
But this was a thing in Everquest. High level spellcasters would hang out, afk while they did other things, but cast high level AoE spells for others’ benefit (and the occasional donation). The most popular was Temperence, which was a buff that lasted hours, raising your HP significantly. It was a static amount, meaning a level 1 would gain a HUGE amount of HP. And since that game was so difficult/unforgiving, it was practically necessary if you didn’t want to fight enemies below your level.
“Train to zone!!”
SoW!
Trump:hi it’s me your non profit
Leave this person to get it on with this.
There’s no such thing as a philanthropist. She didnt make billions of dollars doing good deeds.
Would you consider divorcing Bezos a good deed?..
For the record, I would. Also, what she is doing is great. Regardless of what you and I think about it.
There’s no such thing as a philanthropist
Either this is a wild take, or you accidentally a word there
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You guys know what a tax writeoff is, right? She still loses all of that money. If you’re not donating to “charities” that are really just fronts for your personal interests, there’s not really any monetary incentive to do this.
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Uh… yes.
It appears so on this occasion. She’s made giving her money away a full-time job. Not like she’s ever going to live uncomfortably, but it’s pretty much a positive.
She has currently donated over $15 billion since the divorce (started with $38 billion in amazon shares, now is worth about $40 billion despite stock price doubling in the 5 years since then), none of it with strings attached or being future promises like most billionaires. She doesn’t need tax cuts since she just gets taxed on what she actually spends from capital gains tax (or whatever, I’m not an accountant), she doesn’t stay in media spotlights except for when her donations go out, her donation org website does semi-yearly updates so its not trying to be a source of info or drama, etc.
She hasn’t lost money because she amazon stock price keeps going up, she’s just not gaining as much as she could be if she hoarded her wealth, but she knows she has more money than she could ever hope to or want to spend in her lifetime, her kids lifetimes, or however many generations $40 billion can support even assuming the amazon stock prices get tanked (very unlikely).
She just is a good human being with a good heart. It’s rare that people like that have this kind of money to give away for purely charitable reasons, but here we are
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She’s a philanthropist. A genuinely good person who wants the world to be a better place.
This may shock you but… Bill Gates is also a philanthropist.
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Ehh. Even if he is, his choice of charities and other beneficiaries are sometimes questionable. His push for charter schools being a great example. My dislike of billionare philanthropy stems from the fact that it can often subvert democratic interests in favor of one individual’s personal vision and myopic views.
She’s one of the few who actually put the “billionaires should be free to donate how they choose!” thing up in good faith, it seems. I’ll reserve some skepticism, but as far as the mega wealthy go, she seems to actually be doing okay.
