In Northern Ireland he supported “mixed” (i.e., Catholic and Protestant) child education. In 1991, he gave £8m to the Integrated Education Fund,[20] a grant-making charitable body which aims “to make integration, not separation, the norm in our education system”.[21] Queens University Belfast also received grants of more than £100m,[20] for capital projects, child education and medical research.[22]
More controversially, Feeney gave substantial personal donations to Sinn Féin, a left-wing Irish nationalist party that has been historically associated with the IRA.[14] Following the IRA ceasefire in 1994, he funded the party’s office in Washington D.C.[20]
Feeney supported the modernization of public-health structures in Vietnam,[18] AIDS clinics in South Africa, Operation Smile’s free surgeries for children with cleft lips and palates, earthquake relief in Haiti, and the UCSF Medical Center at the University of California at San Francisco.[8]
Jim Dwyer wrote in The New York Times that none of the one thousand buildings on five continents that were built with Feeney’s gifts of $2.7 billion bear his name.[1]
On September 14, 2020, Feeney closed down the Atlantic Philanthropies after the non-profit accomplished its mission of giving away all of its money by 2020.[25]
Immensely based
We found him
The good billionaire
Millionaire*
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Yeah supporting IRA (sympatizers) is based /s
Surprised you are .world and not .ml Remember its not either this or that, A or B, you can be against killing without calling it based.
Yeah supporting IRA (sympatizers) is based /s
Supporting Sinn Fein is absolutely based, I love a good DemSoc party. As for the IRA, Republican paramilitaries were the least civilian-murder-happy of the sides in the Troubles, so while I wouldn’t express support for them, I’m also not going to automatically reach for condemnation for a paramilitary group that began in legitimate oppression and ended with good-faith peace negotiations.
The troubles sucked and people shouldnt be divided like that, hope we can agree on that.
There’s one group responsible for the division, and it ain’t the irish.
While I honestly believe nobody can get that kind of money ethically, the fact that he actually put his money where his mouth was on philanthropy whike still alive, and almost all anonymously, is very admirable
You would not know who Chuck Feeney is, but you know the business he set up: Duty Free. He made billions during the golden age of air travel. I think you could become rich ethically by setting shops in places where millions of people run across 24/7.
Why do you think it’s ethical that he get so much of the profit instead of the people who made the goods he’s selling, or the people working in his shops?
Edit: hopefully that didn’t sound too rude
Yeah I mean his efforts to donate his wealth are admirable but he literally built his wealth off tax evasion systems
Exactly. If that money has been paid as tax, it might have done more good. He didn’t want people to decide democratically how to spend the money; he wanted to control it himself.
The article and author is very layman shall we say, and has obvious libertarian bias, but it has a point:
According to Forbes, this nefarious tycoon “has aggressively tried to avoid taxes at every stage in his career– from setting up his early business in Liechtenstein, incorporating his holding company in Bermuda. . .”
Feeney transferred his business interests to his charitable organization in 1984. And for the last 30+ years he’s given away nearly $ 8 BILLION through the foundation.
While the US government has been using your tax dollars to bomb children’s hospitals by remote control, Feeney has been building them.
He has endowed entire universities, funded cancer research, invested hundreds of millions in AIDS benefit to Africa, built a $ 300 million medical center in California, and developed a new technology hub on New York City’s Roosevelt Island.
These aren’t the actions of a narcissistic robber baron.
Th**e entire concept of taxation is grounded in the idea that some politician knows how to spend money better than you do. ** But Feeney opted for a different path: taking completely LEGAL steps to stay in control of his savings and make a huge difference in people’s lives.
I’m not trying to fanboy Chuck Feeney. If it had been proven that he was very exploitative of human lives and dignity to amass billions, I will change my opinion of him. However, the results speak for itself.
I would also add that the article has a point about it. In my home country, there is tax for citizens leaving the country. I was appalled not because I will lose money, but I know that my taxes will go to the then president and his family’s fortune who unabashedly orders extrajudicial killing.
