Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage
-
@gąska said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
@hardwaregeek said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
@gąska said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
@blakeyrat there's less than 200,000 of ALL Teslas worldwide. Even if we assume 90% are sold to CA, that's very far from commonplace in such populous state.
Yes, but you can't stand on a Silly Valley street corner for 10 minutes without seeing a dozen of them drive by.
I've just thought of an amazing use case for self-driving cars: you can save on parking fees by never actually parking! Just keep it in motion for the 8 hours you're at work, and have it pick you up when you're done!
Alternatively, drive to work, and let self-driving find a free parking spot within 30 miles radius.
Why waste fuel without getting something back? Send it off to be an Uber and earn its keep
-
@greybeard Yes.
-
@blakeyrat So no reason? Just pure bigotry?
-
@greybeard Whatever lights your candle.
-
@blakeyrat I'm just not following you. Donating to charity is supposed to be an example of why people are garbage? That doesn't even make sense.
-
@boomzilla said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Just write a few checks to those places where you want the money to be used.Some of us care to have a larger proportion of that money go to the charity than the Federal and State governments.
-
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
@blakeyrat I'm just not following you. Donating to charity is supposed to be an example of why people are garbage? That doesn't even make sense.
The problem is that the money is just a tax write-off for the donors, but is never actually put to use to help anyone — except the fund manager, who gets paid fees based on the amount of money the fund holds, not what it gives away.
-
@hardwaregeek said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
but is never actually put to use to help anyone
Bull pucky.
Why on earth would anyone donate to the sole benefit of the fund manager? There ain't no tax write-off worth more than the value donated. At least not to a donor-advised fund—they don't take old clothes you can't dispose of any other way.
-
@greybeard Did you read the article? There are billions of dollars sitting in donor-advised funds that just sit there. The donors never bother to advise how the funds should be disbursed, sometimes intentionally — I want my kids to do that after I'm dead — and the fund managers have no incentive to encourage the donors to get off their butts. Meanwhile, the charities that could use the money to help people can't find out how to apply for the money, because there's no requirement to disclose what sort of charities the donor might be interested in supporting, nor even who to talk to to find out.
-
@hardwaregeek said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Did you read the article?
Yeah, it was some charities going "Waah! Waah! People aren't giving us as much money as we deserve!" and "Waah! Waah! We can't spam our donors as much as we were used to!" And some section on "This is so unfair to private foundations!"
there's no requirement to disclose what sort of charities the donor might be interested in supporting, nor even who to talk to to find out.
Why on earth should there be a requirement for them to disclose this sort of PII and profiling information on their donors? Is your idea of charity to help out the Cambridge Analytica types?
One of the things a donor-advised fund can do is act sort of like an HSA or 529, but entirely constrained to charity. Take the drop in taxable income in a high-tax-bracket year, let it accrue tax-free, then disburse it to charity in a low-tax-bracket year.
Are people who let money accrue in HSAs, 529s, and other tax-advantaged accounts human garbage?
-
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
@boomzilla said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Just write a few checks to those places where you want the money to be used.Some of us care to have a larger proportion of that money go to the charity than the Federal and State governments.
Did you read TFA? The funds were sitting on the money and the money wasn't getting to the actual charities. They did say that some funds were better than others at actually dispersing money, but that seems like a secondary objective to getting people to donate (which the current tax law really encourages) and then building up their fund into a permanent institution.
It's possible that they'll eventually get big enough and then be a good source of funding for the sorts of worthy causes that most people thought they'd be helping, but at best there's a massive delay in the system as they set up their perpetual money machine and at worst that's all they're really doing and the charity stuff is just a scam to get people to give them money.
My post was saying that you could skip the fund and give directly to charities. This has the upside that the money goes where you think it would be useful (and should still be tax deductible) with the downside that you have to research the charities yourself.
-
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Are people who let money accrue in HSAs, 529s, and other tax-advantaged accounts human garbage?
I think you're totally missing the point. At the risk of repeating stuff that I just posted, the problem is that the money doesn't get to charities. I think that blakey's rage is better directed at the fund managers, not the people giving away money thinking that they're donating to charitable causes, but he's weird and bigoted like that.
-
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
I'm just not following you.
Good! Every fucking other person in your shitty State has moved up to Washington and turned ours into a raging hellhole, maybe you'll be the one fucking exception. Do not follow me. Ever.
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Donating to charity is supposed to be an example of why people are garbage?
