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this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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I’m not even a Swift fan, and yeah I get that she is ultimately still a billionaire. But she played on Friday in my home city of Melbourne, and that day she donated $100k to a local food bank system. I know that’s still a drop in the bucket for her, but that’s not chump change.
However, if you do some searching, there’s a stream of news stories of her donating large amount like that or more. The day before her first Melbourne concert, she donated $100k to the family of the woman killed at the super bowl parade. Two months ago she donated $1 million to a relief fund for tennessee tornado victims. Heaps more food bank donations.
Like, can we seriously just leave her the fuck alone? Musk is an alt-right piece of shit, she’s just a talented musician that actually works for a living. And yeah, I know she doesn’t work as much as some of the rest of us, but stadium touring is still brutal. Musk just sits on his arse all day tweeting and committing labour violations.
She’s also not the child of an emerald mine owner so there’s that too.
100k to a billionaire is no more than a tip. Billionaires are a symptom of an unjust system of wealth distribution, regardless of the person. Musk also happens to be a racist numbfuck, but they're a dime a dozen. The problem is that he's part of a digital feudalism and wields enormous power.
Yeah, like I already said in my comment, it’s a drop in the bucket for her. But she’s doing it over and over again. Twice this week she donated $100k. It adds up over time. Dolly Parton is worth $650 million, and she also donates significant sums of that to her book charity. They’re both trying reasonably hard to make the world suck less. Musk is actively creating more suffering. Can we not talk about them like they’re the same level of evil? What good does that bring?
Many rich people are "donating" to avoid paying taxes and it another way for marketing. You are the proof of that, you are defending and promoting her.
Billionaires like her are the reason we have poverty and charity associations
You are 100% correct that many billionaires do that. As cogman mentioned above, having a “charity” that you run yourself as a billionaire is absolutely a common tax scam. That’s not what she’s doing though. She’s actually spending the money.
Also in terms of marketing, like, are you serious? Her music speaks for itself to her fans, they don’t care about any of this. My words here aren’t going to influence someone to go listen to her music or buy a concert ticket. To believe that they could is simply ludicrous.
It's not a literal tax scam, it's just free PR due to tax reasons. You donate and you pay less tax
As a US citizen, she is only allowed to claim donations to charities registered in the US. The $100k she just dropped in Melbourne, Australia wouldn’t be eligible for example. Therefore it’s not free PR, she actually paid about $100k for it.
$100k is equivalent to 6 dollars for a normal person
Cool. I acknowledged that way further up thread. That doesn’t mean you aren’t wrong friend.
A lot of billionaires do donate sums like these without direct personal gain. They also have more complex tax optimization/scams going on. None of that means they are virtuous people, and neither is taylor swift. She's just like any other billionaire.
The misogyny in this thread reeks.
Have you ever read Andrew Carnegie's book The Gospel of Wealth? Even if Taylor hasn't, someone close to her has. Carnegie and Rockefeller needed bodyguards to feel safe in public. All billionaires should feel the same. We forgot to call them what they are. Robber Barons.
It's, frankly, more than most billionaires and 100 millionaires do.
Most billionaires are setting up fake charities as tax shelters so they can publicize "Elon musk gave money to the Elon musk charity for fueling billionaire private jets foundation".
You can pretty much pick a billionaire and find that billionaire's charity that does dog shit.
Except for Dolly Parton who apparently didn't get the memo that she's supposed to be scamming :D
https://fortune.com/2022/12/12/elon-musk-gave-5-7-billion-to-charity-last-year-where-it-went-was-a-mystery-until-now/
More than most billionaires is a pathetically low bar to clear. Charities are less efficient than paying taxes to fund proper centralized systems but this way they get to hold on to the majority of their dragon hoard, not meaningfully address most of the cause they donate too, and launder their reputation to people like you that can’t see past the hollow optics.
Umm, ok, Like I agree with you that charities in general tend to be a bad way to solve public problems. But I'm also pointing out that charities rich people tend to contribute to are often even worse than ineffective for addressing public needs.