When my daughter wanted her first tablet, a friend of mine said he had an old one he could sell me for $50. Cool, I said, and my daughter saved up her allowance (paid for feeding the cats, as I recall) to get the money. Then, my friend said to just put the $50 in her savings account.
Oh, I said, right, we should set one of those up for her.
Once she had one, it was clear I should be adding to it every month. But, the initial nudge to get her one was important. Hopefully, having an account will make it more likely to put a little in every month? It's not everything, but it's also not nothing.
Of course, cheaper housing would help the kids more, but that has more entrenched interests opposed to it (almost every homeowner), and not even Dell has enough to overcome that.
What you say makes sense, and yet what I find in reality is that almost no one thinks this way; they want their house to go up in value. Perhaps everyone assumes that they will sell sometime in the next few years?
What kids really need is a mandatory personal finance class at the High School level. This would teach them how to handle money, debt, spending, budgeting and general financial health.
Nothing would help the next generation more, even above giving them seed investment money, than helping them avoid the pitfalls which are just waiting for them around every corner.
My daughter took an elective for this in HS, and every day would come home and say how much she was learning and how empowered she felt about money afterwards.
> What kids really need is a mandatory personal finance class at the High School level. This would teach them how to handle money, debt, spending, budgeting and general financial health.
Most of us are completely clueless in high school and the lessons will be completely forgotten. (Though I'm happy my province, Ontario, started doing this a few years ago.)
That is awesome Ontario is doing that. it will make a difference.
I agree that most of us get out of high school clueless, both because of age/maturity but also because schools are not teaching people HOW to think, they're teaching WHAT to think.
Two areas of knowledge would revolutionize the system, and obviously would never happen:
* critical reasoning -- this is I bought my kids a book on cognitive biases and how to think through problems and fallacies in thinking
* curiosity -- this is where AI would help in schools, but unfortunately teachers are pushing kids away from using AI in general, let alone using it as a tool to be curious and explore knowledge and reasoning about a subject
I can only conclude that these things are not inherently in the public school system on purpose to keep the population dumb and docile. I hate thinking that, but it's the only conclusion I can come to. Someone(s) wants our children to be dumb, dependent and easily manipulated in their thinking.
What kids really need is a mandatory personal finance class at the High School level. This would teach them how to handle money, debt, spending, budgeting and general financial health.
In the U.S., we had this for about 50 years, but was mostly gone by the mid-1980's. It was part of a class called Home Economics.
In some schools it was mandatory for everyone. In other schools, it was for girls only because at the time it started, it was usual for women to do the household finances.
The course often also included things like cooking, cleaning, and sewing. What people today learn from online "life hacks."
I'm glad I learned all of those skills in high school. I only rarely need to darn my socks, but the knots I learned translate to fishing and other needs.
Absolutely. My wife is Japanese, and they still teach "home economics" there (and no, it's not sexist .. both boys and girls have to attend classes). They learn the following, basically life skills:
* proper nutritional eating
* balancing a budget (saving, spending)
* simple skills like how to stitch and sew their clothes when there is a hole or button needs to be fixed
I looked at their text books and my jaw hit the floor. All up to date, amazing pictures and instructions, little anime characters teaching life skills in a fun way. I was blown away, it was both practical and fun.
My daughter got a class like this in her charter school, they learned how to change a tire for a car and such. She absolutely loved it. They ran scenarios like, "if you made $<x> amount of money per year, and you want to live around $<y> how could you do it?", and she learned how she would get a roommate, how to split rent effectively and make a monthly budget.
My middle school home ec class was completely worthless “skills” that weren’t worth the opportunity cost of the time, but a finance class would have been.
I wonder if this would very quickly get politicised.
Because what would you teach in these classes? I guess you'd start with, avoid debt, spend according to your means etc.
Next minute some politician will be concerned voters take it too seriously and start judging them by their ability to stick to budgets. Nononono. Let's make that curriculum less revolutionary.
