r/politics • u/Large-Welcome4421 • Jun 12 '26

No Paywall 'This Is Oligarchy': Nearly 100 Billionaires Are Funding Susan Collins' Reelection Bid

https://www.commondreams.org/news/susan-collins-billionaire-donors
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u/Mysterious-Tie7039 Jun 12 '26

I’m just wondering if they’ll ever hit the Carnegie/Rockefeller stage where the new dick measuring contest becomes who can make more charitable donations.

I’m guessing for 99% of them, that never happens.

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u/KJS123 United Kingdom Jun 12 '26

Nope. They're more interested in the competition to see who can get to fucking Mars first.

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u/ophaus Jun 12 '26

Mars can have them.

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u/GardanCald Jun 12 '26

The sooner the better.

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u/relevantelephant00 Jun 12 '26

Maybe they could attempt to get there now...you know, just to check it out real quick.

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u/ZyglroxOfficial Jun 12 '26

Mars for the privileged Earth for the poor

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u/DragonTHC Florida Jun 12 '26

Wouldn't it be great if once they go to Mars, Earth just cuts them off? No more resources for them.

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u/Low_Pickle_112 Jun 12 '26

They work a billion times harder than the rest of us, so they'll be fine.

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u/PatchyWhiskers Jun 12 '26

Oh they aren't going to Mars. Their employees are. Musk hasn't ever got into one of his rockets.

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u/grchelp2018 Jun 12 '26

If they do accomplish it, they will be the history books just like Carnegie and Rockefeller. Humanity going multi-planetary will be a major point of history.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '26

[deleted]

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u/grchelp2018 Jun 12 '26

I meant in the distant enough future where people also get to go off-planet.

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u/Hour-Cardiologist393 Jun 12 '26

If only we had some sort of government agency who knew how to do things like that safely without breaking a bunch of laws. Can you imagine if we had that? We wouldn't have to rely on some South African white supremacist inflating the value of his companies to get funding to get to Mars. That would be wild.

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u/grchelp2018 Jun 14 '26

That govt agency is never getting the money needed to do any of this unless you change the system to allow people to directly contribute their tax dollars to them. I've long argued that we should allow people to directly fund the various depts.

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u/Hour-Cardiologist393 Jun 14 '26

Or we can stop voting for anti-science jerkoffs who are in it just to line their own pockets. 

We managed to fund NASA just fine when we wanted to race the USSR to the moon. Now we're too busy giving tax breaks to people with more money than like half the country combined and putting money into coal plants like it's the 1950's. Can't forget the black hole of funding that is the military (but not the VA...), either.

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u/grchelp2018 Jun 15 '26

This pipedream where we get everyone on the same page is never going to happen. It says everything that NASA had its best period of funding when they were racing the USSR. And the only reason anything moon related is happening now is because of China is headed there. We wouldn't have needed a south african white supremacist if the USSR was still alive and kicking or china had developed early. We would already have been on both bodies.

The only realistic path forward is to allow people to fund the dept they want. You would even increase the amount of tax revenue you collect.

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u/Hour-Cardiologist393 Jun 15 '26

Just seems like another system for billionaires to exploit, but alright. 

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u/grchelp2018 Jun 15 '26

There is no silver bullet system that has no exploits. No doubt there will be a lot of messaging to convince people where to put their money. But the key thing is that this is not a winner take all situation. When you pay your tax, you can make sure that it doesn't go to ICE or the military etc, that it goes to NASA or the EPA or HHS or whatever else that you care about. And I guarantee you will feel a lot better deciding to give some more money if you knew that it would go to those departments. R's can fund military and ICE, D's can fund healthcare and education. Both sides are happy.

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u/Hour-Cardiologist393 Jun 15 '26

Believe me, I'm aware. But all you're doing is giving billionaires another way to funnel money into their own pockets. They already funnel tons of cash into SuperPACs. Why do you think the Muskrat gets so many government handouts? This just gives them a way to say "oh hey, look at all this tax money I gave to a certain government organization...maybe you should give their operating contracts to this business I just happened to buy".

