yes! because they have the police power and can force action from ALL emitters
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Jeff Bezos commits $10 billion to fight climate change
- Thread starter Deleted member 43084
- Start date
Lol at people praising him for this. Not only is $10b a literal drop in the bucket when it comes to what we will need to spend on addressing climate change, but this is not an issue we can buy ourselves out of. The government needs to enact strong regulations on the economy and oversee a transformation of our economy from the top down. Unless he's spending $10b on campaigning and lobbying for the Green New Deal I highly doubt this will be money well spent.
Any government that is willing to force the megawealthy to pay what they owe is probably going to be more trustworthy with that money than any recent government or any member of the megawealthy.
This. It's the old "if you can't beat em, join em" but from the other angle.
The mega rich *ARE* running the country. If they weren't, they'd be forced to pay their fair share and the money would most likely go to things other than the megarich.
Why is it always the low post accounts that come into the thread with shit like THIS A GOOD THING or YOU ALL ARE JUST WHINGERS, is it people not wanting to use their main account some weird autosurf #PraiseJeff shit going on, or are people really that ignorant to where this money is actually going.
Money made off sweatshop conditions and tax avoidance. Fuck off bezos
These rich cunts think have such a high opinion of themselves that they think their ill-gotten wealth can solve problems that are systemic and relate back to the obscene amount of money they've accumulated. Capitalism has proven itself incapable of solving climate change or responding properly to any issue that threatens any kind of entrenched wealth.
These rich cunts think have such a high opinion of themselves that they think their ill-gotten wealth can solve problems that are systemic and relate back to the obscene amount of money they've accumulated. Capitalism has proven itself incapable of solving climate change or responding properly to any issue that threatens any kind of entrenched wealth.
Companies pay taxes on income, not revenue. They did "only" about $60B in income/EBITDA over that period. Subtract everything out and Amazon is running their business at ~5% margin.
This thread should be proof positive to anyone succeeding in a public way to ignore haters. It's never enough. You can never please them - they don't like *you*.
You think we'd be celebrating an American company that employs hundreds of thousands of workers domestically, instituted a company-wide minimum wage more than double the federal number, runs its business at very low margin to offer the best deal to its customers, and got to where it is largely ignoring shareholders and thinking massively long term. Instead, it's demonized because the guy who architected it and saw the plan through made an unfathomable amount of money ... on paper. Getting rich building something everyone wants - imagine that.
The irony of you telling me to educate myself, while quoting revenues as a company's tax basis after "3 minutes" of research, is too damn delicious.
1. You're only looking at USA, those figures are global.
2. You're buying into the tax reduction/evasion techniques, well done you played yourself.
3. Guess you missed this part in the title of the source link - "Annual net revenue of Amazon from 2004 to 2019"
4. A behemoth operating at loss/low margin and destroying entire markets and competitors isn't a standard to uphold ourselves to economically speaking.
5. Minimum wage and benefits in the USA is not a standard we should hold companies to either.
And I'm done replying to you. Zero effort or rebuttal facts on your part. Dick.
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This!
There's nothing more harming to the world than bad policies and lack of accountability
I agree, which is why I added my tidbit at the end about wealth equality but this administration is not going to use taxes toward climate change so the donation is warranted.
It's not that it's not being used for the charitable cause, but that there are strict rules on how to be eligible to receive money from the fund that render the actual amount that gets distributed way, waaaay less than 10B. If he only actually used $1 a year on the charitable causes, but claims the 10B is part of the fund, then he gets to claim 10B was donated without ever losing control of that money.
Literally any business could do this if they wanted to, but the legal fees to manage it are too high to be practical until you've reached the multimillions of dollars these billionaire funds are.
Like don't get me wrong, money will likely go to "some" sort of environmental cause. But not anywhere close to 10B, and likely not any time soon.
Net revenue is gross revenue minus COGS; it's not the same thing as net profit.
AMZN is a publicly-traded company; just check the full numbers on Yahoo! Finance.
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) Income Statement - Yahoo Finance
Get the detailed quarterly/annual income statement for Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN). Find out the revenue, expenses and profit or loss over the last fiscal year.
finance.yahoo.com
Revenue, net or gross, is not profit/income. Read the statements carefully. They are a very low margin business and pay taxes based on operating income (simplified for our discussion). Almost all of the revenue goes back out to pay for the goods and workers' wages.
Stop listening to the media and become truly informed.
I understand that but for a simple comparison figure it's relevant enough. Especially given the scale of differences.
That's false. To qualify for charitable status charities have to actually spend a minimum amount of money per year. You're also wrong about only billionaires being able to afford legal fees to exploit this supposed loophole.
More here, but you can search other sources if you prefer: https://grantspace.org/resources/knowledge-base/payout/
This money will absolutely be used for real causes. Cynicism and skepticism is fine, but basically all of the negative takes in this thread are uninformed and can be solved by doing quick Google searches.
There are a bunch of governments in the last 150 years that eliminated the megawealthy through tax or other means. Which of those did you consider trustworthy with their spending?
AMZN is a publicly-traded company; just check the full numbers on Yahoo! Finance.
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) Income Statement - Yahoo Finance
Get the detailed quarterly/annual income statement for Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN). Find out the revenue, expenses and profit or loss over the last fiscal year.
