• Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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    2 hours ago

    she also refused to be named on any buildings after her, its only way to know you are genuine. unlike zuckerberg who donated to SFGH, TO name it after himself.

  • sonofearth@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    What are you even going to do with a billion dollars? I can’t even think of what I will do with a million dollars other than buying a comfy home for my family instead of living in a small congested apartment.

    • Annoyed_🦀 @lemmy.zip
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      11 minutes ago

      Actually a billion is very hard to spend if the rule is for personal use. You can do it by buying super yacht or private jet but other than that, there’s nothing much you can do with that amount of money if you’re a decent person.

      But for altruism purpose, i can think of many, many stuff.

    • Mistic@lemmy.world
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      31 minutes ago

      Well, it’s not money, it’s assets.

      If you have a house, car, etc, that collectively cost 1mil, you’re worth 1mil.

      What you could do with the extra money you have is putting it into assets that generate cash flow. Stocks, bonds, indexes, businesses. If you can manage it well enough, it could secure you a lifestyle where you can ditch your job without being strapped for cash.

      That’s basically what the rich do, except on a MUCH larger scale, where the cash flow generated is enough literally throw money around.

    • starchylemming@lemmy.world
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      45 minutes ago

      come on, you can think of something .

      you could create a whole humanitarian organisation. have well funded teams dedicated to improving the communities of your choice

      a million just gets you a cozy home in a decent neighbourhood. Now you pooped out all your funds and need more to cover maintenance

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      2 hours ago

      he married a reptile queen to, he married a plastic doll that likely wont challenge or sue him like mackenzie woud. and his networth is like 300bn right now. up from 70bn before the pandemic.

  • nonentity@sh.itjust.works
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    5 hours ago

    Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.

    Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.

  • protist@retrofed.com
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    6 hours ago

    MacKenzie Scott actually helped found Amazon, she married Bezos before Amazon even existed and literally worked on it with him from the very beginning. The whole idea that she married into wealth or “got it from the divorce” reeks of sexism.

    She’s also rapidly giving away her money with no strings attached, and she’s supporting underserved communities all over the US. The HBCU in my city got a massive grant from her that’s totally transformed what it will be capable of, for example. I just don’t get why you’re choosing this person to rag on out of all the truly vile billionaires out there

    • SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      4 hours ago

      I don’t see it as ragging on her. I think she is being used as an example as she has given away more in proportion to her total wealth than most other billionaires yet is now worth more than ever. The point I believe this meme is making is billionaires will still continue to be obscenely rich even if they are heavily taxed.

      • smeenz@lemmy.nz
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        3 hours ago

        I see it as pointing out that even after giving away around 2/3rds of her wealth, the remaining third managed to generate more than what was given away.

        In other words, an example of the axiom that you need money in order to make money, and if you have an obscene amount like $10 billion , it can double itself easily without any real effort on your part required

    • Bamboodpanda@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      I respect her contributions and philanthropy. I just don’t think essential social support should depend on the generosity of billionaires instead of stable public systems.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      5 hours ago

      No human needs a billion dollars. It’s an utterly obscene amount of money and just because you give away $26 billion does not mean that the remaining 10 billion is an acceptable amount to keep.

      • osanna@lemmy.vg
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        3 hours ago

        A million seconds is 11 days or so. A billion seconds is 31 YEARS.

        just to put it in perspective of how big a billion truly is

  • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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    10 hours ago

    Such a small fraction of their net worth would change my life that it’s equivalent to pennies you might find in your sofa. Like not even millions or hundreds of thousands, but a thousand. A thousand would be life changing to me right now, and that’s .0001 of their worth.

    Just LOOK.

    Nobody should have that kind of money. Slay the dragons.

    • Lemmayng@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      Every fact I scrolled past and read on that made me more depressed while slowly raising my blood pressure.

      Throw the rich in a ditch.

      • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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        7 hours ago

        It gets annoying and boring to scroll. But that’s the whole point. Keep scrolling and it gets so much worse.

  • AFK BRB Chocolate (CA version)@lemmy.ca
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    11 hours ago

    People have a hard time conceptualizing really big numbers, and a billion is a really big number. If you put $1B into a fixed rate investment earning 5% annually, you’d be getting $50M a year just from that. Most investments in the market do much better than that. So if she kept just (just!) $10B of what she got, she could easily be getting back well over $500M without doing anything at all. Every year, forever. If she doesn’t spend or give away that much, then what she gets back grows.

