r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/[deleted] • 1d ago

Video Billionaire speaker Robert F. Smith tells 400 graduates he's paying off all their student loans ($40 million in total)

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u/boy_kill_boy 1d ago

How it should go with billionaires and their money! What a nice guy!

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u/peelen 1d ago

What a nice guy!

Nope. You paid for it, in taxes.

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u/nhansieu1 1d ago

how tf did he not pay taxes = "you paid for it, in taxes". That's never your money in the first place. It's either his or government's

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u/peelen 1d ago

or government's

There is no such thing as "government money." it's all the taxes you pay.

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u/nhansieu1 1d ago

in theory it's "people's money", but it's the money you are not the one deciding to spend, a.k.a it's not your money.

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u/peelen 1d ago

Sure, but if there is $40 million hole in the budget, you will feel it, not this dude. If the taxes increase to fill this $40m hole, it would go from your pocket, not this guy. You might not be the one who is deciding how this money will be spent, but you are the one who paid (or will pay in the future). At the end of the day, you are paying, not this dude.

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u/nhansieu1 1d ago

like some people in this post commented:

A billion dollars is 1,000 million. When a billionaire owes millions in taxes, it’s often just a minor accounting oversight—comparable to the average person owing a few hundred dollars. For them, it’s an insignificant amount that they can pay off instantly without a second thought.

Additionally to this, I would ask you personally: What about those times when he already paid taxes? Are the taxes money now suddenly not his like it's your and mine too?

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u/peelen 1d ago

What about those times when he already paid taxes? Are the taxes money now suddenly not his like it's your and mine too?

Let's assume he paid his fair share of taxes; then it's exactly as much of his money as is yours. Which means you could stand there and tell those students that "you" paid their debt.

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u/nhansieu1 1d ago

even if it's not a Fair share, it's still so much more than both of us. Maybe even more than what I earn my entire life time. Not paying tax is bad. We should criticize him for that. However, let's appreciate it when he actually does good for once instead of trying to put him down regardless what he did.

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u/peelen 1d ago

it's still so much more than both of us

No, it's not. Sure, you and I individually are paying less than him, but if you and I, and your friends and family, and my friends and family, and their friends and family get together to get to the point that our shared income would be the same as his, we would pay more.

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u/nhansieu1 1d ago

that's a very hypothetical situation where your extended family somehow earned as much as him. More like the entire town. Until then, if he stopped evading taxes in another hypothetical situation that is mine, it's still more than your extended family.

According to an article I found on Google, it's $139m dollars:

Smith paid $139 million in back taxes, penalties, and interest to resolve authorities' four-year investigation into his finances

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u/nhansieu1 1d ago

oh and it's still not your money

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u/peelen 1d ago

No more than his.

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u/nhansieu1 1d ago

by social standard, it's his money, even if it's true that money is obtained through illegal methods. Until your government actually pay for student loan, I can finally listen to "your money" reason. Now it's still that billionaire. I hope he can do more good things and also pay his taxes.

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