Then I suppose there's corporate interest too. Surely spending withing your means is un-American? Let's include in the lessons stuff about spreading the cost of your purchase over 3 years on a credit card. And did you know Visa, our educational partner, offers you a student credit card with just 280% annual interest and 0.001% cashback, just to get you to dip your toes in the world of crippling debt? I mean, sustainable personal finance. And if that all gets too much, here's some opioid painkillers. There, much better.
We need to stop thinking like this for sure. Good advice is good advice, regardless of where it comes from.
The key lesson kids need to learn is to avoid debt and live within their means. Now-a-days every business has decided there is more revenue in pushing their individual debt platforms rather than their products. Go into the Gap, and the staff is heavily incentivized on pushing "Gap Cards", but not on actual product sales.
I won't get into a religious debate on if all debt is bad, but it is a fact that without financial awareness this is the #1 problem facing households today, spending above their means and having "bad" debt dragging down their wealth building.
At an early age I pointed out to my kids, as we went through a store cashier, the signs about "get a <x> card for savings" and brainwashed them that those are traps. They are now in college, everything is cash flowed, and they will not have a credit card in their name (in fact their credit is locked).
"But how will they be able to afford a house and get a loan if they don't have a credit score?!" -- by saving and investing their money instead of spending it with pieces of plastic. Loans can be given with manual underwriting. Cars can be bought with cash following simple rules.
Aside from all that though, just teaching AWARENESS and intentionality from a personal finance class will carry on beyond the class. Having awareness of spending (i.e. "Can I afford this?"), followed by intentionality ("I'll save $500 for the next three months and then buy it, instead of paying payments. I can wait!"), followed by planning (i.e. budgeting), and you have someone who is going to be successful and build wealth.
They could teach things like how credit cards, car and personal loans, and mortgages work. That the 'monthly payment' is not the only important piece of information. How tax brackets worth, how investments work, what bonds and stocks are. And so on and so on. None of this was taught when I was in high school, yet we're all expected to know these things to navigate life in the modern world.
I suspect ignorance is desired. Financially illiterate people are more profitable.
Some U.S. States have moved on this, such as Ohio, yet it does not get the coverage and press it deserves. Consider how much the debt driven capitalism machine would change if we force educated our up and coming young adults to understand how finances function. Very few think in time in our perceived as instant world and the social cost of this has only just begun.
I don’t really understand the underlying US government program— specifically why in a time of alarm over deficits “we” are enacting new private giveaways of public funds. Cynically, I doubt the folks who enacted this care one whit about folks who will turn 18 in the year 2044, 19 years from now. They only care about pumping the stock market today and winning elections in 2026 by transforming the Federal government into something like a hedge fund with a “save the children” sticker on the front door.
As for the Dells— they really do seem to care about our children and their philanthropy is beautiful.
Selfless move. Have a lot of respect for the Dell philanthropy arm for doing this, will surely benefit a bunch of kids down the road even if they are more financially literate
I would much rather tax the wealthy, so that we could create a society where we don't have children who need a "financial head start"
I read a book nearly a decade ago, that I think is worth highlighting.
> The book's central thesis is that members of the global elite are using philanthropic institutions to preserve a system that concentrates wealth and power at the top at the expense of societal progress. Giridharadas examines the narrow limits of modern philanthropy, claiming that rich donors avoid contributing to causes which could undermine their own lofty status. He argues that in some cases, the political lobbying efforts of wealthy donors may reduce the government's ability to address inequality.
Had a conversation with a us friend who works with philanthropy. That person agreed that philanthropy is ugly, but let me know that it is better than nothing while the US has its current ways.
You could simply fix that. In what world does a billionaire pay for a countries' contribution to the United Nations, an institute they helped found and which has its main seat in that country... it's shameful, really.
The top 10% of the earners in the US are paying 72% of the taxes collected. I'd assume most of the posters here from the US fall into that category. ($178k/year AGI). Are you willing to pony up more of your income for taxes?
> Are you willing to pony up more of your income for taxes?