Donating to a garbage charity makes you a garbage person.
Also everybody who lives in Silicon Valley is a garbage person, based on the kind of businesses they found, the kind of posts they make on Hacker News, the actual stories I get from my step-sister who is an HR person at Facebook, which has basically made some kind of mutant 21st century Chinese walled city where you can spent 20 hours a day, be waited on in every possible way by servants, and ensure you never talk to someone who makes less than $160,000/year. (I imagine Google and Apple are no better. This is also why people in Seattle are hating on Amazon so much, because they've taken this route instead of the good citizen Microsoft route of actually engaging with their community.)
And so fucking greedy! You can't have a conversation with a Silicon Valley person for more than 10 minutes without hearing some get rich scheme. Greed greed greed.
-
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Yeah, it was some charities going "Waah! Waah! People aren't giving us as much money as we deserve!" and "Waah! Waah! We can't spam our donors as much as we were used to!" And some section on "This is so unfair to private foundations!"
See this is what I mean. So fucking greedy. Every conversation with a Silicon Valley person is like:
Money money money. Money money? Rich money money money! Money money rich money yacht rich. Money rich money money.
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Are people who let money accrue in HSAs, 529s, and other tax-advantaged accounts human garbage?
Just the ones who live in Silicon Valley.
-
@gąska And then I remember there is a hotel that is built in university campus.
-
@blakeyrat said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
You can't have a conversation with a Silicon Valley person for more than 10 minutes without hearing some get rich scheme.
I won't bring that up! But I will talk about my dogs. And probably poop. Us dog-people are weird like that.
-
@blakeyrat said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Donating to a garbage charity makes you a garbage person.
Garbage men are people too!
I've never seen a garbage woman that I'm aware of.
-
@blakeyrat said in [Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage]:
And so fucking greedy! You can't have a conversation with a Silicon Valley person for more than 10 minutes without hearing some get rich scheme. Greed greed greed.
@blakeyrat said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
See this is what I mean. So fucking greedy. Every conversation with a Silicon Valley person is like:
Money money money. Money money? Rich money money money! Money money rich money yacht rich. Money rich money money.
...this from the guy who bought a cryptominer?
-
@masonwheeler said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
...this from the guy who bought a cryptominer?
Yes.
EDIT: since you're trying to paint me as a hypocrite, you might want to know:
- I am a hypocrite, I've never claimed otherwise, queue Walt Whitman quote you've probably heard from me before.
- At the time I bought this B3 miner I also bought TWO power supplies for it because a friend of mine needed one. He hasn't repaid me and I haven't asked him to. (Although it was like a $120 gift so I have to admit it's bugging me somewhat.)
-
@blakeyrat said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Like seriously, just flush your money down the toilet, it'd be just as effective.
If I do that, can I name the toilet after myself?
-
@boomzilla said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
I've never seen a garbage woman that I'm aware of.
-
@blakeyrat said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Also everybody who lives in Silicon Valley
is a garbage person, based on the kind of businesses they found,
Nope.
the kind of posts they make on Hacker News,
Nope. I don't even read Hacker News (unless there's a link from here); never posted.
the actual stories I get from my step-sister who is an HR person at Facebook, which has basically made some kind of mutant 21st century Chinese walled city where you can spent 20 hours a day,
Nope. Don't even have a Facebook account.
be waited on in every possible way by servants,
Hah! I wish! Sometimes I can get my son to do some chores.
and ensure you never talk to someone who makes less than $160,000/year.
Nope. I wouldn't even be able to talk to myself.
You can't have a conversation with a Silicon Valley person for more than 10 minutes without hearing some get rich scheme.
Nope. I don't think I've ever talked about a get rich scheme, unless to make fun of it.
-
@boomzilla said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Did you read TFA?
Yes I did. It was garbage, written by a hack.
The funds were sitting on the money and the money wasn't getting to the actual charities.
The funds were sitting on they money because that's what those particular donors wanted. The funds will go to some charity at some point; they are constrained so.
They did say that some funds were better than others at actually dispersing money, but that seems like a secondary objective to getting people to donate (which the current tax law really encourages) and then building up their fund into a permanent institution.
It's possible that they'll eventually get big enough and then be a good source of funding for the sorts of worthy causes that most people thought they'd be helping, but at best there's a massive delay in the system as they set up their perpetual money machine and at worst that's all they're really doing and the charity stuff is just a scam to get people to give them money.
Do you even know how donor-advised funds work?
