59. The Billionaire Philanthropy Episode: Can We Save Lives Without Turning Over Our Democratic Institutions to the Capitalists?

Explicit content warning

08/27/20 • 49 min

In this episode, we really engage in The DiscourseTM - there is a larger Internet conversation going on about whether billionaires should be lauded for giving money to charitable causes or if we should be skeptical that they are doing so to preserve a fundamentally exploitative status quo that ultimately harms more people than it helps. And we (as Phil DeFranco, one of Deondre's favorite YouTube stars would say) dive right into it.
On the one hand, there is no doubt that philanthropy involves a fair bit of whitewashing, where rich people can use their charitable giving to try to divert attention away from their corrupt business practices (and try to lower their own tax burden). Sometimes they even take influence and power away from the communities they are trying to help by dictating how the money they are giving will be used. But most opponents of philanthropy say those wealthy people should be taxed instead. Should they?
As we are in the midst of one of the biggest movement for Black lives in the history of America, and one mechanism of financial activism that has gained prominence in recent months is bail funds. This is one example where taking money away from billionaires and giving it to the government makes the problem WORSE. While we generally do believe the rich should pay higher taxes, this is just one of the many reasons why we question whether taxing the rich is truly a better alternative to philanthropy.
Links:
Vox article making the case against Billionaire Philanthropy: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/12/17/18141181/foundation-charity-deduction-democracy-rob-reich
Against Against Billionaire Philanthropy (Slate Star Codex blog post): https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/29/against-against-billionaire-philanthropy/
2015 TED Talk where Bill Gates, the Prophet Nobody Listened To, tells us all how we should be preparing for the next pandemic (and we clearly took that information and chucked it out the window): https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready?language=en
Note: In this episode, I (Isabel) mistakenly stated that Bill Gates told us his pandemic readiness plan would cost $1 trillion. What he actually said was that he didn't know exactly how much it would cost, but if we didn't prepare at all, the economy stood to lose $3 trillion.

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

Previous Episode

58. The Toxic Workplaces Episode: Respect and Paychecks Don't Always Go Together

Have you ever had to work overtime without getting paid for it? Had an abusive boss, or just a boss who didn't know how to manage? We talk about how so many workplaces, especially nonprofits an social mission-driven organizations wind up being toxic and what we can do to make workplaces more humane. So much of the time, bad bosses don't wind up getting fired because they have the trust of the higher-ups (which is why they were promoted in the first place) and their loss would be so much more disruptive than letting the employees they abuse leave the organization. In this episode, we talk with Sakeenah Shabazz about her experiences with Americorps and the nonprofit world

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

Next Episode

60. The Generational Trauma Episode: Simply Existing in America is Giving the Average Black Person PTSD

In this episode, we sit down with DeWayne Anderson, host of the Instagram Live show, Wine Down Sunday. He talks about his experiences with mental health, why it is so stigmatized for black men to pursue self care, and how it is almost inescapable for the average Black person in America to have PTSD with all of the gruesome depictions of Black death and brutalization in the media and our history classes.
He goes into the many things that we need more education about: we need stories of Black flourishing prior to being enslaved, in addition to the traumatizing depictions of slavery and racism in America that are so necessary to spurring us to action. We need to teach about Malcolm X. We need education about mental health services, which he himself didn't learn about until he was 22. We talk about these and so many other things that collectively flow into our understand of generational trauma.
Links:
DeWayne's show, Wine Down Sunday: https://www.instagram.com/thebeardgawd_/?hl=en
Atlantic Article stating that 1 in 3 teens receives over 100 texts a day: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/my-students-dont-know-how-to-have-a-conversation/360993/
Music is Beauty of Maths by Meydän.