The taxes don't have to come from income, there were plenty of tax cut extensions + some new ones that could have been let go without increasing the individual upper-middle-to-lower wealth class taxes and greatly cut down budget deficit with the increased revenue. Instead the extensions of the 2017 cuts are going add some 3.7 trillion over the next 10 years.
I pay as much tax as I can, and claim for none of the allowances I could. Some people actually understand that their tax is important. edit: I'm not in the US, but there's a lot of brits with your attitude too.
I was of that mindset until I learned how currencies and central banks work. The government doesn't need our tax money. US dollars aren't a fixed resource. With fractional reserve banking and interest rates, central bank controls how much new money is entering the economy. Taxes are a way to take some money out of the economy. However the economy runs warm at 2-3% inflation on average. Economy can technically run without any taxation if inflation is kept under control, and productivity of goods and services is going up.
State and city institutions get loans just like we do, sometimes at lower interest rates than individuals can. During covid, loan rate was lower than inflation. That is essentially free money.
It's a complex subject. We've been all told that US debt is a massive timebomb that will explode, however many other countries have higher debt:gdp ratio.
I'm not saying one shouldn't pay their taxes. I'm saying don't pay more tax than you need to. US govt can create money out of thin air either via congress approval or fed interest rate.
It's an interesting point, but "US govt can create money out of thin air either via congress approval or fed interest rate" has spectacular knock-on effects that you'd need to wilfully ignore. I recommend David Graeber's `Debt: The First 5,000 Years` for some good reading on the subject.
the non profit space relies on Congressional deadlock
I know several people that vote for and donate to campaigns for senators on the other side of the aisle just to help ensure gridlock
the next layer after that is that tax education is so poor that the population doesnt even know what laws they want to change
so its not worth talking about as that ensures another 100 years of “tax the rich” turning into “tax the income of wage workers making over $500k” by the time a bill makes it out of committee
(I don’t find that controversial, just different enough to be interesting)
what's more important to me isn't the single person vote itself, the campaign and cause contributions would be influential and the behavior is different than what people think those with money and some power in their domain are doing, how they're navigating and choosing candidates
You can tell this is happening from the fact that all elections seem to end up being a 49/51 result. There's some strange Nash Equilibrium thing going on.
that's just run of the mill polarization in the country, and that the party with more people hasn't been inspired to mass move them around the country for 5-8 months one year to register to vote and tip every election
That doesn't require anything nefarious. The parties can and do change their platforms and candidates to adapt to the electorate. If a party starts finding a way to win more votes, the other party will adjust to win them back.
It's like how prices at different gas stations tend to be within a few percent of each other. It's not conspiracy, just competition.
This is money flowing from rich people to (mostly) not-rich children. Although the mechanism is different, the money seems to flowing in the same direction you’re hoping for?
High income individuals already pay a majority of personal taxes in America. And American governments get about $10T(or $29k per citizen) to play with each year between federal, state, and local.
Exactly how much money is needed to create this society you're imagining? America has more than enough money (IMHO), we just suffer from cost issues, and if you just throw more money at a situation where you have cost issues, you are just burning the money.
To piggy back on this, as a thought experiment, if you took all the wealth of every American billionaire combined you would pay for the US government for about a year.
Top 10% wealth is $113T. Government is operating off of $5T revenue.
Seizing all of it and putting it into even a foreign owned asset basket (could pick an economy as shielded as possible from US in case it causes instability in US economy) should yield enough interest (at least 5% real) to operate the federal government and public entitlements indefinitely based on present real revenues.
It's not clear if this is meant to be a serious thought experiment, but nonetheless I would ask why you equate expenses ($6.8T) with revenue ($4.9T)? I suppose it might not make a big difference, but it's a strange decision (within an already very weird thought experiment.) Also not sure why you picked top 10% wealth, since the previous comment was about billionaires. The top 10% of net worth starts with low millionaires so... goodbye every single employer, I assume.