My post was saying that you could skip the fund and give directly to charities. This has the upside that the money goes where you think it would be useful (and should still be tax deductible) with the downside that you have to research the charities yourself.
Either way the bulk of the money goes where you think it would be useful and you have to research the charities yourself. The downside of skipping the fund is that less money goes to the charities and more goes to government.
-
@boomzilla said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Are people who let money accrue in HSAs, 529s, and other tax-advantaged accounts human garbage?
I think you're totally missing the point. At the risk of repeating stuff that I just posted, the problem is that the money doesn't get to charities. I think that blakey's rage is better directed at the fund managers, not the people giving away money thinking that they're donating to charitable causes, but he's weird and bigoted like that.
The money does go to charities. The manager takes a cut, just like the administrative staff at many charities do, but unless the donors are being wildly irrational that cut is less than what would have been taken by government were the fund not used.
As I said, do you even know how donor-advised funds work?
-
@blakeyrat said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Donating to a garbage charity makes you a garbage person.
You have no idea how the fund I donated to has disbursed those proceeds.
But check: donating to charities other than those Blakey personally approves of makes people garbage.
And so fucking greedy! You can't have a conversation with a Silicon Valley person for more than 10 minutes without hearing some get rich scheme.
Like all my posts about running cryptomining hardware.
-
@blakeyrat said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
See this is what I mean. So fucking greedy.
I point out that the two main complaints of charities are that there's a big pot of money that exists that they think they deserve more of and that the ability to disburse funds anonymously makes it hard for the nonprofits to "engage with potential givers" and that makes me the greedy one?
-
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Do you even know how donor-advised funds work?
Apparently by investing most of the money instead of giving it to charities.
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Either way the bulk of the money goes where you think it would be useful and you have to research the charities yourself. The downside of skipping the fund is that less money goes to the charities and more goes to government.
Allegedly. The point of the article was that less than you think is actually going there.
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
As I said, do you even know how donor-advised funds work?
I mean...you said that you read TFA but it seems like you didn't. I dunno...maybe you found one that actually prioritizes distributing funds to charities. Both TFA and I mentioned that.
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
@blakeyrat said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
See this is what I mean. So fucking greedy.
I point out that the two main complaints of charities are that there's a big pot of money that exists that they think they deserve more of and that the ability to disburse funds anonymously makes it hard for the nonprofits to "engage with potential givers" and that makes me the greedy one?
Now, I'd like to draw a contrast between myself and blakey (duh!). My concern here is that what you think is going on is not actually going on, though I have allowed that you managed to find one of the good ones. Let's assume that's true for the sake of argument.
But do you really think it's unlikely that at least some people would see this sort of institution and not turn it into a hedge fund that pays them a cushy salary while sending the minimum possible amount to the sorts of causes that people thought they were supporting?
-
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Yes I did. It was garbage, written by a hack.
But was it true.
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
The funds were sitting on they money because that's what those particular donors wanted.
Then that's a pretty shitty donation, isn't it. It's almost like that was the point of the article.
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Do you even know how donor-advised funds work?
Apparently: like shit. The answer to "how do donor-advised funds work?" is "like shit".
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Either way the bulk of the money goes where you think it would be useful and you have to research the charities yourself.
So where did your money go?
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
The downside of skipping the fund is that less money goes to the charities and more goes to government.
The government spends it on stuff like schools and roads. That's better than the alternative you're offering here, which is nothing.
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
The money does go to charities. The manager takes a cut, just like the administrative staff at many charities do, but unless the donors are being wildly irrational that cut is less than what would have been taken by government were the fund not used.
Why are you so angry about "the government getting money"? It's called taxes, and it's how society functions. When society isn't filled with sociopath Silicon Valley jackasses, at least.
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
But check: donating to charities other than those Blakey personally approves of makes people garbage.
No; people being garbage makes people garbage.
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Like all my posts about running cryptomining hardware.
I don't get the link between wanting to own an ASIC miner and "being greedy" and two people have brought up now. ASIC miners are cool tech. I bought it with toy money I earned because I got stupid-lucky with an early Bitcoin investment. (Which I made because, at the time at least, I thought blockchain was cool tech too.) It's a nerd thing, not a greed thing.
-
To be fair, there's nothing wrong with setting up an endowment as a charitable fund. Donations go into an investment account, and the returns go to the charity every year. If you're looking for something that will be better at providing long-term (more than 20 years) funding, then this kind of endowment is a great idea. I've donated money to a couple different such funds.
