McKenzie Scott is the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos. She was at his side when he founded Amazon and was the company’s first accountant. She played a role in the success of the company. When they divorced (he left her for another woman), McKenzie received a share of his Amazon stock. She is now one of the richest people in the world. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranks her as the 18th richest person in the world, right behind Alice Walton, with a net worth (on Tuesday) of of $62.4 billion (Jeff Bezos is the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $189 billion).
In a better world, there would be no billionaires. Everyone would pay a fair share of their income and wealth in taxes, and there would be no extremes of wealth or poverty. The rich would still be richer than everyone else, but not obscenely rich, with billions that they could never spend in ten lifetimes.
McKenzie Scott is giving away more than any other billionaire. Last week, she revealed that she had given away $4.1 billion to more than 384 organizations in every state and Puerto Rico. Advised by a team, she selected the recipients to focus on directly helping those who were actively involved in serving the most vulnerable members of society. In late July of this year, she gave away almost $1.7 billion to 116 organizations focused racial equity, LGBT equity, gender equity, economic mobility, empathy, democracy, public health, global development, and climate change.
She wrote on Medium about the groups that received grants:
Some are filling basic needs: food banks, emergency relief funds, and support services for those most vulnerable. Others are addressing long-term systemic inequities that have been deepened by the crisis: debt relief, employment training, credit and financial services for under-resourced communities, education for historically marginalized and underserved people, civil rights advocacy groups, and legal defense funds that take on institutional discrimination.
To select these 384, the team sought suggestions and perspective from hundreds of field experts, funders, and non-profit leaders and volunteers with decades of experience. We leveraged this collective knowledge base in a collaboration that included hundreds of emails and phone interviews, and thousands of pages of data analysis on community needs, program outcomes, and each non-profit’s capacity to absorb and make effective use of funding. We looked at 6,490 organizations, and undertook deeper research into 822. We put 438 of these on hold for now due to insufficient evidence of impact, unproven management teams, or to allow for further inquiry about specific issues such as treatment of community members or employees. We won’t always learn about a concern inside an organization, but when we do, we’ll take extra time to evaluate. We’ll never eliminate every risk through our analysis, but we’ll eliminate many. Then we can select organizations to assist — and get out of their way.
We do this research and deeper diligence not only to identify organizations with high potential for impact, but also to pave the way for unsolicited and unexpected gifts given with full trust and no strings attached. Because our research is data-driven and rigorous, our giving process can be human and soft. Not only are non-profits chronically underfunded, they are also chronically diverted from their work by fundraising, and by burdensome reporting requirements that donors often place on them. These 384 carefully selected teams have dedicated their lives to helping others, working and volunteering and serving real people face-to-face at bedsides and tables, in prisons and courtrooms and classrooms, on streets and hospital wards and hotlines and frontlines of all types and sizes, day after day after day. They help by delivering vital services, and also through the profound encouragement felt each time a person is seen, valued, and trusted by another human being. This kind of encouragement has a special power when it comes from a stranger, and it works its magic on everyone. We shared each of our gift decisions with program leaders for the first time over the phone, and welcomed them to spend the funding on whatever they believe best serves their efforts. They were told that the entire commitment would be paid upfront and left unrestricted in order to provide them with maximum flexibility. The responses from people who took the calls often included personal stories and tears. These were non-profit veterans from all backgrounds and backstories, talking to us from cars and cabins and COVID-packed houses all over the country — a retired army general, the president of a tribal college recalling her first teaching job on her reservation, a loan fund founder sitting in the makeshift workspace between her washer and dryer from which she had launched her initiative years ago. Their stories and tears invariably made me and my teammates cry.
It is obvious that the tax code is not going to be changed any time soon. Trump and McConnell revised it to favor the 1%, and McConnell will fight to keep it skewed toward big donors and corporations.
In the meanwhile, I salute McKenzie Scott for singling out the worthiest organizations and giving money without strings. Unlike the Billionaire Boys and Girls Club (think Gates, Broad, the Waltons), she does not choose organizations that are doing her bidding. She funded organizations serving those in need and gave them unconditional grants.
