Politics

How the Rich Avoid Taxes and Gaslight Us When They Donate Billions to Charity

And why we stupidly thank them for it when they do

J.J. Pryor
The Apeiron Blog
Published in
10 min readJun 24, 2021

Jeff Bezos laughing while sitting in a leather chair
Credit: Steve Jurvetson, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

MacKenzie Scott has now donated 8 billion dollars of her personal wealth to charities. While that act is noble in itself, her estimated wealth increased $23 billion during the same period.

Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife literally can’t give her money away fast enough.

Because she shouldn’t have had that much money in the first place. Neither should her ex-husband have. And neither should the other 717 billionaires in America.

719 people who collectively now own more than 4x the wealth of the bottom half of Americans.

Wealth is Out of Control and Charity is Making it Worse

We’ve now entered the age of philanthrocapitalism, where the world’s richest CEOs, genetic lottery winners, and fake-tanned narcissists all donate vast amounts of money to varying causes.

Causes they get to choose. Causes that may not be charitable at all. Causes that are unknown and often untracked.

Yet in nearly every case, when the mega donations start rolling out, these billionaires receive countless accolades…

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Published in The Apeiron Blog

An easy to read philosophical space that aims to elicit discussion and debate on matters of the universe.

Written by J.J. Pryor

3.01 Mil reads | Ex-pat | Ex-Head Product | Ex-cuse Me | PB&T creator | Top 100 Writer | jjpryor.substack.com

Responses (21)

Nicholas Woodman

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When billionaires like MacKenzie Scott appear to be genuinely trying to help and donate billions to worthy organizations — do not thank them.

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