Of course, this should be clearly stated up front. Saying that donations will go to some charity, when they instead go into an investment fund, is a dick move and probably fraud. But if you tell people that it's an endowment fund, there's nothing wrong with it.
-
@dragnslcr said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
But if you tell people that it's an endowment fund, there's nothing wrong with it.
True, as long as the proceeds from the endowment are used for charitable purposes. But if you have an endowment with hundreds of millions of dollars, as some of the wealthy donors have given, you're getting an ROI of a lot more than 1%, which is all some of them are giving away. A private charitable foundation, such as the Ford Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, or the Pew Memorial Trust (to name just a few that I can think of off the top of my head, because I hear their names fairly often on Public Radio), give away at least 5% of their assets each year (because the law requires it), but their endowments don't seem to be running dry. Giving a measly 1% looks stingy; coupled with the anonymity and lax regulation these funds have, it leads to articles like this that accuse them of abusing the "charity" designation.
-
@blakeyrat said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Why are you so angry about "the government getting money"? It's called taxes, and it's how society functions. When society isn't filled with sociopath jackasses, at least.
Something something
SocialismCommunism... Something something you can run a state on something other than taxes you bloody moron...Not that greybeard would say this, but, um, that's what I've read around here.
-
@blakeyrat said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Why are you so angry about "the government getting money"? It's called taxes, and it's how society functions
-
@boomzilla said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Do you even know how donor-advised funds work?
Apparently by investing most of the money instead of giving it to charities.
No. When the money is invested and when it is disbursed is almost always up to the desires of the donor-advisors. Some donors want to disburse sooner, others want to disburse later. TFA tots up the amount of money in the latter category and uses it in a smear campaign.
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Either way the bulk of the money goes where you think it would be useful and you have to research the charities yourself. The downside of skipping the fund is that less money goes to the charities and more goes to government.
Allegedly. The point of the article was that less than you think is actually going there.
As a donor-advisor, one knows exactly where the money is going. The funds give regular statements.
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
As I said, do you even know how donor-advised funds work?
I mean...you said that you read TFA but it seems like you didn't. I dunno...maybe you found one that actually prioritizes distributing funds to charities. Both TFA and I mentioned that.
You're speaking from ignorance. TFA could be from ignorance or malice.
But here goes:
A Greybeard Primer on Donor-Advised Funds
Why Donor-Advised Funds Exist
Tax arbitrage.
A donation to charity decreases the net worth of the donor by and increases the funds owned by the charity. Because of the way the US income tax is structured, the two amounts can differ.
A donor-advised fund can structure transactions such that the amount of net worth drop per amount gained by charity is decreased or the amount gained by charity for a set amount of net worth drop is increased. You can look at it either way—they're essentially the same thing. The difference comes from the government's collection of income tax from the donor.
How Donor-Advised Funds Operate
Legally, a donor-advised fund is a charity which gives money to other charities.
The donor-advisors open accounts and the fund keeps a ledger for each account. When the donor-advisors donate to the fund, the fund converts the donation to cash and credits it to the account. The donor claims the donation as a tax deduction.
The donor-advisor can at any time advise the fund to give a specific amount of cash to a specific charity. If the amount is less than or equal to the balance of the account, the charity vets as acceptable to the fund, and various other conditions are met (the donor-advisor receives no tangible benefit, it does not satisfy a binding pledge by the donor-advisor, etc.) then the fund will accept the advice, disburse the cash, and debit the account by the amount.
In order for the cash to not just inflate away between the time of donation and the time of disbursement, the fund will invest it. The advisor can advise as to which of a small set of mutual funds in which it will be invested. The gains or losses from these investments are tracked in the advisor's account.
The accounts are periodically debited to cover the administrative overhead.
Why a donor wouldn't just write a check directly
Suppose you have a bunch of stock with a cost basis of ε. Further suppose you want to reduce your net worth by $10,000 and give the proceeds to charity.
One way to do that would be to sell $10,000 worth of the stock and write a check for the proceeds directly to the charity. Ignoring state tax, you'd have to pay, say, $2,380 income tax on the stock sale. You'd get a deduction off your top tax rate, worth, say, $2,809. So that would be a net gain of $429 which you could then also give to the charity (resulting in a further deduction, but I won't calculate the series to infinity).