Reasonable point. I shall cogitate on that.
A lot of goods sold in Duty Free shops probably would have been manufactured in North America and Europe at that time, which has good labour standards. So, there isn’t much of a concern for exploitation of sweat shops in third world countries, and most of those countries at the time have too much instability to attract foreign direct investments.
If there’s enough profit to turn the CEO into a billionaire, there’s also enough profit to pay the workers more. Certainly, as you’ve said, things could be worse and there’s plenty of bad examples, these workers were still being underpaid relative to the value they produced
I knew this line will come up.
Look, I abhor billionaires who exploit workers and people (I don’t condone the murder of the UnitedHealth CEO but i understand), but is there evidence that Chuck Feeney underpaid his staff? So far, I hear nothing. I will change my opinion when I hear good evidence against him.
But here is the more important question, do cashiers or cleaners deserve director level salary? All people deserve to earn decent wage to keep food and roof over their heads, but all this rhetoric about increasing wages because the owner is billionaire is ridiculous. Up to what level should cleaners, security guards, farmhands or labourers should be paid? Leadership roles are also administrative in nature which requires a lot of effort than most people realise. You have to organise, manage people and logistics, do meetings, conduct finances, problem-solving, do legal work, ensure compliance, and if you have a family that is already another work on its own, etc. Having done various jobs in my career, I would argue that administrative roles are harder than manual labour. This is not to diminish the importance of blue collar and labour workers, but the human brain alone consumes 20% of energy that an individual takes from food. A lot of mental work will get someone tired easily in just two hours at least. That is why college-educated folks are paid more because of the intellect required for the job. Again, this is not to undermine the role of blue collar workers, but being operator or a janitor doesn’t require as much work. I know because I have worked as blue collar and labourer. I certainly don’t expect to be paid a lot for those jobs. The pay among the low, middle and high earners should be proportional, which is why it’s important to look at the ratio of CEO pay versus the lowest
Duty Free is a private company, so the owner decides how much of the profit goes to paying the workers more. But if a person wants more equal pay regardless, there are co-operatives to work in. Everyone basically gets equal income in co-ops. I’m a supporter of co-ops but I am aware of its limitations. It may be democratically run with one vote per one person, but co-ops are known to always elect increasing their wages which could affect the net earnings and may not be able to cover the operating costs.
the fact that he actually put his money where his mouth was on philanthropy
Even setting aside the question of where the money came from, the theory behind philanthropy is fundamentally anti-democratic. The philanthropist establishes an untaxable trust and personally appoints a board of cronies to allocate limited resources based on an inaccessible group’s whims.
I could go into the numerous failures and crimes of private non-profits - the Bill & Melinda Gates campaign to sterilize Africans in a nakedly racist effort to curb population growth, the Longtermist tech industry campaign to invest billions into generative AI in pursuit of a god-like superintelligence, the Catholic Church’s enslavement and abuse of young people in their network of church run orphanages from Ireland to Guatamala to Thailand. But the bottom line is that using your economic position to play Sim City with other people’s neighborhoods and livelihoods isn’t charitable in any meaningful sense of the term. Its mega-maniacal. The utopian visions of the philanthropy’s founder don’t change that, even if your organization doesn’t end up going the way of the philanthropy shaped Ponzi Scheme like Foundation for New Era Philanthropy or St. Jude Hospital’s horded endowments
Every super rich person who has this mindset should rigorously advocate fair taxation of their peers that is the only chances for a non revolutionary change.
Yes, it is nice that billionaires give away their money, it would be nicer if the people could choose how that money was spent instead of the billionaires.
Not only that, but it’s good for one person to donate their excessive wealth, but it’d be great if the other 2700 of them had to relinquish some of it.
To be fair if some ultra rich wanted their money be used efficiently for good they sure as hell wouldn’t want them to be taxed.
The good billionaire… eventually? How many people never become billionaires in the first place because accumulating all that wealth in the first place is bad. Unless you have a billion in inheritance in one go or something.