Revenue, net or gross, is not profit/income. Read the statements carefully. They are a very low margin business and pay taxes based on operating income (simplified for our discussion). Almost all of the revenue goes back out to pay for the goods and workers' wages.
Stop listening to the media and become truly informed.
I did look at Yahoo finance originally. What makes you think Amazon's 3-5% low margin business is so unique? Any distributor, especially on a global scale operate in those ranges. Standard supply chain and volumes, most pay multitudes more tax than Amazon does. R&D write down of $28B, yeah ok. Again another just buying into the same old reduce and evade techniques IMO.
I don't side with the media, nor do I side with Amazon but when I see a global company operating in hundreds of billions and paying 150 million in tax only there is major cause for concern. I don't give a shit if that is in their profit or gross revenue. They affect the planet, markets, competitors etc. Would you side with a company selling at a loss for over a decade and killing an entire industry all the while receiving tax breaks and R&D write downs/credits? It's legal but is it ethical? Fuck no.
This donation is of the same ilk. It's blood money and far too little, especially over a decade long trajectory if it's a one shot deal. If they/he start donating annually in these sorts of amounts then I'll change my tune. I'd change my tune if Governments started to investigate and alter laws around these techniques, rapidly and sustainably. There is literally 3 to 4 global accounting firms creating all these problems to enable companies like Amazon to legally get away with it. Politicians need to wake the fuck up.
EDIT: Funnily enough the Australian government (Australian Tax Office, specifically) created a tax avoidance task force back in 2016 to manage these loopholes and global companies. It's far from perfect and not "hardline" enough IMO. However they have already recovered 10s of billions and they're funded for the next few years targeting the top 1,000 multinational companies. USA would be wise to do the same.
Source
Want more proof of tax evasion being recouped? How about 5.6Billion in the first 2 years of this task force. Now multiply that for the USA market vs the Australia market and you get an idea of how much you're being ripped off by companies like Amazon.
Source
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The ones that come to mind first are the Soviet-inspired ones. But I'm happy to hear other examples.
"Because it doesn't solve every problem, I'm going to sit in this corner and pout about it."
This thread is the very definition of "making the perfect become the enemy of the good." Since I haven't seen any reports of what this money is specifically going to, assumptions about any of it are just bullshit. How about you wait until we see the results, but $10B is a lot more than the $0B we had previously. It's a fucking start and I don't see anyone else doing it.
To be fair, it requires the assumption that something actually gets done with it for it to be more than $0, and nothing of value getting done with it is certainly in play when it comes to otherwise "charitable" endeavors. So if it's premature to knock it, then it's definitely premature to operate from the base assumption that's it's anything at all.
And the link between tax reform and authoritarian governments are?
To my knowledge, the various Soviet style Governments were birthed from either Civil War or from World War 2. Such countries didn't tax the wealthy appropriately. Rather they simply seized and nationalised property and wealth. Even in Socialist Yugoslavia, which I believe had the full support of the West post WW2.
In short, I don't believe there has ever been a Liberal Government in which the wealthy have paid what they owe. Socialist nations that tried this democratically were generally regime changed pretty quickly. The Scandinavian countries are probably the closest to fitting the description, but the wealthy are currently in the process of eroding the welfare state in those nations.
Tax reform, no link. Eliminating the megawealthy, a close link. It's hard to divine the intent of the poster I replied to with just "paying their share". That's why I asked for examples.
My "intent" would be that Bezos and other "philanthropists" like him will use their charity funds as tax dodges. They donate stock because that can't be taxed until it's liquidated, and then they claim the stock donation on their tax return. Meanwhile the stock that was donated is still under their control.
So in this context, "paying what they owe" would be not doing any of that. Liquidating their stock, paying the appropriate tax, and making that donation in cash. Really just ending all of their tax avoidance scams completely.
And as stated previously, any Government ends all of these tax avoidance loopholes would be infinitely more trustworthy than any previous modern government.
User banned (1 week): hostility
Deleted. The forum's getting to me too much tonight for some reason, so decided to bow out for now.
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This sounds nice on the surface. But I don't want another Bill-Melinda Gates Foundation situation where they give billions to fight malaria and polio (good), which money they got from investing in oil companies that pollute environment (bad).
Also their vaccine campaign (while good) is motivated by the overpopulation myth, which is inherently racist.
$10B is a good start, but it's only a start. Hell, he's investing $1B into Blue Origin per year as is, you'd think he'd have a little cash left over to pay his workers better.
Basically this.
This thread astounds me. Any one in here donated even close to 5% of their net worth to the benefit of the planet? I'm amazed he did this, could have continued being a wholly greedy man and donated next to nothing, like 99.9% of the ~1%.
He doesn't need the PR I think he'll be just fine regardless of the opinions of the people. Wonder if this might set a trend.
He doesn't need the PR I think he'll be just fine regardless of the opinions of the people. Wonder if this might set a trend.
Yeah. I havent read the whole thread yet, but I assume a lot of posts already mentioned this. All these big companies need to do is pay their taxes and stop lobbying to remove regulations. Just do that shit. Making announcements like this just seems like self promotion.