    • BigBenis@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      If you had $500k, you could buy an average house in my area. If you had $1M, you could buy two. If you had $1B, you could buy 2000 i.e. the entire neighborhood.

    • kboos1@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      What about having $1bil and giving away $1mil is like having $1k and giving away a $1.

        • Ulvain@sh.itjust.works
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          9 hours ago

          Except that the 1$ i give. I can imagine using it, just like i can imagine using the other 999$.

          Billionaires have more money than they can imagine using, it’s completely insane

            • vairse@lemmy.world
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              4 hours ago

              Musk literally did that when he bought Twitter though, and is still in n trajectory to being the first trillionaire. At the level of billionaires, it no longer matters what you do, everything generates money and doesn’t actually use your assets anymore

            • Lemmayng@lemmy.world
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              8 hours ago

              Then they’d have even MORE money they couldn’t imagine using, and then they’ll buy more companies, IPs and other shit that will give them even more money they couldn’t imagine using and then they’d ha-DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM HERE?!

    • Lupus108@sh.itjust.works
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      10 hours ago

      To imagine the huge difference between a billion and a million I always liked the example - a million seconds is roughly 11.7 days, a billion seconds is around 31.7 YEARS.

      • Ulvain@sh.itjust.works
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        9 hours ago

        I prefer the “having 10,000$ is one step on the stairs” image.

        Most people will never be on the first step, apart from people in industrialized countries and even then, not everyone.

        A millionaire will be about 100 steps up, or about 4 floors. Ah ha! Look at you all small down there from my 4th floor vantage point!

        Then a billionaire, in that same analogy, is 100,000 steps up, or 11 miles, somewhere in the fucking stratosphere. Think they can see the difference between you and the millionaire from up there?

        Musk, at 680,000,000,000$? He’s passed the fucking ISS, 750 miles from the Earth, basically wealth stops having any kind of meaning or human scale.

      • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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        9 hours ago

        “You need to “earn” 1300 dollar per hour from the moment of birth to almost be a billionaire at 30 years old” - another way to perceive it.

        You need to “earn” 317.10 dollar per second ($1.14 million per hour) around the clock to become a trillionaire at 100 years old.

        • Black616Angel@discuss.tchncs.de
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          3 hours ago

          Okay, it’s early where I am, but 1300*24(hours)*365,25(days/year)*30(years) is not a billion. It’s 341.874.000, so barely a third of the way. You need to ‘earn’ roughly 3803$ per hour to be over a billion in 30 years.

    • radiofreebc@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      I always say to people “how long is one million seconds?”

      The answer is 11.5 days.

      Then i say “how long is a billion seconds?”

      The answer is 31.7 YEARS.

      Nobody needs to be a billionaire.

      • 14th_cylon@lemmy.zip
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        10 hours ago

        i see this lame poem parroted all over the internet for the last few years and i am still baffled with why it should convey the message better than “it is 1000 times more”. people are really not good at counting in 365-base number system. if anything, it obfuscates the situation.

        • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          I always phrase it like this:

          A thousand seconds is a coffee break, a million is a vacation, a billion is a career and a trillion is over three hundred centuries.

          • 14th_cylon@lemmy.zip
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            4 hours ago

            really. well i am not really having casual conversations with people involving conversion of multiples of ten to random units. but i guess americans will really do anything to avoid metric system 😂 🤷‍♂️

            • arrow74@lemmy.zip
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              1 hour ago

              really. well i am not really having casual conversations with people involving conversion of multiples of ten to random units

              Except you do so, twice

            • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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              4 hours ago

              You should try talking about wealth inequality with strangers more. Maybe we’ll get somewhere.

              • 14th_cylon@lemmy.zip
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                4 hours ago

                you missed the point by thiiii … … … … … … … … … … … … … iiis much.

                • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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                  4 hours ago

                  Nah, I was ignoring you being rude and staying focused on my point. We all need to do that if we want to get anything done about wealth inequality.

        • Obituarykidney@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          If you asked me on the spot how many years 1000 times 11 days was, I could not tell you.

          Also, how many times in my life have I needed to count in a 365 base? What the fuck else uses a 365 base? Not every year is 365 days anyways.

          Your comment is stupid and you should feel ashamed.

