In a word…Bezos (as in, “you say Jeff Bay-zos, I say Jeff Bee-zos, let’s call the whole thing off”).
Jeff Bezos (it is bay-zos) isn’t all bad. Incredible entrepreneur. The Washington Post benefactor. He doesn’t appear to be giving money to hate groups, as some 351 charities and foundations have done. Plus, now that he’s stepped aside as CEO of Amazon, some of the things that make him a poster child for what’s wrong with philanthropy may change–but probably not much. Herewith a primer:
1. Too much money. Without a doubt, the fundamental problem with philanthropy is that Bezos and others have too much money. Imagine if he hadn’t gotten divorced: he’d have over $250 billion. Think about it: 1 million seconds is 12 days; 1 billion seconds is 32 years; 250 billion seconds is 8000 years. Yep, if you earned $1 per second, $60 per minute, $3600 per hour every hour of the day, every day of the year, and assuming you didn’t have to pay any taxes, you, too, could have $250 billion in just 8000 years!
It took a noted British epidemiologist, Richard Wilkerson, to point out the correlation of wealth inequality with a nation’s negative social indicators such as opioid use, incarceration, and poor health and education. With too much money and power in the hands of a few, a plutocracy, democratic decision-making to address these problems is supplanted by gilded philanthropy. Essentially, we’re expecting the Bezos’ of the world to solve the problems…when they are the problem.
2. Too little taxes. There are many factors that have contributed to the extreme wealth inequality. Easily topping the list is the tax policy which allows Bezos to pay a 23% tax rate on his investment gains (less than what many working people pay on their earnings), and then only if he actually sells stock. Bezos’ fortune reflects a massive transfer of wealth from the U.S. government into his bank account. His home state of Washington is trying to fix that a bit with its own wealth tax, but the federal government is still left with less money to equitably invest in society’s needs, placing untenable burdens on philanthropy to fill the gaps.
3. Using other people’s money. As if the low taxes aren’t enough, Bezos is able to extract even more money from the government with a valuable charitable deduction – worth over 70% to him. We don’t have access to his tax returns, but we can make a reasonable guess that when he sold $9 billion of Amazon stock last year, he contributed $2 billion or so to a Donor Advised Fund. He gets an income tax deduction and he avoids capital gains tax and estate tax on the stock he contributed. So when he gives $800 million for climate change, he is contributing roughly $500 million of taxpayer money and only $300 million of his own.
4. Should it even count as philanthropy? Bezos announced an intention to give away $10 billion, but the actual amount of money Bezos gave away is $800 million, or after taxes, $300 million. This represents 0.15% of his net worth. Were he to meet the Crisis Charitable Commitment’s Charitable Standard, he should be giving away $10 billion each year!
5. Buying a seat in heaven. Good reputations are hard to come by, especially when you have pocketed $90 billion since the pandemic began, while your employees are making $15 per hour, 50 million Americans are food insecure, and unemployment is in the tens of millions. So what does any good rich person do: announce an intention to make a large charitable gift! Bezos announced a $10 billion effort to fight climate disruption, but gave only $800 million in 2020. His PR folks went to work, and the next thing you know, he is philanthropist of the year.
6. Houston, we have a gender problem. Maybe heaven wasn’t on Bezos’ mind; maybe it was ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, who, with one third as much wealth as her ex, actually gave away $6 billion last year. The New York Times reported on a phenomena we’ve noticed at the Crisis Charitable Commitment: although there are notable exceptions, women are much more generous philanthropists than men, the richest two of whom would rather spend time with their space toys than addressing our nation’s most pressing needs.
7. The power to decide. Seriously, does anyone think solving the climate crisis should be left in Bezos’ hands, or saving our democracy in Zuckerberg’s, or dare I say, conquering space in Musk’s? Even if you thought it was okay for people to accumulate the kind of wealth these men have, should we let them use taxpayer money to fund their own personal priorities? This is particularly troublesome because important priorities are often overlooked, such as highlighted by the Climate Funders Justice Pledge, which calls for more funding for organizations led by people of color.
8. Perpetrating perpetuity. If he hasn’t already, Bezos most certainly will take advantage of Private Foundations (PF) or a donor-advised fund (DAF), one of the greatest rewards for the rich (poorer people don’t set up foundations)– akin to cryogenics. Not only do donors use other people’s money, retain the power to decide everything (how we educate our kids, what diseases to fight, what art we see in museums), and buy their seat in heaven, they get to continue doing it even after they die!
A donor gives to a PF or DAF and gets a tax deduction that is meant to encourage them to donate to charity, a nonprofit. But instead they hoard the money, earning tax-free dollars so they can hoard even more. After five or ten years, depending on investment returns, all of the money in the PF is actually taxpayer money, without any taxpayer decision-making power. Is that what Congress had in mind when it tax-subsidized this kind of charity?
If we can put a person on the moon, we can change laws to solve the problems both of excessive wealth inequality and rich man’s philanthropy. But we need to act soon–before the rich own the moon, too.