Thoughts on famous people with money

Apparition

Apparition

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Today while at the Dinosaur National Monument I noticed that Andrew Carnegie was the major funding for it.

Now I’m familiar with him due to my hometown having a Carnegie Library.

For those that aren’t familiar

A total of 2,509 Carnegie libraries were built between 1883 and 1929, including some belonging to public and university library systems. 1,689 were built in the United States, 660 in the United Kingdom and Ireland, 125 in Canada, and others in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Serbia, Belgium, France, the Caribbean, Mauritius, Malaysia, and Fiji.

I’ve heard of LeBron James building a school and I’m sure others are building some tangible long lasting things I’m unaware of but I’ve not heard of anyone doing anything to that scale.

Two that come to mind are Gates and Buffet, I always hear them giving money away but where does it go?

It appears to me they give to other organizations that dilute everything down to nothing, hopefully I’m wrong.
 
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Apparition said:
Today while at the Dinosaur National Monument I noticed that Andrew Carnegie was the major funding for it.

Now I’m familiar with him due to my hometown having a Carnegie Library.

For those that aren’t familiar

A total of 2,509 Carnegie libraries were built between 1883 and 1929, including some belonging to public and university library systems. 1,689 were built in the United States, 660 in the United Kingdom and Ireland, 125 in Canada, and others in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Serbia, Belgium, France, the Caribbean, Mauritius, Malaysia, and Fiji.

I’ve heard of LeBron James building a school and I’m sure others are building some tangible long lasting things I’m unaware of but I’ve not heard of anyone doing anything to that scale.

Two that come to mind are Gates and Buffet, I always hear them giving money away but where does it go?

It appears to me they give to other organizations that dilute everything down to nothing, hopefully I’m wrong.
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Trump has done things that people haven’t heard of much, like pay off people’s homes and give to charities and fund things he is a fan of.

However, I don’t follow this stuff much as I don’t see it publicly shown. I know, the media doesn’t like us to hear about the GOOD people do, and I know they do!
 
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Rubi04 said:
Trump has done things that people haven’t heard of much, like pay off people’s homes and give to charities and fund things he is a fan of.

However, I don’t follow this stuff much as I don’t see it publicly shown. I know, the media doesn’t like us to hear about the GOOD people do, and I know they do!
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Sure and nothing wrong with that but my point is Carnegie was a visionary that invested in things that are still beneficial 100 years later.

Although this recent storm in Iowa messed up the library.

A788E621-0878-44AF-8356-F121E44BEA39.jpeg

Already rebuilt.
 
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Apparition said:
Sure and nothing wrong with that but my point is Carnegie was a visionary that invested in things that are still beneficial 100 years later.

Although this recent storm in Iowa messed up the library.

View attachment 186934
Already rebuilt.
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Gotcha. You’re looking for heritage. That I don’t know off hand but I’m here to learn from those who do!
 
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Personally, I’m not a fan of the prestige. If I had f-you money.....I’d be low key about it. I don’t want my name all over the place. But I’m not rich so....lol
 
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Rubi04 said:
Personally, I’m not a fan of the prestige. If I had f-you money.....I’d be low key about it. I don’t want my name all over the place. But I’m not rich so....lol
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Understandable but you ever see how big the Trump logo is on his buildings?

After thinking about it there’s a guy in a town next to where I grew up who sold his business to Monsanto for 8 billion dollars. He’s built several things there ranging from an elderly care facility to a new waterpark.
 
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Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, JP Morgan and Ford were orders of magnitude richer than Gates, Buffett, Bazos and Zuckerberg. Rockefeller was beyond rich when they forced him to break up Standard Oil.... the "remedy" for having so much was breaking up his company and selling it off. In a matter of 2 weeks he went from about 80 Billion to 690 Billion (both in 2005 dollars) as Standard oil became Chevron, Mobil, Exxon and Amoco. Further breakups created Marathon, ARCO, Sohio, Conoco and Kyso.

Those guys gave away untold Billions in public projects, hospitals, libraries, university endowments, research grants and religious charities.

JP Morgan had enough money to literally bail out the US Government in the 1890's.

Today's ultra rich are not nearly as liquid rich as those guys were. Bazos at 160B couldn't liquidate more than 40B without cratering the value of his stock. Same goes for most to the paper billionaires of today.

In terms of liquid cash the richest man of the last 40 years is who?