We suffer from billionaires hoarding money and companies creating an unfair market. Tell me what's the need for billionaires? Even having 100m is enough to feed a few generations of your family, isn't that enough?
This could teach a lot of kids at least some financial literacy, which is valuable in any situation or tax regime.
Personally, I would have loved to have some money on such an investment account as a kid, and I would nerd out on its development, discuss it with friends etc. Knowing that everyone around me has the same account would also make it less taboo to discuss money in general.
You would, but most kids would not care. I question the value because I've seen plenty of kids spend every penny they get on candy and other such things that are not valueable long term.
The OG claim wasn't a claim that they're more effective. It's that it could reduce inequality. By definition it's true. This is simple to prove. If I say, confiscate the wealth of anyone with more than a pot to piss in, and burn it in a fire. Then we would all be equal.
And even if that weren't the case, it's still not democratic to let people individually decide who gets what dollar. We build states so that we can direct their action through democratic means, using our votes. That's the best way
That's not a realistic position to take, no society works on that principle. The state always levies taxes (ok, Somalia may be excepted here) and the state always does the allocation of that money.
Use their wealth to accumulate more wealth through political connections. Use their wealth to disenfranchise others. Use it to harm others. How many forms of abuse are there and what would it take to enumerate them all?
" - $73.34 billion in tax revenue was lost to the public in 2022 due to personal and corporate charitable deductions.
- If we include just the little data we have about charitable bequests and the investments of charities themselves, the revenue loss is pushed up to roughly $111 billion.
- And if we also include the capital gains revenue lost from the donation of appreciated assets, the true revenue costs of charity likely add up to several hundreds of billions of dollars each year."
There is a political benefit for Trump and fellow Republicans. The accounts will become available in the midst of a midterm election, providing money to millions of voters — and a campaign talking point to GOP candidates — at a critical time politically. The $1,000 deposits are slated to end just after the 2028 presidential election.
They are obviously trying to buy the vote, so they can keep benefiting from the various tax breaks this admin is giving the wealthy...
I mean... This money isn't going into a matress. For 18 years, this is just a way for the government to give $3.6 billion to the owning class.
And as a bonus, it makes everyone defacto invested into the status quo of "line go up at all costs, devoid of relation to economy." Don't think about protest little ones, or you'll lose your nest egg and mommy and daddy lose their retirement.
I'm sure they're also salivating thinking about how to use this to justify the removal of Social Security payment in due time too.
Philanthropy at the personal level is good. People need to interact with their city and know their neighbors and their issues. Mega donations at the national level are really just end-runs around our democracy. We need to figure it out as a society, not have a rich person come in and say 'I have money and this is how I want society to work'. Even if I agree with you, I don't really want any individual to have that much power over that many people. We need to constantly find ways as a society of encouraging individual voices and reducing the power of money as a voice.
The government might spend the money on giant AI data centers instead, this donation is going directly to something helpful.
I've been thinking about a synthesis of communism and capitalism, where instead of levying dollar taxes, the corporations transfer 0.5% of control (stock, etc) to the government per year. Adjusted for how much the government already controls.
I think you hit the nail on the head with your "good enough" phrasing. It might actually not be good enough. It begs all sorts of questions about the state of things in the US that an extremely wealthy individual has the means to do this and at the same time that something like this doesn't already exist for the recipients via some other mechanism such as the entity that's responsible for a citizen's well being playing some role.
It is good, though. I think most folks who complain about it, though, wish it were better (better does not mean Dell spends even more of his own money on this, not directly anyway).
Many people view the existence of billionaires as a profound societal flaw. The accumulation of such obscene wealth by an individual is only possible because of systemic problems which prevented employees from capturing their fair share of their productivity, prevented competitors from entering the market to lower margins or prevented customers from being able to purchase at lower prices.
It's a good thing that he's giving away 4% of his wealth. He'll still have $140,000,000,000 left after this donation though, which is relevant context.
Trivial for a lot of people, sure, but imagine the difference between not knowing what an investment account is and knowing that you've got $250 in one that you can contribute more to.