Not everyone is impressed by her generosity:
Some point out that in a different America, Scott wouldn’t have billions of dollars to give away – instead, more of that wealth would be paid in taxes that could benefit all Americans, and in higher wages to Amazon employees who could use the money directly.
Anand Giridharadas, author of the book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, said in a tweet, which has since been removed, that it was “union-busting and tax avoidance that made the fortune possible.”
As well as praising a billionaire for giving money to HBCUs, Giridharadas said rank-and-file Amazon workers should be praised for their contribution to the company’s success: “Let us salute some folks barely holding on, running up and down warehouse aisles, whose wages did this.”
But even critics of income inequality recognize that McKenzie Scott is far more generous than her fellow billionaires, most of whom signed “The Giving Pledge” (promising to give away most of their wealth) but are taking their time dispensing their vast riches. (Look at the pictures of billionaires on the website of The Giving Pledge. Think Scrooge. Think French Revolution. Liberté, Fraternite, Egalite.)
Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, wrote at CommonDreams that while Scott is a newcomer on the billionaire-giving scene, she is doing it better than others in her cohort.
“She still has a long way to go in her stated intention of giving away all the wealth. But she’s now made two bold moves, putting to shame the other 650 U.S. billionaires who haven’t figured out comparable ways to boldly share,” he said.
“During a pandemic when US billionaire wealth has increased $1 trillion since March, other billionaires should draw inspiration from her approach to move funds to urgent needs, to historically marginalized groups, to share decision-making with non-wealthy people, and to avoid warehousing funds in private legacy foundations.”
Our society has a long way to go to create an economy where everyone has a chance to live a decent life, find satisfying work, have access to good health care, good housing, good schools.
There used to be a guy in my community who was a sort of self-taught philosopher. Uncle Billy, as he became known, was observed in a local drug store discussing philosophy with the druggist, who was a Primitive Baptist who accepted the idea of man without free will.
He used to tell Uncle Billy: “If a rock gained consciousness in its flight, it would swear that it launched itself.”
hmmmmmm
The greatest gift these billionaires could give would be to campaign for universal health care, a living wage and strengthening the social safety net in general. Not to mention giving their support to the actual real public schools. Oh, and a top marginal tax rate of 91%, a la the Ike era.
Good people of Georgia, please deliver us from the obstinate obstruction of the right wing. Please vote so we can move forward as a nation.
Good for her! Hopefully, this is true philanthropy and altruism and not another “look good” scheme. Sorry to doubt, but look at all the “faux-lanthropy” from the big egos! Maybe Jeff left her because she took the “Giving Pledge” seriously and he just signed on to increase his wealth?….greed vs. good? Hopefully, good will win! Maybe she will embarrass them all into “stepping out of the way” when they give their funds to the more “grass roots” type of organizations.
And this is why I have trust issues with the uber wealthy crowd! This op-ed by John Arnold on charitable giving laws? “Mr. Enron” and SIB promoter? Someone help me here because me-thinks another big scheme is just around the corner? The past few weeks I have witnessed a few mea culpa’s (USAToday) from the Grinch, Mr. Koch himself. What is really going on?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/12/18/why-reform-charitable-giving-laws-would-help-more-people-need-column/3937999001/
She and her former hubby got their billions on the backs of their workers. And they continue to get wealthier by the day through exploitation and abuse of other people and degradation of the environment for everyone.
The central question that few people address is Why should there be billionaires at all?
If one is religious, I don’t see how one can justify it, not if one actually believes the processed moral tenets of most of the world’s major religious groups.
And if one is not religious, there is also no justification. It’s actually absurd to believe that anyone should be allowed to control so much of the world’s wealth.
A related question: is it possible to control that portion of the GDP without breaking antitrust laws?
I doubt it.
And trust busting is probably the only way the billionaires could be brought to heal.
But it would take someone like Bernie Sanders or another Teddy Roosevelt .
I don’t see it happening any time soon. Not under Biden, who has already assured the wealthy that nothing will fundamentally change.
https://www.salon.com/2019/06/19/joe-biden-to-rich-donors-nothing-would-fundamentally-change-if-hes-elected/
“Why should there be billionaires at all?”
