No. Last year I dropped 3k into different charities and wrote it off. that's how it works.

we need to burn that guy at the stake, he is darth vader^2!!

How many people were in the top '1%' 500 years ago? 4? Technically this is progress. We are living in a time where there are people in power who actually make efforts to give back. How many kings of old did that?

I'm sorry but you are simply wrong. That's how someone that needs a tax break looks at things. You don't believe that anyone on the fortune list needs one,do you?

I am not even close to being on the fortune list and I don't need a tax break. My accounting department does keep track and does apply any charitable donations we make.

But I don't write off donations from my personal income. It's silly to even bother. If I had to be concerned about it I obviously wouldn't ever do anything decent for people.

The Gates Foundation

It had an endowment of US$38.3 billion as of 30 June 2013.[3] The scale of the foundation and the way it seeks to apply business techniques to giving makes it one of the leaders in the philanthrocapitalism revolution in global philanthropy,

In 2007, its founders were ranked as the second most generous philanthropists in America, and Warren Buffett the first.[6]

As of May 16, 2013, Bill Gates had donated US$28 billion to the foundation.[7]

Donating $28 billion isn't for tax purposes/

I really do need to get to work now!

But here is an interesting statement about the richest man on earth..
Carlos Slim Helu

Donations: $4 billion

Net worth: $74 billion

World?s richest man has publicly stated that he feels more good can be done from creating jobs than from band-aid charitable giving. Yet it turns out he gave $2 billion, mostly from dividends, to his Carlos Slim Foundation in 2006, and $2 billion in 2010. Most of its programs are focused on digital education and health. A $100 million gift to the Clinton Initiative project is helping pay for 50,000 cataract surgeries in Peru. With the Gates Foundation and the government of Spain, it?s spending $150 million on nutrition and disease prevention in Central America.

I bought a set of towels made from this cotton, specifically due to the cause.

::::::::::

WASHINGTON -- The National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA) through its international development program CLUSA, today announced the receipt of an $8 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to improve the livelihoods of 60,000 small scale cotton farmers in Mozambique.

The grant will fund The Cotton Value Chain Improvement Project, a 5-year project aimed at increasing Mozambican farmers' cotton yields-and profits-by improving their efficiency in producing cotton.

An hour long staff meeting and only one comment in this thread... What happened to the eat the rich crowd?

I'm guessing those filthy bastards are hiding their gold on Oak Island.

it's all in that hole!

Might be something stashed away in that swamp too,

while we're creating wealth equality by taking from the haves and giving it to the have-nots, we should also create race parity.. A master race would solve that.

What the fuck are you guys debating?

If you take ALL those top 85 people and put all their money combined together it would come up to 5.7 trillion dollars.

The US govt. will spend 3.8 trillion in 2014 alone.

I say again...WHY aren't the bleeding hearts railing against the all-powerful and RICHEST entity on the face of the Earth?
The U.S. Govt.

The U.S. Govt. is the one with all the "wealth" and it's the one that chooses to spend it on weapons of war and death while making sure that every member of Congress and the Senate are richer than any of you will ever be.

The top 85 people at least earned their money. The U.S. govt. just takes it.

And what good do they do with it?
The poverty level is higher than ever.
And we have the lowest percentage of the population in the workforce ever.

But let's be sheep and let the govt. convince us is it's all Bill Gates' and the rest of the "rich" peoples fault because there is a magic "pie" of wealth and they have taken more than their fair share.

Some of y'all are just plain out fucking pathetic. Grow a set and EARN money.

I have noticed that Relentless is on that kick lately. I am not certain why that is, but hopefully he reads a bit of what these .0001%ers have done in a very positive way to benefit the world.

I don't think I've read anywhere that Warren Buffet has had his army attack any other countries.:winkwink:

And Warren Buffet is worth 60 billion dollars. The US Govt. spends more than that in ONE week!