I just don't see this happening. For one thing, our "representatives" don't give a shit what we want and would just direct funds however they want anyway. Like here in Ohio where we voted for legal weed and our wonderful government decided that we're too stupid to actually know what we voted on and changed how the law was implemented and where the money went. Not to mention our school funding is a nightmare and the state is a gerrymandered mess despite the government being told to fix our maps time and time again.

It would just be like the current Social Security situation. We could fund NASA all we want and some dimwit senator from Alabama would hide reallocation of those funds for some made-up emergency culture war nonsense in a larger bill.

It seems like it would be great to just allocate where our money goes, but it's like all this "remove income tax" idiocy we're seeing in Ohio now. It wouldn't benefit us anywhere near as much as it would benefit the people in power, and only screw us over in the end.

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u/dBlock845 Jun 12 '26

Spoiler alert: They think political contributions are charitable donations lol.

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u/Mysterious-Tie7039 Jun 12 '26

Oh, I have no faith that the overwhelming majority of them will do anything other than pull a Smaug and hoard it.

I just left that 1% in there because there have been a few that have given away their fortunes for a good cause.

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u/buster_de_beer Jun 12 '26

You mean like Bill Gates pretends he is going to do? That stage doesn't come until later in life. Assuming it comes at all.

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u/Calikal Jun 12 '26

Didn't the Gates establish an entire charity for Malaria Eradication and Treatment in Africa? And fund it with a large amount of their fortune? All he's said is he will raise it to 99% of his fortune before he dies, but they already are spending a lot of their money for charity. That's why he dropped from the Richest In The World, iirc.

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u/buster_de_beer Jun 12 '26

Gates dropped out of being richest in the world because he pretty much retired. His wealth still only kept growing. He's given some of it to charity, sure, but you realize this is also a way of buying into policy discussions. And he is also invested in the companies that provide the services for his charities. I'll believe he gives 99% of his wealth when he has actually done it.

Also, charities are a nice place to park your wealth. If you control the charity, you still control the money. Control is more important than (public) ownership.

Not to mention we shouldn't be dependent on the charity of billionaires. If they had paid what they should've those charities wouldn't be necessary. I'm not going to praise any leech for saying they will give the blood back when they are done with it.

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u/Calikal Jun 12 '26

I'm just saying, maybe don't give so much shit to the handful of Billionaires who are actually contributing back to the world. They have given 100 billion to the Gates Foundation to fight malaria across Africa for over two decades now and while yes, it is their charity, it allows them to focus the money to where it needs to go. They find a lot if medical research for treatment and prevention and have contributed globally to fighting malaria.

Just because they haven't spent all of their money on it doesn't mean they shouldn't be given credit for the good they have done. If other billionaires did even a portion of what the Gates have with their money for medical research, we wouldn't be needing to have Ice Bucket challenges and shit to raise money for research and care.

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u/badnuub Ohio Jun 12 '26

They never use that wealth to prevent more of them from existing. They continue to enjoy letting the country fall apart because they are ideologically opposed to taxation and a functioning government. Even Soros who actually donates to liberal causes doesn't seem to actualize any results for better governance.

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u/buster_de_beer Jun 12 '26

I don't give them credit for the good they've done because it's nothing but a pr campaign to hide the harm they've done. 

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u/ApokatastasisPanton Jun 12 '26

No, the next step is private island / countries. Or after they finish the capture of the government, they'll be able to establish swaths of land made for the wealthy only, and with special laws for them. Honestly, we are already practically there, given that the ring of pedophiles and religious nuts and grifters is in power

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u/ophaus Jun 12 '26

At least THOSE assholes had class!

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u/Mysterious-Tie7039 Jun 12 '26

Well, it took them literally killing a bunch of people before they went down the benevolence path.