I’d like to hear a single argument for it.
A simple argument for not allowing anybody make too much money (say, more than a $1 million a year) is that then a single person could influence too large portion of the economy. The question is how much steroid do we want to allow at competitions? Making a million could be done with proper training but more is probably the sign of steroid use.
As far as I can tell, there is absolutely not reason for billionaires at all.
In a related jugular from a year ago: Abigail Disney and the Patriotic Millionaires. (No, it’s not the name of an indie-rock band.)
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/06/the-ultra-wealthy-who-argue-that-they-should-be-paying-higher-taxes
At Axios, “Why AOC lost secret ballot for a seat on powerful House committee…the House Democratic Steering Committee is tightly controlled by Pelosi.”
She will be damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t because everyone knows that anyone who is wealthy can’t possibly be a generous, loving human being. I’m wondering what good it would do to give it all away, which would involve selling all the stock. It’s refreshing to see someone with such wealth giving with no strings attached. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is obscene that our system has created such an inequitable division of wealth, but, of course, it is impossible to believe that McKenzie Scott could actually feel the same thing and is attempting to distribute some of her wealth in a responsible way. In the Bible story about the rich young man, Jesus told him to give away his wealth not because being wealthy was bad but because the wealth was the young man’s god. Whether you believe this story is the literal truth or not, his issues, I suspect, would be shared by most of us if we were in his shoes.
Also relevant is the story of the Widow’s Mite. The leading citizens were being praised for giving away vast sums of money, while the widow gave only a penny. But Jesus pointed out that the wealthy suffered no loss from their giving, while the widow gave all she had.
Which just supports what I said. The rich are far more likely to be owned by their money as well as wear it as a badge of honor. The widow shared the little she had.
A minister I knew once presented stats to the congregation that showed that poor churches “out gave” their richer counterparts. I’m trying to remember the specifics, which have escaped me. They are not global or even national stats, but still an interesting message on the power wealth can have over us (as well as an attempt at the time to get us to open our pocketbooks). All of this is not reason to condemn McKenzie Scott. It is a cautionary tale for all of us. Money can change the way we view the world. What a society decides wealth is conveys status and power. How that status and power are used is another question.
Whoa! I’m getting deeper than myself. Maybe someone else can figure out if there is anything worth paying attention to in my meanderings.
Pelosi and Republicans won’t allow a lessening of concentration of wealth
She was already damned because of the way she and her hubby made those billions.
What she does now is irrelevant with regard to damnation.
She can give all of it away at this point and it makes not one bit of difference.
When one gives away stolen money, does that excuse the crime?
McKenzie and Jeff Bezos have effectively stolen billions from all the people who have slaved for them over the years.
And now Jeff’s former wife is suddenly feeling a twinge of remorse.
The poor dear.
You may be right about her motivation. Even if her giving is totally because of a massive guilt trip, remorse is a good thing.
What kind of slimy scumbag makes their workers pee into a bottle so that they don’t “waste time” going to the restroom?
The slimy bastards who work for him. Funny, I always envied the ability to pee into a bottle. Guess what gender I identify with.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17243026/amazon-warehouse-jobs-worker-conditions-bathroom-breaks
When then if she is headed for Hell no matter what she does, I hope she enjoys every damn nickel! I guess she needed to get divorced before Amazon made money to be redeemed, but then she never would have had anything to give. Tough crowd!
I would not blame the pee in a bottle policy on the peop!e working for Jeff and McKenzie.
The policy came from the top
And McKenzie was the accountant.
If she was not responsible for the penny pinching pee in a bottle policy, she undoubtedly knew about it, along with all the monitoring of workers and other policies meant to pinch pennies..
And much as I would like to think dirtbags get their due in a hot place, I think it’s a lot of poppycock.
Are you kidding me? The accountant of a company is aware of peeing policy?! I wonder how that gets coded.
Actually, my point was not that she needed to get a divorce to be “redeemed” (which is actually a ridiculous concept, especially in the religious sense)
There are lots of things she could have done to improve the working conditions and pay of Amazon workers.