Another way is to give $10,000 of the stock directly to the charity. The charity would sell the stock and get the proceeds. You wouldn't have to pay the $2,380 income tax, but you can still take the $10,000 deduction worth $2,809. You could then give another $2,809 worth of stock to the charity, also resulting in a further deduction.
Donating appreciated assets instead of cash results in more money going to the charity per amount of net worth reduced.
Why a donor wouldn't just give the stock directly to the charity.
Well, sometimes donors do. I did this myself at the height of the bubble. It was an administrative hassle, both for myself and for the charity. The charity missed the email I sent them saying "hey, I transferred a bunch of stock into your account" so it sat there for months before they finally figured out who had sent it. Because of this overhead, it isn't terribly practical except for occasional, larger donations.
The value of donating through a donor-advised funds
The donor-advised fund, on the other hand, specializes in being able to accept appreciated assets. The donor can make one larger donation to the fund and then have the proceeds disbursed in smaller chunks to multiple charities. The charities get cash.
The donor can also have the proceeds disbursed in smaller chunks over several years. This allows them to take the donation deduction in one year, then take the standard deduction in subsequent years. All while causing the charities they support to get a steady stream of smaller, annual disbursements.
-
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
You're speaking from ignorance. TFA could be from ignorance or malice.
Perhaps. However, nothing in your primer was really news to me.
-
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Why Donor-Advised Funds Exist
Tax arbitrage.So literally the first and most important reason is "fuck taxes". Right.
-
@blakeyrat said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
So literally the first and most important reason is "fuck taxes". Right.
It's a pretty good reason.
-
@greybeard And none of what you said there is a problem. The problem is that (assuming the article has its facts correct) there are funds that don't do this:
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
The donor can make one larger donation to the fund and then have the proceeds disbursed in smaller chunks to multiple charities. The charities get cash.
The donor can also have the proceeds disbursed in smaller chunks over several years. This allows them to take the donation deduction in one year, then take the standard deduction in subsequent years. All while causing the charities they support to get a steady stream of smaller, annual disbursements.There are, apparently, funds that don't actually disburse the proceeds. The donor says, "I got my tax break; I don't care about the rest of that stuff." And the administrator says, "I get more fees for less work by not disbursing the money than by disbursing it. Why would I encourage the donor to advise me." So the money just sits there, and no real charities get supported.
-
@hardwaregeek said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
So the money just sits there, and no real charities get supported.
Since the fund is legally a charity, giving the money to the fund itself is lawful (though not exactly moral). Which is what is effectively happening according to your description (there are ways to squirrel the money out of the charity via subcontracting and management fees). Sounds like Situation Normal for finance; find something that is working well for the benefit of ordinary people and fuck it up for personal profit.
-
@dcon said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
@gąska said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
@blakeyrat there's less than 200,000 of ALL Teslas worldwide. Even if we assume 90% are sold to CA, that's very far from commonplace in such populous state.
Don't know about percentage, but they're damn common in Silly Valley. (The drivers are almost as bad as BMW drivers.)
That's just the AutoPilot, not the meatbag driver. The meatbag driver is only trying to keep the AutoPilot from killing them.
-
@blakeyrat said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Why Donor-Advised Funds Exist
Tax arbitrage.So literally the first and most important reason is "fuck taxes". Right.
Stop being a fucking cockhole.
-
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
The funds will go to some charity at some point
Yeah, just like copyright protection expires at some point...
-
@blakeyrat said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
So where did your money go?
So far, a local public school.
The government spends it on stuff like schools and roads.
If you want to donate extra funds to roads, fighter planes, and congressional junkets that's a valid choice. They even take PayPal. Others choose to direct what they can to other causes.
Why are you so angry about "the government getting money"? It's called taxes, and it's how society functions. When society isn't filled with sociopath Silicon Valley jackasses, at least.
I'm not angry about "the government getting money." I don't complain about the amount of money I pay in taxes. I'm not, however, going to volunteer to pay more taxes than required.
I don't get the link between wanting to own an ASIC miner and "being greedy" and two people have brought up now.
Seems a "get rich scheme" to me.
-
@hardwaregeek said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
A private charitable foundation...give away at least 5% of their assets each year (because the law requires it), but their endowments don't seem to be running dry. Giving a measly 1% looks stingy; coupled with the anonymity and lax regulation these funds have, it leads to articles like this that accuse them of abusing the "charity" designation.
TFA states that donor-advised funds in aggregate currently distribute around 14% of assets a year.