That explains it.. The dumbass can't afford an army!

and with all their donations things still continue to get worse for the poor.

how many of that group are contributing to labor and environmental disasters in other countries? their donations are like tiny bandaids on huge gushing stab wounds when you consider what they do also damages people and the world we live in.

i just wonder why is that wealth is so tightly controlled to such a small group of people? what is it that makes it unachievable for most? why will minte never be a billionaire and warren buffet is? why will minte be a millionaire (assuming he is) but i won't be? etc.

what sets these people apart from others?

You are aware that 85 people is many less than the total population of the house, senate and Supreme Court. You are also aware, especially in the aftermath of citizens united that those 85 wield considerably more power than anyone in congress since they can now effectively pick the people in congress. The ONLY thing protecting anyone right now is that the 85 are not in agreement. As that number becomes even smaller agreement become even easier to reach.

Having 85 people control as much wealth as 50% of the population is not a financial problem. It's a power problem. A very dangerous one, with fewer and fewer meaningful safeguards and rapidly accelerating concentration. If wealth did not create influence it would hardly be a problem at all... But it does.

Not sure about your pricing methodology. He likely has enough money to destroy the entire planet if he made that his goal.

An 'Army' is such a pre-1990s concept...

Please provide just 1 example of how the 85 top international billionaires from South Korea, Russia, Malayasia, China, Hong Kong, Germany, India, Brazil, CHile, Nigeria, Ukraine, Thailand, Columbia, Japan, Phillipines, etc, et al, have come together and used their concentrated power to influence something, anything.

he said that IF they agreed they could control anything they want, but they don't, which is why they aren't.

Exactly. It's now a battle of 'do the oligarchs you agree with win or lose to the oligarchs you disagree with' on any particular issue.

If you think those 85 people would be unable to buy local elections, have judges appointed, impact text book content of public schools, distort the news media, alter the environment, affect life expectancy, and so on individually... You are fooling yourself. Now what happens if ten of them agree about something, or twenty? What happens when all you need are twenty? Keep in mind, 85 people have PERSONAL fortunes equal to the wealth of 50% of the population. That doesn't include the massive corporate interests they each control or influence. And as dyna mo rightly points out, this is an international cartel... Not restricted or feeling a sense of allegiance to any particular nation.

Do you really think you live in a republic with a democratically elected government making the decisions?

He can reply for himself, it's his thread.

Nevertheless, I'll reply to you. You missed the point entirely.

The good news is that it is mathematically impossible/improbable for 85 people to actually agree on anything. And those wealthy people still have a boss. And those are the customers. Sears was a heavy hitter for 100 years. They owned retail and catalog sales. Money changes hands based on performance, not luck.

I am less concerned about people like Warren Buffet than I am about the Paul Ryan's and Barack Obamas of the world. With people like Buffet you have an incumbant..someone that has decades of experience to fall back on to make important decisions. With politicians they are mostly transient. They have 4 - 8 years to make an impact and if they are successful, great! If not they become a footnote in history and the rest of the world pays for it.

The operative word is *IF*.
You or Relentless will be hard pressed to point out any examples of powerful ego driven people that will bow to the next powerful ego driven man. It just doesn't happen.

Indeed, that was my point.

If an asteroid hits the planet tomorrow we will all be dead. If a giant tsunami hits Los Angeles and kill everyone, If there really are aliens at Area51.

If is a lot bigger word that it looks. It should really have a lot more letters in it.

And that was my point. :thumbsup

:1orglaugh

How many people is too few? 84? 75? 10?

Many of the people in that 85 have no boss. Bill Gates doesn't answer to stockholders anymore and Warren Buffet could probably run around naked at board meetings with his sack painted yellow... and not have a single person at Berkshire sell their stock as a result. You are watching an international ruling class coalesce and it will be generational, not performance based for the most part. The Walmart heirs didn't build Walmart and their grandchildren will have had even less to do with its rise.

There is a reason we got rid of mulch-generational rulers. If you need proof of that being a valuable move, look no further than W being elected based most on his family name - and how big a catastrophe that turned out to be. Good luck imposing term limits on people worth upwards of 25 Billion dollars who want to blow the tops off mountains, wreck the financial markets with high frequency trading or feel a permanent slave class is a good idea.

