It’s a simple bargain: The rich get huge tax breaks by donating art, property and company shares to benefit the public. But some donors collect millions while offering little or no public access.
  • Turkey_Titty_city@kbin.social
    21·
    1 year ago

    Yep.

    I worked at one for a few years. It had an endowment of like 750million… larger than most colleges and universities. It employed 20 people, 1/3 of whom was solely to manage the investment of the endowment on the stock market and who were paid 500K salaries to do so. Rest of us made barely livable wages. I was 22-25 and making 30K a year.

    It was under the guise of ‘economic research’ but all we really did was reward five or six figure grants to rich and powerful professors, lawyers, and politicians for ‘furthering democratic values.’

    It was a just a way to shuffle money from the ultra rich to the merely rich and everyone got to pat themselves on the back about how heroic and brave they were for ‘the greater good’.

    This is also the bullshit way that most rich universities justify their horrendous hording of wealth. That it’s for the ‘greater good’, but all they are doing is enriching themselves and top echelons of the admin/professors, while the 99% of the rest of the employees who do 100% of the work are getting barely livable wages.

  • PeleSpirit@lemmy.worldEnglish
    20·
    1 year ago

    For the ultrawealthy, donating valuables like artwork, real estate and stocks to their own charitable foundation is an alluring way to cut their tax bills. In exchange for generous tax breaks, they are supposed to use the assets to serve the public: Art might be put on display where people can see it, or stock sold to fund programs to fight child poverty. Across the U.S., such foundations hold over $1 trillion in assets.