But she CHOSE not to do them so she and her hubby could keep making more billions, even though they already possessed more money than they could ever spend.
Finally, if Amazon, Bezos and Scott paid the taxes they should be paying, no one would even need their goddamned charity.
Yes she obviously had a lot of say so. Why else is she an ex-wife?
If we had a tax code that required them to pay more taxes, she might actually pay them.
I find it interesting that you believe she was little more than Jeff’s wife.
You seem hellbent on condemning her because she was. I she had come out of the divorce with nothing would that make you feel better?
cx: If
Nonsense.
It should be clear to anyone paying the least attention to what I said above that I am assuming she had a major role to play in Amazon, which is actually backed up by the facts of the case, not incidentally.
You are the one trying to dismiss her as little more than a wife who had no idea what hubby was doing and/of little influence.
And incidentally, your making light of the peeing in the bottle policy is just weird.
Questioning whether the company accountant had to have knowledge of the peeing in the bottle problem is hardly making light of it. I sense this conversation going toward the personal. I have no beef with you; I just am not ready to condemn someone who appears to be making an honest effort to reframe how money has been given away in recent years. You are sure she was fully knowledgeable and complicit in her husband’s business decisions. I am not. And even if she was, I still applaud her approach to charitable contribution.
Do you have any idea how degrading it is to make your workers do that?
Actually I have a good idea of how degrading it is not to be able to take a bathroom break at all and not being able to pee in a bottle. The four minute break between classes did not provide time for teachers anymore than students to take care of nature’s call. I imagine that there are more than a few teachers out there, women in particular, who wear diapers.
And if she indeed had played no major role in Amazon (an assumption that is actually contradicted by the facts of the case), then I don’t believe for a second that she would have received anywhere near what she did.
I think we had better just agree to disagree.
What difference does it make? Huh? We should NOT have to depend on some fat cat’s arbitrary generosity when we pay taxes. Do Norway, Italy, Spain, France, and Germany do philanthropy to solve problems nearly to the same extent as the lame USA?
Pathetic.
I don’t’ give a booty about McKenzie’s generosity; I care about the fact that she accumulated so much in the first place via her monster ex-hubbie, our government’s enabling of him, and that we get diddly squat for OUR tax dollar, which is OUR money compared to Scandinavia and Western Europe. That’s what I care about. Anyone with a lot of money who gives it away when times are desperate is automatically and effortlessly perceived to be a hero.
McKenzie’s wealth is a symptom and not the cure. Yeah, she did a nice thing. But it signifies something far more profound and deeply disturbing about what American society has become.
Jesus to Jeff and McKenzie Bezos: God the Father says it is more likely that a 🐪 can pass through the eye of a needle than that a rich person can make it into Heaven.
Jeff Bezos: I don’t recall ever saying such a thing. If I did, I must have been drunk.
Not to take away from the analogy because it is still powerful, but the Eye of the Needle was a gate into Jerusalem that was so narrow that access was single file on foot.
By the world’s standards, there are probably more Americans than not that will have trouble getting into heaven including Anand Giridharadas.
“She will be damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t ”
Poor woman. I feel sorry for her.
Thomas Piketty has argued that billionaires are actually a drag on economic growth, because the capital they own is tied up non-productive investments like yachts, big houses, airplanes, and all the other crap rich people appear to think they can’t do without.
It’s not trickle up or down, it’s trickle back. Thanks for the reminder. Read Capital years ago and just looked at my notes. Now I’ll have to get his latest. Thanks a lot for adding to my already too long reading list! (sarcasm alert)
Thanks for reminding me to read the Capital and Ideology. I bought it long ago, but it’s just sitting there on my bookshelf, looking down at me reproachfully.
Estimates of how much it would cost to end world hunger range from $7 billion to $265 billion. So even at the high end of that range, Bezos and his ex combined could nearly do it by themselves. Add in Gates, *uckerberg, the Waltons, etc. and it would take only a fraction of each of their fortunes. Imagine having the power to end world hunger and not doing it. https://ffl.org/14869/can-we-end-world-hunger/
BTW, $4.1 billion sounds like a lot of money, but what really is a lot of money is the tens of billions (and growing) that Scott is left with after her charity. If we really want justice, that money needs to be taxed at over 90% to pay back the workers and the American taxpayers it was stolen from in the first place. Charity is not justice.