-
@boomzilla said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Now, I'd like to draw a contrast between myself and blakey (duh!). My concern here is that what you think is going on is not actually going on, though I have allowed that you managed to find one of the good ones. Let's assume that's true for the sake of argument.
But do you really think it's unlikely that at least some people would see this sort of institution and not turn it into a hedge fund that pays them a cushy salary while sending the minimum possible amount to the sorts of causes that people thought they were supporting?The amount that gets disbursed and when it is disbursed is almost entirely up to the respective donor-advisors. (If an account goes inactive, the fund I use will disburse it to a related foundation and thence to whatever charities they choose.)
Sure, the managers can be generous to themselves in the amount of cut they take. It's the same thing with the managers of charities. Market forces can at least put some sort of limit on that kind of thing.
-
@hardwaregeek said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
There are, apparently, funds that don't actually disburse the proceeds. The donor says, "I got my tax break; I don't care about the rest of that stuff." And the administrator says, "I get more fees for less work by not disbursing the money than by disbursing it. Why would I encourage the donor to advise me." So the money just sits there, and no real charities get supported.
There are donors who haven't yet advised their fund to disburse some or most of the proceeds in their account. There could be several reasons for this:
One, we just had a change in tax law. It would have been advantageous to make donations in 2017 that would otherwise have happened in later years and then disburse as usual.
Two, perhaps some event, such as a company sale, causes someone to have a spike in taxable income. Perhaps they want to earmark a portion of that income for charitable causes but don't want to disburse it immediately.
As I said, it can be used like an HSA but entirely constrained to charity.
-
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
TFA states that donor-advised funds in aggregate currently distribute around 14% of assets a year.
Yes, and it also states that individual funds vary a lot. Which we've been saying in the comments.
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
The amount that gets disbursed and when it is disbursed is almost entirely up to the respective donor-advisors. (If an account goes inactive, the fund I use will disburse it to a related foundation and thence to whatever charities they choose.)
I hear you. That doesn't seem to actually happen all the time though, which was the point.
-
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
@hardwaregeek said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
A private charitable foundation...give away at least 5% of their assets each year (because the law requires it), but their endowments don't seem to be running dry. Giving a measly 1% looks stingy; coupled with the anonymity and lax regulation these funds have, it leads to articles like this that accuse them of abusing the "charity" designation.
TFA states that donor-advised funds in aggregate currently distribute around 14% of assets a year.
TFA also states:
One-quarter of donor-advised fund sponsors distribute less than 1 percent of their assets in a year,
Also,
those funds with high payout rates could just be giving to another donor-advised fund, rather than to a public charity,
So, basically taking it out of one pocket and putting it in another (even if it's controlled by someone else, it's not necessarily doing anyone any good) counts as giving it away. I donate $1M to your fund; you donate $1M to my fund; we both get to claim $1M disbursements!
You actually give your money to someone who needs it. Great! But the rules for donor-advised funds make it very easy to play financial games instead of helping people, and apparently a lot of donors and managers would rather do that.
-
@boomzilla said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
Perhaps. However, nothing in your primer was really news to me.
You write as if you think the fund manager has significant effect on where and when the funds are disbursed. For example:
I dunno...maybe you found one that actually prioritizes distributing funds to charities.
In the usual case that is not the role of the manager. Yes, the manager will block disbursements to charities that don't pass their vetting, but that seems unlikely to significantly impede the total amount of disbursements.
Yes, and it also states that individual funds vary a lot. Which we've been saying in the comments.
You were saying:
the problem is that the money doesn't get to charities.
and
people giving away money thinking that they're donating to charitable causes
The bulk of the money goes to the charities the donors intend. When they intend it to go.
-
@hardwaregeek said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
So, basically taking it out of one pocket and putting it in another (even if it's controlled by someone else, it's not necessarily doing anyone any good) counts as giving it away. I donate $1M to your fund; you donate $1M to my fund; we both get to claim $1M disbursements!
Of what benefit to either of us?
But the rules for donor-advised funds make it very easy to play financial games instead of helping people, and apparently a lot of donors and managers would rather do that.
What financial game does a donor-advised fund permit a donor to profit from?
Why would any rational person with no intent to benefit to a real charity donate money to a donor-advised fund?
-
@greybeard said in Silicon Valley people are all greedy asshole human garbage:
What financial game does a donor-advised fund permit a donor to profit from?
I don't know how it works in USA, but in Poland, charities often spend money on services of for-profit company. I'm not aware of any law saying the service cannot be provided by company owned by charity's donor.