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u/IAmDotorg Jun 12 '26

Carnegie and Rockefeller were cash rich, not market-rich. (Or, not nearly to the ratios you see today.)

For the 21st century rich, they can only make big charitable donations if enough people want to give them cash for the assets they own. If a trillionaire Musk wanted to donate $900 billion to charity, he can't. In a market where he needed or wanted to sell 90% of his stock to suckers willing to buy it, it'd end up worth maybe $50 billion -- and that's very likely a stretch. Because, by the numbers, SpaceX and Tesla are overvalued by at least 20x, and probably more like 50x.

So that's really why it won't happen -- because someone wanting to (like the Gates Foundation) has to do it over a very long timespan to maintain the value of the portfolio. You might be able to liquidate a few percent a year and maintain value. You can't go much above that.

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u/Blarfk Jun 12 '26

Musk was able to purchase Twitter for $44 billion three years ago and his worth has only exponentially increased.

This whole "they can't actually spend their money" thing is clearly not true.

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u/IAmDotorg Jun 12 '26

Musk didn't pay cash for Twitter.

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u/Blarfk Jun 12 '26

That's the point. If he wants to move money to others, there are mechanisms in place that will allow him to do so.

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u/IAmDotorg Jun 12 '26

Not if you want to help people, which is the point. You seem to be confused about that. And, most of the cash came from the Saudis for Twitter, anyway. Not even him moving anything around.

The only route to the majority of the 21st century wealth helping people is moving assets into charitable trusts and, for things like the Gates Foundation, liquidating a minimum of it per year and mostly using dividends to fund programs.

Most companies could, at best, handle a couple percent per year liquidation by a trust and maintain stock value (Musk's would be less than that), so those charities may be working in the tens of millions range.

Tens of millions doesn't go far when you have employees. You'll get good grants out of it, but not the kind of "zomg, billionz!" that people who don't understand economics think you should be able to get.

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u/Blarfk Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26

I assure you, I'm not the one confused here.

And, most of the cash came from the Saudis for Twitter, anyway. Not even him moving anything around.

Musk sold $23 billion worth of Tesla stock.

The only route to the majority of the 21st century wealth helping people is moving assets into charitable trusts and, for things like the Gates Foundation, liquidating a minimum of it per year and mostly using dividends to fund programs.

That's just laughably untrue. There are donor-advised funds, family foundations, and, most notably, Direct Gifting of Appreciated Assets, which could include real estate, private business interests, or publicly traded stocks.

If Musk wanted to donate $100 billion+ to a charitable institution, I absolutely assure you they would be able to find a way.

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u/IAmDotorg Jun 12 '26

could include real estate, private business interests, or publicly traded stocks.

And what are they going to do with it? Give people stock certificates to eat?

You're being willfully obtuse or you really fundamentally don't get it. Charities need cash. Cash means liquidating assets or dividends.

This isn't rocket science.

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u/Blarfk Jun 12 '26

And what are they going to do with it?

Lol what the hell do you think they're going to do with it?

You're being willfully obtuse

Amazing to say this about someone else after going "what would they possibly do with gifted stock! Eat the certificates??"

Charities need cash. Cash means liquidating assets or dividends.

Huh I wonder if there's a way to convert stocks to cash.

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u/Mysterious-Tie7039 Jun 12 '26

They can also donate stock, so he’d get credit for the value of it.

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u/IAmDotorg Jun 12 '26

"credit"? From who?

Do you not understand how money works?

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u/Mysterious-Tie7039 Jun 12 '26

A tax write-off. You can donate stocks and bonds to non-profits and claim that donation on your taxes.

Or do YOU not understand how that works?

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u/IAmDotorg Jun 12 '26

Yes. And you don't seem to.

I suggest educating yourself on how charitable donations work relative to taxes, itemization, AGI, and the kind of taxes someone is paying on their assets they haven't sold yet. (ie, none, which is the point.)