when the rich say 'ill give 95% of my billion away over my lifetime' explained

[Lucius]

We can have different perspectives on things and I am open to contrary views, but I do not think the rich are villains simply for owning more wealth, or that they would have a sad life cause they are richer than majority of the world population.
I do not also think they have a responsibility to the world due to how much wealth they have amassed.

Of course we can have different opinions and I respect everyone's right to express their opinion. However, I look at things in a much wider context and I do not want to accept the image created about someone by the mainstream media, which in some cases is financed by the same rich people who present themselves as people who make the world a better place.

I personally would wake up very ashamed every morning if I knew that my wealth was largely the result of exploiting children and slave labor, but for the world's richest people, this is obviously not a problem.


Source

Wealthy people do not actually own billions of liquid cash. For the most part their wealth is stored up in stocks of businesses they own and have built from the ground up. I will not expect them to crumble their businesses and give it up to charity while surviving on what they have left (which is enough to survive on). Weirdly, if we took out a couple of billionaires along with their networths, the life of the majority of the population will remain the same.

It's not something I didn't know, the rich always want more, and to achieve that they have to invest part of their earnings and it's logical that they don't keep all those billions in cash or in banks. But then the question arises as to why one should find justification for the fact that someone has tens or hundreds of billions that they do not really need, while on the other hand, half of the people in the world today cannot provide enough food on their table.

The politicians are 100% to blame for the half of humanity that are starving; they make stupid policies, start silly wars and only exist for more control, but somehow entrepreneurs he laddened with the blame.

The same politicians whose pockets are filled by these entrepreneurs? It's no secret who the biggest donors to politicians are, and it's also no secret how those same politicians return the favor when they come to power. Politicians are just pawns, someone else makes the moves, and we know that the one with the most money has the most power.

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[Upgrade00]

However, I look at things in a much wider context and I do not want to accept the image created about someone by the mainstream media, which in some cases is financed by the same rich people who present themselves as people who make the world a better place.

You don't have to accept that image and also don't have to create another that they make the world worse.

I personally would wake up very ashamed every morning if I knew that my wealth was largely the result of exploiting children and slave labor, but for the world's richest people, this is obviously not a problem.

Not all businesses are tied to child labor.
The businesses which are tied to it still has thousands of customers, who finance the business but do not consider themselves to be part of the problem. People buy the jewelleries, the devices etc, but will take the moral high ground because, "I wasn't involved in the chain of supply".

It's not something I didn't know, the rich always want more, and to achieve that they have to invest part of their earnings and it's logical that they don't keep all those billions in cash or in banks. But then the question arises as to why one should find justification for the fact that someone has tens or hundreds of billions that they do not really need, while on the other hand, half of the people in the world today cannot provide enough food on their table.

The rich are not taking money off the table of the half of the world population by building their businesses. Many of them when starting out never even expected their companies to get as large as they did, but they do get emotionally attached to it and cannot be expected to halt it's growth cause they are getting to rich.

If I for example invested in Bitcoin when it was not worth even a dollar and held on for it to be worth billions, should I be ashamed cause more than half of the world cannot access safe water but I have billions?

The same politicians whose pockets are filled by these entrepreneurs? It's no secret who the biggest donors to politicians are, and it's also no secret how those same politicians return the favor when they come to power. Politicians are just pawns, someone else makes the moves, and we know that the one with the most money has the most power.

But we vote the politicians in and not the elite, so who should we hold accountable?

[franky1]

its not about any rich person needing to help others..

its about the ones that say they will help others using 95% of wealth.. but the results dont match the sales pitch/promise/pledge

separate subject

The same politicians whose pockets are filled by these entrepreneurs? It's no secret who the biggest donors to politicians are, and it's also no secret how those same politicians return the favor when they come to power. Politicians are just pawns, someone else makes the moves, and we know that the one with the most money has the most power.