“Charity is not justice.”
In fact, they are unrelated. The shocking fact is that even after a 90% tax, she’d be left with $6 billion, and after a 99% tax, she’d still have $600 million. Still too much money to waste.
“Not only are non-profits chronically underfunded, they are also chronically diverted from their work by fundraising, and by burdensome reporting requirements that donors often place on them. ……..We shared each of our gift decisions with program leaders for the first time over the phone, and welcomed them to spend the funding on whatever they believe best serves their efforts. They were told that the entire commitment would be paid upfront and left unrestricted in order to provide them with maximum flexibility.”
This is a big deal. It is the opposite of the kind of giving that Gates does, which is not giving to support public schools, but giving to support public schools doing what Bill Gates wants them to do.
This country needs a marginal tax rate similar to what existed under Eisenhower.
However, until that it is done, it is very important to distinguish between this kind of REAL charitable giving, and the giving done by those who are giving to have their name on a building or have an organization do something they want them to do. There is a very fine line between giving to an organization which will just waste money (which is frankly what has happened with some federal grants to charters that simply enriched individuals) and first researching organizations run by ethical and moral people who use their resources to do good and not to market their own profile. But McKenzie Scott seems to have invested in a team of people who are doing the “accountability” research before giving the money and then relieving those organizations of a lot of burdensome requirements to continue to do and expand the work that they already do. And they are also smart enough to acknowledge that they will make some mistakes! But it seems like a very well-thought out way to direct money to the places where it will do the most good for this country, and not where it will do McKenzie Scott the most good. It is not like the billionaire giving in the past and it would be a good thing if the other way started being questioned and discouraged in favor of this.
I agree. It’s a step in the right direction.
Jeez! A good billionaire is an impossibility! Need I explain why?
Apparently.
I would contend that having billionaires is definitely not good thing for society. Far too much money taken out of the economy and doing little but making more money. Whether all billionaires are by definition despicable people is a different question.
Given how many Americans were just delighted to vote for the party that says that billionaires are taxed TOO much, and how many Americans were delighted to vote for a party that reduced the taxes of billionaires even lower than they were previously, apparently you do.
Not only do a majority of Americans who live in red states disagree with you, they are fine with billionaires becoming even richer because they believe that asking anything other than that is “socialism” and “ending private property”.
I don’t have any idea why it is impossible for the progressive message to get out — but I have been wondering about that since back when I railed against Carter. I remember trying to hold pro-Mondale signs at a 1984 re-elect Reagan college rally seeing tens of thousands of young (!!) Americans who loved Reagan’s message.
The scary thing is that if a politician actually said “a good billionaire is an impossibility” (something I don’t remember Bernie saying directly), that politician would be painted as a dangerous radical by the far right, and a majority of Americans would believe it.
I wish there was a way to counter the propaganda. I do think that what will work is electing someone who doesn’t say “a good billionaire is an impossibility” but who, after elected, helps enact the kind of legislation we had under FDR, Truman and LBJ (despite the criticisms of their foreign policies, they did support good progressive domestic legislation).
I think I remember hearing that Reagan refused to make more than one picture a year because too much would be taken in taxes. He didn’t think it was worth the extra work. He had plenty without it so why bust his butt for little return? If you think about it, how many people would make the same choice if they made enough without “busting their butts?” To use a derivative of that expression, I worked my tail off as a teacher. By contract, I could have worked far less, but every teacher knows that is not how it works. Most of the time no one would have had to twist my arm to make me put in the hours. Teaching was a reward in itself although I suspect that is one of the things everyone depends on.
I’m not sure why you skipped Eisenhower, NYCPPP, but I agree we could use another round of FDR et. al.
speduktr,
I mentioned Eisenhower in my first reply above (when I mentioned that I support a return to Eisenhower-level very high marginal tax rates on the rich) but I wasn’t entirely certain what other progressive policies he supported so I was trying to be careful. Whereas I think of FDR and social security, Truman and Medicare and LBJ and The Great Society programs which were all significant progressive legislative achievements.