If you’re wealth is in stock that have voting rights and you founded the company, getting rid of the stock is risky as it reduces your control over the company. In that case, if you sell you stock to lower your wealth, a bad faith actor could come in and depose you. If you’re a “good millionaire” then this could then have the effect of lowering your charitable giving potential.
Stocks are essentially people putting bets on you and your company. Most billionaires don’t just become billionaires by themselves…the public anoints them.
And I think the public should be able to rescind that if the person does more public harm than good.
Yeah, great points.
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If it was anonymous how do we know it was him?
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Imagine getting sued and being forced to show in court what a badass you are.
The ultimate incidental origin story
I would assume all donations would have to be reported to the IRS as well. You can’t get a tax break on donations if they aren’t filed. So they should know how much every citizen is donating unless they are being taxed and not reporting that, which is fine by me, but bad business on their end.
He had a guy fawkes mask
It still would have been better if workers got the money in the first place. There are no good billionaires.
yeah this is like saying Elon Musk is a “good billionaire” because all his money is just stock and he doesn’t own any lavish mansions or whatever.
Your real thoughts are leaking there. “No, don’t give the money to the starving and homeless that need it most! You are supposed to give it to us!”
My real thoughts are that we should get rid of the elites who prop up the current system so that homelessness doesn’t have to exist anymore. Don’t put words into my mouth.
If your goal was to end homelessness and other societal woes, you would not say that a billionaire working to do the exact same thing using different means is not good. That is why I wrote you exposed your true motivations ;)
We are talking about systemic issues here. The capitalist class as a whole benefits from homelessness being extremely widespread as a way to put pressure on everyone else. One “good” billionaire won’t change anything. We have to put an end to the entire class. The world can only become a just place when former billionaires are limited to levels of economic and political power comparable to everyone else.
No, you claimed
It still would have been better if workers got the money in the first place. There are no good billionaires.
Claiming this specific billionaire is not good either. Now you are trying to switch the topic to a systemic issue when your self-serving claim was called out.
Are you really gonna be pedantic about me using the word “good” one time? With fucking quotes to denote how i’m practically spitting it out…
You are a living meme, and I mean that in the worst possible connotation. You are the personification of a Reddit argument. The president of the Ben Shapiro debate club. I am so done with this…
Are you really gonna be pedantic about me using the word “good” one time?
The title of the post is “The only good billionaire”. You seriously expect anyone to believe that was a slip of the tongue and not denial of the title?
You are a living meme, and I mean that in the worst possible connotation.
What do you expect? You guys are regurgitating quotes and theories with so many holes the Marvel movies are more believable. Of course the only reason I reply is to watch you rage, struggle to come up with excuses or desperately try to change the topic when I call out your nonsense. Bonus if it ever helps some lemming not to fall to this brain rot.
Want a genuine constructive good faith discussion? How about instead of regurgitating anticapitalist quotes, you post something worth discussing seriously. For example a plan for a fair system that does not fall apart as soon as some people act greedily and selfishly, like they always do. Or at least an outline of one, that we can work on to refine. Or you know, if you can’t come up with a whole new system, how to improve the current one.
Until then, you and lemmings like you are my comedic relief.
You are a dumb cunt.
You’re a guy who thinks not being rich makes you morally superior to a man who anonymously donated over 99.9% of his wealth to charity, likely helping millions of people. 🤣
people become billionaires through wage theft. that money should not be his to give in the first place. Plus, the starving are unemployed because the unemployment rate is artificially controlled economically in order to pressure the working class into accepting bad work conditions.
people become billionaires through wage theft.>
Ok Karl Marx.
people become billionaires through wage theft.
Quite the
assumptionassertion. Can I also justassumeassert bad things you did with no evidence? PS: I mean that he specifically became billionaires through wage theft. I am sure many others did.Plus, the starving are unemployed because the unemployment rate is artificially controlled economically in order to pressure the working class into accepting bad work conditions.
Which, even if it was true, he would be unable to change, just as the two of us are.