So..a 401k
At least the 401k is pre-tax. This on the other hand is taxed on both ends. Maybe I am missing something, but I really don’t see the upside.
If you add in the 1000$ that treasury plans to invest starting next year, that is $1250 compounded at 5% annually after 18 years to $3008.27. It's probably still not a "head start" given that inflation is assumed to nominally rise at 2.5 to 3.5% annually and will take a bite out of what the real value is worth in 18 years. Good intentions but misplaced as others have stated. Investing in other ways to provide upward economic mobility will provide much better ROI for the society than allowing most of the wealth to accrue to a handful of people
> If you add in the 1000$ that treasury plans to invest starting next year, that is $1250
This is largely separate from your point, which is good, but the $250 is for kids that won't get the $1000. The $1000 only goes to kids born between 2025 and 2028.
Real quick, the $1000 530A account, if you put in just $1/day, $30/mo, on top of that account, then you get out ~$12,000 at the end of 30 years (assuming 5% interest rate). Which, yeah, that's enough to start a very small business (lawncare, blacksmithing, etc).
The stock market is at ~9.5% returns historically, inflation is likely at ~3% historically, so assume a little higher at 6.5% and that $1000 with a dollar a day increase is then ~$14,800, inflation adjusted.
If you go up to ~$100/mo at 6.5%, then you get ~$42,000, which is an honest start to a small business or college tuition.
The little extra per month really adds up here!
I may not like the administration for a lot of things, but this is one thing that I can really get behind.
Yes, but if you then put in just $5.00 / mo , it jumps to ~$2,300 , a 3.8x increase.
If you put in $30.00 / mo , a dollar a day, then it goes all the way up to $10,700 , a 18x increase (42x over the $250)
Look, we can play with numbers all day long here.
The fundamental difference is the additional contribution amount. Finding just a little bit here and there makes a huge difference.
And getting people into the habit of putting a set amount away each month is the key. Priming this habit, getting folks to look past the next 2 weeks, to just consider the adult they are raising, I think that will be hugely affective.
I may not like what the current administration is doing in a lot of things. But for this little one thing, I can at least applaud this little one thing. I think it will really help out a lot of people in more than just the pure cash.
A little help for millions likely ends up mattering for some of them. It’s a head start in that it removes a single minor issue, shows the value of compound interest in a more tangible way, or possibly gets them to retirement weeks/months earlier.
Obviously many people are happy to spend whatever, but with 25 million people you’ll see a wide range of personalities and life situations. Imagine an otherwise identical life without 600 dollars of credit card debt, that’s a worth quite a bit over time and will likely apply to some of these individuals. Perhaps a musical instrument or similar purchase will end up really helping someone kid, you never really know.
One of the most important benefits will be the example being set.
People will have a visible example of the power of compounding. It’s just a shame there isn’t more time in the equation so they could see the real magic happen.
Did you know that at typical market rates, someone saving $1000 at age 20 would have $64,000 at age 62?
Even more illustrative, if the same person waited until age 27 to save the same $1000, they would only get 32k. If they started at 34, they’d only get $16k!
The importance of time as the secret ingredient is the best kept secret ( that’s endlessly explained by people like Warren Buffett ). Hopefully these accounts will help the message stick.
But what if 10 or twenty of them want to start a company? Maybe they have some savings or can get parents to chip in or a grant, but they can’t open a store and work it, or start a landscaping business or a software company.
I mean you could buy books your first semester of your $75k/year freshman year of college though! Think of all the new Calculus that'll be in the 23rd edition of the standard textbook that costs $150. /s
a savings system for workplace pensions in retirement. It involves money earned by an employee being placed into an investment fund to be made legally available to members upon retirement. Employers make compulsory payments to these funds at a proportion of their employee's wages.
Currently, the mandatory minimum "guarantee" contribution is set at 12%, having increased from 11.5% on 1 July 2025
As of 30 June 2025, Australians have AU$4.33 trillion invested as superannuation assets, making Australia as a nation the 4th largest holder of pension fund assets in the world.