It is sign that high marginal tax rates were working if Reagan only made one movie a year! Ha, some would say it was a good thing and allowed better actors and better movies to be made instead!
If achievements were made by people seeking wealth, there would be no scientists or doctors. The people who go on to make great achievements aren’t seeking more money. They are driven by the need to make great art or change students lives or invent something new or discover something new.
Many dedicated doctors train for 6 years post college and earn $200,000 a year. I don’t begrudge them that salary or even twice that salary. If they were in it for the money, they’d spend 2 years getting an MBA and go into investment banking or corporate work and be able to earn more in one year than a doctor working long hours does in 20 years.
We’re on the same page. I don’t know much about Eisenhower either although I do remember (vaguely) that he warned against a military-industrial complex.
I tend to agree, Duane, although the assumption of pure evil sticks in my craw as the only explanation. How much can a person have before they are damned? How much can we make before we have to give the rest away? I am for much higher taxes. That might even force some people to put more back into their businesses. It also could discourage investment in new businesses if there is little return. Why risk money when so many businesses fail? I must sound like a Republican now (horrors!), but I have absolutely no background in economics. These are questions I would enjoy hearing Robert Reich answering.
One important distinction to make is between wealth and income. McKenzie’s wealth comes from her ownership of shares that other people are willing to pay a high price to purchase, not because she earned a high salary, High marginal rates on earned income would have very little impact on her wealth.
Taxing wealth is very difficult to do administratively, largely because it is not practical to asses the value of all the assets everyone has every year. When an asset is sold a value is established and capital gains taxes are owed, typically at a much lower level than earned income.
I think you are right to worry that people would not form new businesses if they are forced to sell the business in order to pay a wealth tax if that business becomes very successful.
I’ll explain, Duane:
According to Business Insider the ten wealthiest in America gave .94% of their earnings to charity. Of those 10, 3 gave 0%. We have a profound problem with greed in this country. When the top 1% of the population has more money than the bottom 80%, opportunity for all remains a pipedream. I applaud McKenzie Scott for trying, but it simply is not enough.
A good billionaire for sure. The process she undertook, the “no-strings attached” approach and the fact that she and her team were moved to tears, shows that she gets it. Yes – there should be no billionaires and the tax code should be different. But she can’t change the fact that she has this money – better in her hands than her ex-husbands. I think her model of funding should be a blueprint for others who are in the same situation. Find experts in the field already making a difference. Give them lots of funding and get out of their way – no strings attached.
Yup.
Anand Giridharadas has a clear view of what this is all about:
The critical thing is not how she is giving away her money but how she made it in the first place.
In 2024 or 2028, I want McKenzie Scott to run for president.
@speduktr – “Actually I have a good idea of how degrading it is not to be able to take a bathroom break at all…” I was thinking the same thing. We limit our intake of water @ school b/c there is not time for bathroom breaks. I once heard a curriculum coordinator say (after someone talked about having no time to even use the bathroom) that when she was a teacher she had her bladder “trained.” I guess at least Bezo’s isn’t making employees ‘train’ their bladders.
And no, I am definitely not making light of the working situation at Amazon. If we all voted with our dollars and didn’t use Amazon, he would no longer be able to have such practices.
conditions not situation.
and Bezos…. not sure why the ‘. Typing too fast.
My mother (o.b.m.) said it simply (& this is partly a reply to your “meanderings”* comment way up there, speduktr): “The rich get rich & the poor get poorer.” In step w/what you said about about poor churches giving more than rich ones.
Too bad so many people–& those who can least afford it, most likely–donate so much money to politicos (ahem–it45–&, also, all the incessant ads I get from “Elect Democratic Women!!” {Undoubtedly, $$$$ being used for the candidate the DNC will be putting up against Nina Turner–after all, don’t want to increase membership in “The Squad.” I call that maneuver “The Squash.”})
Not meanderings. Your comments are always intelligent, sped.
Hello Does anyone know how I can get funding from McKenzie Scott?