That’s really helpful, thank you Meowkins!
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Those were some of the hints I was picking up about SPLC that led me to look for alternatives. Thanks for the great recap.
NCRI looks interesting. 1 woman out of 17 leaders & board members makes me hesitate, though.
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Ditto, I’m loving this conversation. I also like the thought of mirroring “Eat the rich” with “Can we not eat the poor, tho? Cause that’s what we’re doing now.” which I hadn’t thought of in quite that way.
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Well that’s a shame. I’ve known them as a force for good here in the deep South since the 70s. I hope they get things sorted.
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I like that sentiment of building the floor first, though the two discussions often go hand in hand because taxing the wealthy a lot more is one of the ways to build that floor.
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right!
also im just petty and dont want those a-holes to have so much power and money.
but i do totally appreciate @Elle’s point that the floor is more important than the ceiling. folks can argue endlessly about the ceiling without ever addressing the floor and that is a real problem.
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I guess I’ll throw in my passionate opinion. Pushes over soap box
I think the questions of the morality of extreme wealth are pretty clear. Is it moral for someone to shit on a gold toilet bowl seat while down the street their neighbors baby dies from drinking their shit out of the water?
Of course not. And that sounds like a simple comparison, but it’s the same everywhere. The wealthy have luxuries that do nothing for them but offer momentary diversion while other people lose their lives because of the inequity of resource distribution. That is wrong. People who have a lot voluntary choosing to ignore other people who have less is wrong. Period.
Billionaires in a capitalist society are immoral because their existence necessitates great income inequality. Like literally, the definition of the rich existing is that the poor exist. So if we are cool with the idea that the ultra rich can be moral aren’t we necessarily condoning the existence of the ultra poor?
Beyond that, I think impact and scope.
Billionaires fail immediately. Impact is huge because they use the most resources and hoard the most. Scope because they can affect not only their family, their friends, their neighborhoods, but also enormous things like entire infrastructures, the path of justice, who leads the country. And we’re doing pretty shit on that accord because the billionaires are getting richer and we’re barely moving the line on justice and the climate is basically done.
For someone with 6 figure income, what’s the impact and scope? Yeah, it’s noticeable, but no where near as large or life-changing. That in and of itself makes the case that as wealthy as we are for having like $200k, how fucked up is it in this country that $200k is ridiculously wealthy?
Anyway just saying 1000% agree with @elle that the floor is despicable and for SURE the billionaires are immoral in this case. Doesn’t absolve those of us with 6 figure networth from doing literally anything, but definitely shows that we can donate to the local food kitchen and the aclu but we’re not affecting the course of justice on as massive of a scale.
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This is where I am. Realistically I make a ridiculous amount of money, and yet even if I donated every penny I have I wouldn’t be able to cover a local agency’s daycare budget for a single year. This is a group whose whole focus is getting families and single parents to the point of ongoing self-sufficiency, and most of their budget has to go to the very basics (I count safe childcare on that list since it’s a pretty big barrier for jobs or education for a lot of the parents involved). A minimum would give people a starting point, and then we can figure out how much is too much later. I don’t disagree that there is such a thing as too much, but I’m not sure it’s an easy line in the sand.
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Hi! Recent inductee into the $1,000,000.00+ club here. Literally zero wealth related guilt.
My efforts feed a few dozen people at costs lower than they could do it without my help. But they still get to keep their pride and pay for things. Because that’s important to them.
How many more people would my guilt feed?
Is there a structural problem? Maybe. But unless we can create a single, unified government over the entire planet, we’re not gonna be able to do a whole lot about it. But if we do create it, I’ll accept benevolent dictator for life.
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I’ve been following this thread with great interest. We’re a high income family, living in a HCOL area, and my general philosophy is “tax me!”
Numbers
Every two weeks, I (just me) gross ~$5000, and pay ~$1400 of that in withheld taxes. Now, this tax rate makes many people move out of California, but I think our safety net is better than most other states. Not perfect, or even “good”, just better.
I tend to not want to put a cap on things, but just tax the bajeezus out of income as you get higher and higher.
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I’m 100% for this. And closing down loopholes.