How much are the investment bankers going to profit off these childhood investment accounts?
They're making it seem like this is some big selfless thing, giving a bunch of kids a small amount of cash. I see it as a big payday for the large banks.
It's a tiny pittance of what would have been owed had they been taxed appropriately, and seems conveniently timed to bury the news of Dell (via Dell Federal Systems) funding ICE (it's completely erased it from the first page search results for "dell funds ice" in less than 24 hours).
This isn't badass, it's a disgrace. They've hoarded an incredible amount of wealth generated by others and returned a sliver of it. You've been so conditioned to accept this system that you're even grateful for the scraps.
If they gave $100 billion, they'd still have over $51 billion in the bank. That's roughly $7 million a day for every day he's been alive, or enough to feed every child in America for over a decade. Imagine the regional economic stimulus if instead of being hoarded for nearly half a century that money was paid out in salaries to those actually earning that money. _And_ they'd still have billions.
Can you explain what part of that is "communist nonsense"? Appropriate taxation (and leaving them with billions still even after that)? Or was it feeding hungry children you're against?
America had a tax rate of 91% on the obscenely wealthy for decades and around 70% until the 80s. Reducing this to historical lows has universally, by both bipartisan and nonpartisan[2] parties, been found to have been the primary driver of inequality[1].
At even an absurd 99% tax rate, applied equally instead of tiered, Michael Dell would have $1.5 billion dollars.
> Or society could decide that people shouldn't have to pay for [healthcare]
Society has already basically decided that: it's called health insurance. Having a "single" "government" payer where claimants actually pay nothing at PoS can be thought of like a very low deductible health insurance plan, can it not? Everyone still pays their premium in taxes, unless we mean to enslave doctors and nurses.
for comparison: every child in germany receives 250euro per month from birth at least until they are 18 years old. that is 54000euro per person. it is simply a negative tax in a way. and it is not meant to be saved but used for the childrens every day needs.
interesting. how does that work specifically? if your income is so low that you don't pay taxes, do you actually get cash?
the german system simply pays out the money unconditionally. regardless of income. it doesn't affect your taxes, but if the regular taxes happen to lower then you get more money than you pay.
> A portion of the Child Tax Credit is refundable for 2024. This portion is called the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC). For 2024, up to $1,700 per child may be refundable.
say i am earning 2000$ per month. i pay $100 on taxes on that. so that's $24000 income and $1200 in taxes per year.
$1700 as a tax credit, does that mean my taxes are 0? or do i get $500 on top of my income?
so after taxes how much do i have? 24000? 24500? and where are the $250 per month you mentioned?
here is how it works in germany:
24000 euro is my income. 1200 euro are my taxes. but i get 3000 euro unconditional per child. so after taxes my total income is 25800 euro with one child. add 3000 for each additional child.
the actual tax rate is made up, and just set to 5% to make the comparison easier.
I’m not sure how much good $250 will do for a child.
I think this essentially explains why taxing billionaires is not very useful, because the total amount of their life generated wealth assets amounts to a small amount for 25 million people let alone larger populations.
Even if you took all the $’s away, the government really needs to tax high numbers of lower income people for the income to be meaningful.
Depends on how it is spent. Buy candy/beer - as many kids will (depending on when they are allowed to access it) and there is no good. Buy some education and it is good. Remember money is fungable - even if this money can only be used for something good, it can still free up money for something bad that in turn destroyes the good (you buy tuition for a semester, but then use your free cash to party and get bad grades...) I don't know how to solve this problem, but it is one everyone should be aware of.
Again, depends on how it is spent. How much of that spending is for outliers - every school has a few severely disabled kids who can't even feed themselves: schools spend a lot more on those kids even though they will never learn. Also there is a lot of money spent on sports, music, art... which have debatable use in education - your community has come down on one side of the debate, but that doesn't mean it is right.
