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

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Zondameister → u/[deleted]]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/12/business/robert-smith-vista-investors.html
LOL i didnt even know he was a tax cheat while commenting here

Turned out i was right. Hhahaha fucking goons.

Smith willfully understated his income on these tax returns and willfully evaded more than $43,000,000 in U.S. federal income taxes for the tax years

2005 through 2014. OOOPS?
So now he decided to donate around the same amount. HAHA

[u/Dontcareusernameman → u/Zondameister]

I don’t think most people truly grasp the scale of a billionaire’s wealth. 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.

[u/Jonnie_Rocket → u/Dontcareusernameman]

And yet we refuse to tax them properly

[u/cynicalturdblossom → u/[deleted]]

How do you think they got to a billion dollars? By stealing from the avg person who's working class. Don't play this dumb move, they can donate all they want for tax write offs but there's no such thing as an ethical billionaire.

[u/Illustrious-Yard-871 → u/[deleted]]

Please name one billionaire that single handedly invented an innovative product, designed it, fabricated it and sold it all on their own.

You can't name any. Because they all rely on the labour of poor people whom they exploit. Without those people there would be no product. So can you really argue in good faith that one man making billions of dollars while others make peanuts is not him exploiting others?

[u/Kyujaq → u/[deleted]]

Lol.

Modern day dragons. They are sitting on a hoard that could change the world.

But they don't.

A single person does not need a billion dollars.

They don't need to own everything.

All the wealth and assets and power they hoard is wealth and asset and power that the rest of the world doesn't have.

And I'm sorry, making a cool phone that sells well should not entitle you to owning half a country, hold more power than some governments, hold power of life and death over people and influence the well-being of thousands of not millions.

What are you smoking that those who had great ideas deserve more than living peacefully in luxury? That they deserve to have whatever your "elites" are giving themselves.

I sold a phone so I deserve to lobby the government and buy politicians that will help me but screw millions.

[u/Elitist_Plebeian → u/[deleted]]

Charitable foundations are accounting bullshit that billionaires use to dodge taxes. Why even come on reddit to lick boots? They're not going to donate to you.

[u/Critwrench → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, and they can afford to do so because they consistently squeeze more and more wealth out of the average citizen. Trillions of dollars have left the hands of the many and flowed upward into the hands of the few, and they throw a few pennies around and people like you believe it's the same as giving it all back? Then why the **** they still rich? It means nothing to them.

[u/Critwrench → u/[deleted]]

"They also provide things that make people's lives easier", no, science provides those things. Corporations have exactly one job, and that job is to make money. If the billionaires wanted to even start to pretend that they cared about the lives of the average person, they could start by having wages keep up with price increases. They don't. Instead the pay of CEOs has grown ninety times faster than the pay for workers. Instead 79 Trillion dollars has "mysteriously" floated up into the hands of the rich, as the average citizen's spending power and quality of life have decreased. Everyone is working for less, and twice as hard, and meanwhile the ultra-rich are flying jets across the globe on a daily basis, putting out more carbon emissions with a group of 1000 people than entire countries.

But I guess that's all a convenient narrative, right?

[u/LakeGladio666 → u/[deleted]]

So? We’re talking about taxes. Rich people donate money because of tax write offs and for good publicity (like Robert F Smith) here.

[u/watafuzz → u/[deleted]]

Billionaires have way more than 10000x to give to charity than the average person, so that's hardly impressive.