The world’s richest turnip Jeff Bezos has pinky-sworn to donate “most” of his $124 billion USD ($185 billion AUD) fortune throughout his lifetime, starting with Dolly Parton…?
The 58-year-old space barnacle handed the country music icon a $100 million cheque as part of his annual Courage and Civility award this week for her to give to charities of her choice.
“[I] want to bring a little bit of light, a little bit of amplification to these people who use unity instead of conflict,” Bezos said about Parton in an interview with CNN.
Sure she’s a queen among queens but what is it with this fkn guy and “unity”? Hoarding wealth ain’t gonna unite shit.
But the Amazon founder and fourth richest person in the world has not specified how much money or what proportion of his wealth will be donated. Curious. And other than pledging $10 billion USD over 10 years to his own Bezos Earth Fund, he hasn’t said who else would get cash or the kinds of causes he intended to support.
Plus, Bezos is infamously not super charitable so you’ll forgive me if I don’t trust his promise.
Firstly, Bezos hasn’t even signed the Giving Pledge which is pretty much the bare minimum a billionaire can do. The campaign was set up by fellow billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in 2010 to get the world’s wealthiest people to commit to giving half their net worth to charity. It has 236 signatories, including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
To be clear it’s just a goal, not a legal contract. Like I said: bare minimum.
Beyond a public gesture what Bezos could start with is paying Amazon workers a living wage and giving them humane working conditions.
Multiple investigations by the New York Times and other publications have laid bare just how hellish it is inside Amazon facilities where workers are overloaded, their every movement tracked in the name of productivity and their rights exploited. How else do you think the company grew to be worth $1 trillion USD?
Bezos also announced on Monday 10,000 Amazon staff were about to be laid off because times were tough for this pale leach.
So I’d argue: triple all Amazon workers’ wages first, let them take fucking toilet breaks, then maybe solve world hunger — which the United Nations’ World Food Program said he could absolutely do — fund the world’s transition away from fossil fuels and then Jeff Bezos can think about donating money to other wealthy celebrities.