          • 14th_cylon@lemmy.zip
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            5 hours ago

            If you asked me on the spot how many years 1000 times 11 days was, I could not tell you. Also, how many times in my life have I needed to count in a 365 base? What the fuck else uses a 365 base?

            right? which is exactly my point. you are arguing in my favor and don’t even know it, which is hilarious.

            just because you don’t understand something doesn’t make it stupid. maybe the stupidity is on the side of the recipient. i will leave up to you whether you want to feel ashamed 😂.

    • Brokkr@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      Another way to think about this, if she invested the $10B as you said, she could spend $1M every DAY forever and still have about $130 left over each year.

      How much would you need to spend in a day to have a very comfy life? I could maybe think of a way to spend 10k, I would struggle to spend 100k in a day. I have no idea how to spend 10x that much EVERY DAY.

    • 14th_cylon@lemmy.zip
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      10 hours ago

      Every year, forever.

      every year, forever, and if she is lucky, it might even be slightly more than inflation… 😂

  • user_name@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    And she’s actively trying to give it all away and she’s doing it faster than other “philanthropists.” She didn’t start a foundation which will hoard most of it and give a tiny (legal minimum) away each year but is instead makimg direct gifts. She also isn’t giving small gifts to small organizations to help them grow, she’s making big gifts to big orgs that can handle the money.

    And despite all of this is continues to grow too rapidly.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      2 hours ago

      most of them use it to launder money/hiding thier taxes anyways. GATES is a likely example, he was only doing ti to deflect attention away from being involved with epstein. I knew there was wierd vibes coming from him. he did an AMA a while back about his charity, they dint allow money launder/tax avoidance to be discussed.

    • kboos1@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      Can she give me a small gift? Really anything more than what I have now would be nice but $1mil would be really cool?

  • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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    10 hours ago

    There are no ethical billionaires.

    Can’t remember his name (which was his point), but there was one who donated all but 1 million to causes, and left in his will that everything should be donated. All anonymously. He said nobody needs more than a million, and didn’t want to be named in things.

    He was the only one who seemed to get it, and I can’t remember his name, which seemed to be what he wanted. All the rest are snakes.

      • osanna@lemmy.vg
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        3 hours ago

        Though he was never uber wealthy (because he chose not to be) but the woz donates his meagre wealth to schools and museums. He could have been Elon musk wealthy but he chose not to.

  • ceenote@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    But if we taxed her more she might lose her motivation to make shitloads of money in divorces.

  • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    Seize their fucking money. She isn’t trying hard enough. Give it to me I make it all gone in a week. Fuck anyone trying to apologize for her our make excuses. We have children straving and homeless that she could end in a day. Fuck that cunt no better then her ex.

    • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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      3 hours ago

      I mean this money isn’t literal money; it’s assets and shit. As shown by Elon Musk’s Twitter fiasco, that kind of “money” can’t be converted into liquidity on a moment’s notice. The assumption that giving away all one’s wealth immediately leads to maximum good is also not true, because the whole point of capital is that it grows. In Mackenzie’s example she could donate six billion right now and end up right where she started (ignoring inflation, which we probably shouldn’t). That means that, hypothetically, she could donate 36 billion dollars every seven years, or about 5 billion dollars per year, forever. That’s 50 billion per decade, and there are many decades in a human lifetime. You count how many homeless children that is. Capitalism is an unethical system, but there’s merit to participating in an unethical system where one is given power if they can do more good with their presence than with their absence. It’s basically the same logic as a regional bureaucrat with a conscience in a dictatorship. For fun I tried to calculate how much money adjusted for inflation you could give out starting from 36 billion dollars over a human lifetime, assuming all remainder gets given away on death and that the giver is going to die exactly forty years later. Here’s the result: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/ysyzv7ur1m (x axis in years, y axis in billions of dollars). Here you have four donation schemes, in order from the top, with growth rate 11% and inflation 4.5%:

      1. Give away 5.14 billion (approx. 36/6) at the end of each year, give away remaining principal after 40 years.
      2. Give away all 36 billion immediately.
      3. Give away exactly what one gains, adjusted for inflation, without touching the principal (in this case 2.25 billion in 2026 dollars), give away principal after 40 years.
      4. Let principal grow, give away all at once after 40 years (you’ll have to zoom out for this one).

      Of course saving a starving kid now is better than saving a starving kid now so these numbers shouldn’t be taken at face value, but you get the idea. Money is power, and there are better things to do with power than immediately give it away.