Note too that higher education in the US is partially supported by things other than tuition and so 250 can go farther than it seems because it is 250 applied to your portion of the whole... We can debate how much different payers should pay, but that is a different question.
I think if this were a much larger number like $100k or even $10k, I might agree with your argument, but the fact that this less than 1% of a college degree or less than 1% of a communities total spending on a child or even just a fraction of the minimum wage.
I feel he would have been better off going to someone like Coursera and funding minimum accredited US associates degrees and delivered electronically and delivered for free to anyone in the United States.
It seems like the buying power of $6 billion to deliver electronic services on the cheap would make more sense than giving millions of children a one time amount of essentially pocket change in relation to total spending.
They rather give kids $6.25B going straight to SPX than build schools. At some point, the billionaires
realized it’s best to keep Americans uneducated. They then turn around and hire all the immigrants and complain why there are so many of them in this country.
People realize this is precursor to them removing social security for this generation of kids?
"Why don't the poor just have investment accounts" - Marie-Antoinette Dell
Having $250 in an account does practically nothing for the child. But having $6.25B invested does generate fees for bankers chosen to manage this program. (Chosen by the president's Wall Street entourage, presumably?)
So we are going to live in a world where the national well-being is dependent on the good whims of billionaires and their "pet" causes. Not in the geographic or interest vicinity of a feudal lord? Too bad, maybe you should work harder, fuck you.
If only there was some sensible way for 25M children to be given a financial head start that wasn't Michael Dell directly funding it.
See his total net worth and the YTD increase:
https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/michael-s-de.... Google/ChatGPT his 2019 (pre-covid) net worth (I'll save you the trouble): $27B. It doesn't matter if it's super accurate because we all know the multiple is probably pretty accurate given what's transpired.
And before you go calling me a wealth hater, I just wish the US wasn't such a wealth lover. Just a bit less emphasis on people getting rich and a bit more emphasis on getting our shit together so that the government can fund savings accounts for kids and while they're at it teach them some basic understanding of investment/budgeting.
Yes, good call, you're right. Does that completely undercut my sentiment? That said, I'm all for Dell and every other billionaire jumping on board as well because you'd end up with a pretty nice entitle--err--nest egg for the future. I even have a clever name for it: pre-social security.
Why is private philanthropy not sensible in this case? Should all philanthropy be socialized and centralized and administered by the federal government?
No, it should not all be socialized and centralized. Think things are running smoothly in the US at the moment? I wish it were the case that Michael Dell would have to consider whether the deployment of that kind of capital is a layup for him or if it requires some major sacrifice on his part. And, yes, it's better that he does it than not, but I won't pat him on the back too hard given the math.
It's so interesting how many of the comments already are some variant of how ridiculous this is that a rich person voluntarily donated their own money. That that's somehow bad, and what we really need to do is to force all of them to donate via taxation.
But you just got $6 billion and you already want more? This attitude exactly why so many people are against raising taxes, supposedly against their own self-interest. The idea that I can freely spend OTHER people's money is the most seductive thing in the world.
I don't think it's ridiculous that he voluntarily donated six billion dollars. I think it's ridiculous that he had six billion dollars to donate. I think it's even more ridiculous that donating six billion dollars won't even make a noticeable dent in his wealth.
Just checked my accounts, I didn't get $6B. Maybe the wire just hasn't come through, I'll check back tomorrow.
Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.
Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”
$6B is what, 4% of his current net worth? For a family with a million dollar net worth that's about $40k to put it in more normal human perspectives.
I think there's plenty of more socially bad ways for him to toss his wealth around. I applaud him for doing a bit. But I also don't exactly see it as some extreme amount of charity, because at his level it really isn't that extreme.
Oh, I said, right, we should set one of those up for her.
Once she had one, it was clear I should be adding to it every month. But, the initial nudge to get her one was important. Hopefully, having an account will make it more likely to put a little in every month? It's not everything, but it's also not nothing.
Of course, cheaper housing would help the kids more, but that has more entrenched interests opposed to it (almost every homeowner), and not even Dell has enough to overcome that.