Pablo Escobar with about 4 Billion in 100's and 20's
 
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Apparition said:
Understandable but you ever see how big the Trump logo is on his buildings?

After thinking about it there’s a guy in a town next to where I grew up who sold his business to Monsanto for 8 billion dollars. He’s built several things there ranging from an elderly care facility to a new waterpark.
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Very cool. I know I’m a simple man. I would honestly be happy with a chunk of land, a nice cabin and some cool toys.

I honestly would set up my family in a responsible way and give most away. But I also am not rich and haven’t killed mused to build a empire so I’m speaking from a poor mans perspective.

I think it’s awesome to give back and where I’d like to see our country go. Fund and take care of your communities and they will prosper and take care of you.
 
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Apparition said:
It appears to me they give to other organizations that dilute everything down to nothing, hopefully I’m wrong.
Click to expand...

You're actually right about this.

I had read an article years back that investigated a number of top charities. The conclusion that they came to was that the majority of charities don't actually end up giving very much at all to the actual people who need it. Most of the money is spent on paying their employees and other overhead costs. It was something like less than 10% of the actual donated amount makes it into the hands of people who need it.

It had a list of the top offenders, and they were all big name charities.
 
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In my past career, I worked for many high level millionaires and several billionaires. Most are not familiar names to the general public. Many have charitable foundations with names that further obscure where the money comes from. These people don't necessarily want or need to have their names widely known, but they are generous in giving back to causes they believe in. The rest of us don't see it because it often isn't meant to be seen.
 
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Those non familiar may do many good things. It's too bad they aren't famous.

It seems that most currently famous people with money are doing little, if anything, beside be on TV or in a movie.

One of the saddest things I saw in the last few days was a Carnegie library that looks like it hasn't been used in at least several years and had a for sale sign in the yard. It was in a small Ohio town that I can't quite recall the name of.
 
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In a sane world, someone like Jeff Bezos would pay all of his employees a living wage and provide all of his employees with health insurance. Instead he buys mansions all over the world, newspapers, sports teams and politicians advocating we pay taxes to give money to cover these employee expenses through universal healthcare, wages, college, whatever.

If you look at their history, you'll find most of them made billions exploiting people, or at a minimum overcharging all of us with the help of government protections. Any good they do could have been done rather than amassing a fortune off of others. They get to craft policy for the rest of us using their foundations and vast wealth to buy politicians around the globe. And put their name on it as if they are doing a good thing for us.

My company is full of rich people. The founder is wealthy and has donated millions and has a foundation. The wealth we generate is also distributed to the employees yearly in bonuses and high pay.

Bezos could give each of his employees a raise, a bonus, and healthcare and still be worth $100 billion. He could lower his prices and still be worth $80 billion. He gives to charity in order to form policy that affects our lives and not his. He's everything wrong with the world. Lather, rinse, repeat with most multi-millionaires and billionaires.

People like Buffet are probably the least of the worst. Apple probably the worst company. Making $50-100 phones with almost slave labor in 3rd world countries to sell to us for $1000 then preaching garbage about social justice. I have little time for people or companies like that. They're hard to avoid because our antitrust laws have gotten weak again.

I'm not anti-capitalist at all. I wish we had capitalism instead of government protected oligarchs.
 
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InOmaha said:
If you look at their history, you'll find most of them made billions exploiting people, or at a minimum overcharging all of us with the help of government protections. Any good they do could have been done rather than amassing a fortune off of others. They get to craft policy for the rest of us using their foundations and vast wealth to buy politicians around the globe. And put their name on it as if they are doing a good thing for us.
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Love this post, and as you said this is nothing new. To tie it into Jeeps and 4-wheeling, it's interesting to learn about Colorado's mining history via driving the old trails and seeing what's left of the old mines and mills. When I drove the Alpine Loop a few years ago, I got a book from the library beforehand and read up on the mining history of the area around Ouray. I've learned a lot that I didn't know before moving to Colorado, from wheeling, reading, and going to museums and tours of the sites. The initial gold rush in CO, the switch to silver, the crash of the silver price due to the end of government manipulation, mine closures and ghost towns as a result, the mining barons who got rich and sometimes went bankrupt, conditions for miners and their fights to unionize, the Ludlow Massacre, environmental effects (ongoing today such as the spill into the river near Durango and ongoing massive mines near Leadville and Cripple Creek), etc.
 
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