But we vote the politicians in and not the elite, so who should we hold accountable?

when there are millions of people leaning towards one political position.. who is chosen as the local and national representatives is not done by the public.. there is alot of internal posturing and garnering donations and sucking up to win favour within the close doors of political party meetings

yes the public then vote on who sounds better of those chosen representatives to then decide which party should be elected based on the parties representatives/spokesman.. but there is much more going on behind te scenes of who got chosen as representative/spokesman for the party

and dont get me started on gerrymandering and also community/social media pandering that swings votes

[Sithara007]

This is how it works:

A rich person is having assets worth $50 billion. Out of that, he announces that he is "donating" $40 billion for charity (any resemblance to criminals such as Bill Gates is purely unintentional). Now he forms a "charity trust" with him and other relatives as the board members. $40 billion worth of cash and other assets such as stocks and bonds are moved to a bank account earmarked for this charity. Any income in the form of interest payments or dividends are tax-free, as the account is owned by the charitable trust.

Now comes the irony. Instead of purchasing luxury houses and yachts from his own account, the billionaire will just purchase them using the charitable trust. Instead of bribing politicians openly with his own money, he will do so with the bank account owned by the trust, in the form of "speaking charges". On top of that, he will write down a few million USD every month for himself in the form of salary.

[franky1]

This is how it works:

A rich person is having assets worth $50 billion. Out of that, he announces that he is "donating" $40 billion for charity (any resemblance to criminals such as Bill Gates is purely unintentional). Now he forms a "charity trust" with him and other relatives as the board members. $40 billion worth of cash and other assets such as stocks and bonds are moved to a bank account earmarked for this charity. Any income in the form of interest payments or dividends are tax-free, as the account is owned by the charitable trust.

Now comes the irony. Instead of purchasing luxury houses and yachts from his own account, the billionaire will just purchase them using the charitable trust. Instead of bribing politicians openly with his own money, he will do so with the bank account owned by the trust, in the form of "speaking charges". On top of that, he will write down a few million USD every month for himself in the form of salary.

salary Pfft
the richguy can put (instead of $40b in one go..) $2B a year for 20 years
the trust can sell upto $2b/yr of asset and invest in-kind in a 'loan facility'. thus no capgain... and give a'personal' loan to himself from trust to personal. so rich guy receives a loan (tax free money) and as a repayment(to himself as trust) puts another $2b into trust. to cancel loan. which again is no gain for trust

[dezoel]

Does anyone around them see the changes caused by the fact that the richest people in the world give money to charity? I just see that ordinary people have less and less, and that those who call themselves philanthropists have more and more - and naive people admire them because they throw crumbs from their table. I can't call it anything other than calming their conscience, because deep down they know that all the wealth they have accumulated has denied many people a normal life.

If someone has $200 billion (regardless of how he earned it), why do millions of people admire him, and at the same time struggle to survive from month to month? If that person wants to be a great man, let him distribute 90% of his wealth to the poor and make a difference in the world, and he will still be an extremely rich man.

One would never do that, they don't care that much, no matter how good they preach they are or how much money they give to charity or whatever humanitarian work they do around the world when it comes to distributing a very large percentage of their total wealth, they wouldn't be ready to do that even if that percentage wouldn't make them become poor or something but they will lose their status which to them is the most important thing, in my opinion.

Take Elon Musk as an example. He is currently the richest person on the face of the earth with a net worth of $246.4B according to Forbes, now if he decides to give away about $50B worth of his assets, someone else will take that position and he probably wouldn't want that to happen.

[Peanutswar]

Rich people already experience being rich that can afford everything without looking at the price, all of the expensive things they can now really afford they continuously making an investment and of course in a good return for all of their hard work giving a small amount to the people of the community as help them in a good way but again not all the rich people will do the same thing some of them still want to make a dominance into this world which have their own power and do what they want that's the power of money. This kind of privilege is quite risky too they can use those power to help or to manipulate.