Dick Smith, Graham Marr and Richard Barnes are the only Australians among 400 millionaires and billionaires globally to sign an open letter calling for higher taxes on the super rich
The list of ways they can actually help are endless, they just don’t want to actually do any of them - they just want you to think they want to help.
This part is absolutely correct. A social billionaire is a direct contradiction.
The idea of billionaires self-regulating is utopian - if they were willing to do this without external coercion, they would already be doing it. At least something like a tax can be enforced, but even then, like you said, politicians who make laws are in the pockets of the owning class. We’d need a radical overhaul of the whole rotten system to be able to enforce any seriously important financial law on them.
That said, creating charities and aid isn’t a bad idea, it would be far better for them to support ones which already exist and are struggling. And it’s particularly difficult to trust billionaire claims of being charitable when so many already perform investment and other financial activity under the guise of philanthropism. Supporting grassroots aid efforts rather than building charities from scratch would demonstrate legitimacy. And like you said, there is no legitimacy in these claims.
I’ve done lots of work for some big charities, and they’re rotten to the core in terms of how much money actually goes to the cause vs how much is spent on “administration” etc.
This part is absolutely correct. A social billionaire is a direct contradiction.
The idea of billionaires self-regulating is utopian - if they were willing to do this without external coercion, they would already be doing it. At least something like a tax can be enforced, but even then, like you said, politicians who make laws are in the pockets of the owning class. We’d need a radical overhaul of the whole rotten system to be able to enforce any seriously important financial law on them.
That said, creating charities and aid isn’t a bad idea, it would be far better for them to support ones which already exist and are struggling. And it’s particularly difficult to trust billionaire claims of being charitable when so many already perform investment and other financial activity under the guise of philanthropism. Supporting grassroots aid efforts rather than building charities from scratch would demonstrate legitimacy. And like you said, there is no legitimacy in these claims.
I’ve done lots of work for some big charities, and they’re rotten to the core in terms of how much money actually goes to the cause vs how much is spent on “administration” etc.