Also, when I’m dictator for life, one initiative is a “don’t be a dick” rule. If you want to try to exploit a deduction, you can pay double.
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Having spent my career doing things not exactly like SPLC, but pretty adjacent… I don’t think I’ve worked anywhere that didn’t have a major reckoning about racial discrimination while I was there, unfortunately. Including organizations led by POC. This isn’t to say it’s normal or fine, and I don’t know anything about SPLC’s budget + rigor so I’m not disagreeing with you at all, but it truly sucks that it’s so endemic to the field of “people trying to do policy + advocacy research for social change.” Everything is bad!
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I think this encapsulates how I feel pretty exactly. Maybe that’s what I don’t like about how some conversations focus so narrowly on ultra wealth. Extreme global poverty is declining, which is super exciting (it has dropped by 50% in the last 50 years), but of course there’s still so much. I try to focus my “power” on that stuff; raising the ground floor stuff. I really believe the improvements are indicative of a world that is becoming more compassionate, though. Our lives are just so short! It’s hard to see the needle move very much.
I guess the other question is of individual morality versus solving problems. Like, of course my scope is less than a multi millionaire, who can impact far more people, but I still think it’s of equal moral importance for me to give as it is for someone with way more. I don’t think it’s about quantity but proportion and intention. I have a lot of hope for current and future humans overall. I think we’re getting better as a species. Slowly.
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I recently heard that for every $1 spent in auditing they get like $5 in reclaimed taxes.
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Good point!!!
Western State Center is also apparently a more regional focus than SPLC but does similar work. POC-led, but husband doesn’t know all the deets on board diversity. At a glance there’s more than one woman. LOL.
@Bernadette yeah it’s sad. I guess all we can do is keep calling them out and putting the heat on when the problems are caught.
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I have 2 offers for a free week of EveryPlate meal delivery – DM me if you are ok with sharing your email so I can fwd the link to you.
All right, probably overthinking this, but I’m still going around in circles so crowdsourcing ideas I might be missing (please don’t quote, I’ll probably come back and delete). Short version, a little cousin of mine was in a bad accident.
Cut for how bad because injured kid
An elementary-schooler has a head injury severe enough that the doctors aren’t sure they’ll wake up at all, and if they do the damage is so extensive they’re looking at ongoing care for the rest of their life.
I was planning for the next couple months’ donations to go to the family since there’s a lot happening even outside the hospital, but along with the info about where to send donations was the fact that a not-insignificant percentage of the donations would be going to their church. I believe once you give someone something it’s theirs to do with as they wish, but in this case I know the family’s specific religious beliefs aren’t ones I support in any way (openly sexist, marginally less openly homophobic although it’s definitely there; there’s a reason I avoid the adults involved at family reunions) and the idea of giving any money that might support that makes my skin crawl.
At this point I’m thinking just donate to the hospital, but it’s not what the family is asking for. Anybody have other suggestions? Realistically they won’t know either way since it’ll be anonymous, but half of me is saying ‘they need the money right now’ and the other half is ‘oh, hell no.’
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Oh kenner, I’m sorry.
Could you use that donation amount to pay part of their hospital bill directly?
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Gift cards for expenses like gas, groceries, etc.?
But since money is fungible, in reality this just let’s them shift cash donations to the church.
The petty part of me can’t help thinking
Summary
If they can afford to give so much of the donations to the church, they don’t really need the money
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I would give the money directly to the family so they can choose what to do with it. The “we’re giving part of our donations to the church,” thing is probably a cultural-must in their world. I imagine if they accepted donations from people and didn’t state they were giving some to the church there might be side-eye towards them from their community. They probably also feel indebted to the church, and that the church is helping them through this, and therefor has earned part of that money already. Just saying, I definitely would not take the donations to mean they don’t actually need money. I’ve seen people with practically nothing give what they have to their church because they are taught “it will come back tenfold”.
I also don’t have a problem with donations helping something/someone I don’t agree with though. I’m sure lots of money I’ve donated has directly helped people who believe all sorts of things I don’t, but I kind of see that as part of the merit. If you really don’t want to do cash, I think gift cards for gas and delivery food would be nice, but they may donate some of those gift cards too.
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