That’s established economic science. Billionaires cannot possibly create added value to account for their wealth, just as you or I cannot become billionaires at the sweat of our brow. These people end up billionaires for being at the giving end of an oppressive labor system, and often, of untaxed inheritance.
this is not established economics. It’s labor theory of value derived by Marx that was never fully accepted, and was thoroughly debunked like 80 years ago at the latest.
Maybe look up definition of wage theft first. The one most people use.
In addition:
Billionaires cannot possibly create added value to account for their wealth, just as you or I cannot become billionaires at the sweat of our brow.
- Value and create in this context is mostly subjective.
- Ever since internet and software became a thing, they can. It is absolutely possible for one person to create sw worth billions.
- Ever since internet and software became a thing, they can. It is absolutely possible for one person to create sw worth billions.
Name one thing that one person created that became worth billions. Something that is rightly credited to a single person.
Google is rightly credited to two people and valuable enough to make both billionaires.
World wide web is credited to a single person, idk if rightly. It is probably the most valuable piece of sw in history, despite being given away for free. Even if it was really made by a decently sized team, would be billions in value per person.
Quite the assumption.
Go learn what the term “assumption” means.
Huh, I misunderstood that word for quite a while. Fixed it now. Thanks.
You gonna pack some more words into his mouth or, you done?
Yeah, kinda pathetic.
Uuu, copium is strong here 🤣
You don’t meet the minimum requirements to troll me.
Starving people are the result of class divides.
Which is irrelevant when discussing the morality of a person who bridged that divide by giving his wealth away.
What makes you think the workers downstream from him are not among the starving and homeless?
What makes you think a system where workers are fairly compensated would not also be a better system for food/housing security?
I’m assuming this isn’t a dumb comment and just a fun thought exercise.
Or that people remain homeless because they know a job wont solve their homelessness.
What makes you think the workers downstream from him are not among the starving and homeless?
Because RoyaltyInTraining made that statement without referring to any additional information? So I obviously assume that he made his statement based on the information in the post.
Besides, even if they were, would donating the money be less effective than paying them in wages? Charitable donations are tax exempt, wages are not. Also, you assume he was in a position where he could do anything about the worker wages, which seems unlikely given how most companies work (wiki says he was not a full owner, just co-founder).
Warren Buffett and Bill Gates created The Giving Pledge, a legally binding agreement to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropy by death or through last will and testament. It currently has over 240 signatures from over 30 countries.
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This video explains the scam that Billionaires use:
Why There’s No Such Thing as a Good BillionaireSigning the pledge doesn’t duck you out of any taxes. Also, giv8ng money away can lower taxes you pay, but it doesn’t lower them as much as the amount of money you gave away. Not how it works.
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Then they didn’t actually give the money away, and they still aren’t saving or making more money themselves by doing that.
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If I sell a million dollars of stock and pay $400k in taxes, I have $600k. If I give away $1,000,000 in unrealized gains I get either nothing, or I can do a tax write off and maybe save like $200k in taxes. Either way I’ll have less than the $600k I would have had. At best it’s a workaround to give several other people working for the “charity” money, but at that point why not just put those people on my own payroll and give them the $600k?
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4 - High-end philanthropy is subsidized by regular taxpayers.
I feel like this is really under-appreciated. Like, Rich Dude decides he wants to donate $100M to…whatever - early childhood education. In the US, he avoids up to $37M taxes, which you can either look at as other taxpayers making $37M matching donation or $37M taken from other society objectives.
To the extent that government is a (marginally) publicly accountable system for funding a society’s competing goals - education, health, defense, research - charity allows the very wealthy not just to bypass the social structure for prioritizing goals, but to force other taxpayers to adopt their personal priorities. Maybe the goal is good, maybe it’s not - the point is that they’re completely unaccountable.
What makes high-end philanthropy different from low-end philanthropy? Don’t they both get the same tax cuts?
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They probably do not get the same tax cuts: a “normal” person, making a paltry $250,000/year only reduces taxes by 24% of their giving, where the ultra-rich get 37%.
