One of the best things I read was an 1889 essay by Andrew Carnegie called The Gospel of Wealth. It makes the case that the wealthy have a responsibility to return their resources to society, a radical idea at the time that laid the groundwork for philanthropy as we know it today.
In the essay’s most famous line, Carnegie argues that “the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” I have spent a lot of time thinking about that quote lately. People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that “he died rich” will not be one of them.
People should just call his bluff and ask if he would support a big estate tax.
He literally has the financial resources to lobby congress to make it happen.
I honestly don’t understand why self made billionaires wouldn’t do that, it’s not like their kids are gonna be poor, they will still be rich, just not oligarchs level (which they probably would suck at anyway given how they don’t have proper experience).
Not saying you are wrong or anything. I just remembered seeing Bill Gates’ name being brought up as a supporter of raising the estate tax for the richest rich people. Its not the article I remembered but didn’t feel like spending time sorting thru the search results for the most reliable source but here is a Forbes article that mentions Gates as supporting raising the estate tax:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/cartercoudriet/2019/10/15/billionaires-more-taxes-gates-buffett-bloomberg/
There is prolly more/better articles out there but all the top search results today are referencing Trump’s estate tax hike that was announced in the past day or so.
This is a good comeback. Take that wealth and start lobbying to start fixing shit
He could start up a whole ass organization with departments to fight for education, health care, income equality, homelessness and more.
He could resolve homelessness single handedly by funding homes, but what we need is to fix the machine.
I seriously think we need to focus in fixing education and news/social media regulations to increase critical thinking in the masses and stop the suppression of “woke media”
They’re making everyone dumber and brainwashing the masses. How we got our current leader.
Social media platforms are how many Americans get thier information and news. Purposefully spreading misinformation and suppressing non offensive political views should be a massive fine by the FCC.
Why would he do that? He’s so rich, he can never go broke.
All his “Foundation” bullshit is PR, after he realized everyone hated him before Bush Jr. made all his troubles go away. I wonder how much that “Donation” was?
There is no such thing as a good billionaire.
That’s my point. A “good” billionaire would make moves not promises and donations.
Agreed.
I appreciate how civil most lemmings are. I’ve been wrong and admit fault. Or unclear and clarify.
We also have idiots on here though. I imagine that ratio may change as Lemmy gets more adoption.
Regression towards the mean is inevitable. The best we can do is hope to model a good culture for future fediverse denizen (fedizens?)
I’d prefer fedizen over lemming because I can’t get the old lemmings out of my head.
Hell, he could buy the country like Musk did. He’s just not as narcissistic as Musk, who made very dumb decisions that would have landed him in prison in a sane reality.