Bow to? Unlikely. Collaborate with? Yes, often and always to their own mutual benefit. When it benefits the mutual interests of 85 people they wont have to bow to each other, though the other 7.4 billion of us will end up having to bow to them. You seem to value your autonomy less than you claimed. :2 cents:

When there are 85 asteroids on a clear collision course with our planet, and their combined force is capable of destroying all life on Earth as we know it... be sure and let me know. :2 cents:

Maybe it was my stint in a nuclear missile battalion. Old Jeff, was in the same division I was in and he would be able to verify what I am saying.

You are concerned about rich people. I was in my early 20's for the last year of my stint in the US Army. I was a B team member of operations in Pershing. What that means is that I had the keys to 9 very large nuclear warheads. President Kennedy had installed a system called PAL..permissive action link so that in order to detonate the missiles you had to program in a sequence of numbers. Which I would've had a 1/9999 chance of guessing

But I could've launched them . Imagine. The Soviets would see these blips on their radar coming towards them faster than anything else in the sky. They would've known that they were live nuclear weapons. From the time we launched in Germany they would reached the targets in less than 15 minutes. No time for the pentagon or USAEUR to communicate with the Soviets. Do you think the Soviets would've launched?

You apparently like to worry about things you have no control over. Most of our nuclear arsenal is still intact and ready to rock & roll..so there is something more and very real
you should worry about. :)

The ultrarich guys..I don't even think about them.

To be clear, I'm not worried in the least about 'rich people', we aren't talking about 'rich people', we are talking about people who have many thousands of times what any rich person has in terms of wealth and probably millions of times what a rich person has in terms of influence. I'm not a big fan of a guy in a silo with a 1 in whatever chance of guessing the launch codes either. That's a good reason to change the way we handle launch codes, not a good reason to ignore other problems that are at least as serious.

You seem to believe if many things are broken, why bother trying to fix any of them. I do not share that viewpoint. I believe if many things are broken, we have a lot of work to do. :2 cents:

Ok, just 2 comments.. rich(EST) and precisely what is it you are doing to solve these problems? ok three...I will soften that second remark,

What do you think we can do to curb this new world order?

What happens when they all die?...

it still amazes me that people think life is fair and that all humans are created equal.

the world has always been like this. There will always be powerful people and the rest will have nothing.

Hahaha... don't throw them a curve ball. They still can't accept that money is circulating in the economy and funding construction, funding their home loans and their car loans, creating businesses and funding business development, funding charities and paying billions in taxes in addition to everything else that money does.

lol, yep. Everything they buy goes back in circulation, unlike welfare and everyone trying to be "fair"...

Hoarding is a problem, though..

So you don't find it interesting taht out of 7 BILLION individuals, 85 individuals own HALF of the entire wealth of those 7 BILLION?

That means 0.00000121428% of the worlds population own 50% of the wealth... That is mind boggling.

Forget all the hatred towards rich, that is just a staggering figure to wrap your head around.

There are dozens of things we could and should do. Most of which would only be effective if we took a serious attempt at many of the items simultaneously. Here are 10 off the top of my head...

1 - Immediately pass legislation to overturn Citizens United and move to a system of publicly funded low cost campaigns with a definite start date.

2 - Much stricter regulation against consolidation of media interests

3 - Term limits on all elected officials

4 - International treaties and taxation requirements to prevent games like Apple borrowing 17 Billion for little interest and avoiding repatriation of assets overseas.

5 - National sales tax and reduced income tax

6 - Real single payer basic healthcare and supplemental private insurance

7 - A 10 cent tax on each share of stock traded, to end all high frequency trading

8 - Enact the buffet rule and eliminate the loophole mess

9 - Put very strict regulations in place to ensure the cost of higher education is tied to the expense per student, and use public colleges to further undercut price gouging

10 - Simplify the tax code and end the kind of generational tax loopholes now common in the Dakotas.


Will that immediately solve the problem? No. Will it do more than waiting for Soylent Green to become a reality... yes, yes it would.