But the real difference is scale. A million people each giving $100 to their favorite charity is going to distribute that money more-or-less according to the community’s overall priorities. One person giving $100M to their favorite charity has no connection to the broader community and social goals. They supercharge that one thing, which takes attention and resources from everything else.
“Can we have some of your billions?”
“Over my dead body”
- The Giving Pledge
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There’s a big difference between giving away 99.975% of your wealth, leaving your self with what 1 person can OPTIMISTICALLY make in a lifetime for retirement, and allowing people to scarp half of whatever is left after your life of destruction.
Not only does that mean Gate’s grand children have a grandpa with unimaginable wealth and power, but half of that is still in the family and all of them and their children’s children are all set for an absolute decadent life even if they all decide to never move another muscle ever again. All while the world continues to burn rapidly, waiting for the dragon to bleed.
This is the bare minimum, and they only do it to gain sympathy and trick us into believing they aren’t evil.
From the his Wikipedia:
More controversially, Feeney gave substantial personal donations to Sinn Féin, a left-wing Irish nationalist party that has been historically associated with the IRA.
He was a basically an Irish-American George Soros.
And it’s down Along the Falls Road, that’s where I long to be, Lying in the dark with a Provo company, A comrade on my left and another on me right And a clip of ammunition for my little Armalite.
George Soros is not a good billionaire. The right wing delusion of him is such a convenient smokescreen for all of the actually horrible global conditions he’s helped give birth to and gotten rich from, that I wonder if he doesn’t perpetuate it himself. He’s basically the final boss of neocolonialism, but because noone will teach you what neocolonialism is and how capitalism violently extracts cheap hyper-exploited labor and natural resources from the third world which amount to super profits for the billionaire class, most people don’t see how bad he is.
True but I drew that comparison since they both donated to left wing parties in countries outside their native homeland. Soros is a prick but not for the reasons that the neo-Nazis would have you believe.
Based.
RIP
With $5 million, many of us could comfortably live off the interest alone. This allows the freedom to focus on work that aligns with personal passions and priorities rather than pursuing excess. Unfortunately, many people prioritize accumulating as much as possible, often without consideration for their neighbors or community. It’s important to strike a balance between personal success and contributing to the greater good.
The individual of the future is less susceptible to the influence of the seven deadly sins, embodying discipline and virtue. There is nothing preventing you from adopting these qualities and becoming a person of the future today!
But if everyone had the same amount of money, the interest is suddenly 0 because interest is made off the backs of debt holders. You can’t be a debt holder if you are wealthy enough to live on interest. Interest money always comes from somewhere. It’s inherently the transfer of wealth from one person to another. The idea that you might live stress free solely off of the interest of your wealth is capitalism. Meaning capitalism requires people to be in debt and it requires people to struggle while the wealthy do… passion projects? Sounds like an ideal society…
The current financial system, where money is printed without sufficient backing, raises important questions about wealth distribution. Many individuals do not require billions to live comfortably; a modest sum would suffice, allowing us to maintain a productive and fulfilling life. In fact, with financial security, we would likely become even more productive, as we could focus on careers that align with our passions and interests. Automation and AI technologies should be leveraged for tasks like cleaning and food service, rather than allowing greedy corporate interests to exploit workers. Ultimately, most people would be content pursuing meaningful work, rather than being driven solely by financial necessity.
Universal Basic Income, is the term you’re looking for. Interest is a loan you make to someone, someone unfortunate enough to need a load as opposed to have enough to lend themselves. UBI works in any system with surplus, AKA any society that isn’t literally starving.
Millionaire
Whyre you getting downvoted?
I am not sure, normally i would consider someone with billon dollars a billionaire. Someone who gave away all their money except a couple million would be a millionaire.
Yeah and thats why there arent any good billionaires bacause it contradicts itself.
If I had that money it would all go towards awakening working class conscious and hopefully destroy the system that allowed such hording. But then again noone freely relinquishes power.
