A Story of Two Donors
The New York Occasions did some A/B testing for these of us on the political proper who consider the paper has an axe to grind in opposition to conservatives and treats them much less charitably, to say the least, than their liberal counterparts.
Enter a pair of visionary, billionaire businessmen moved, on the finish of their lengthy and profitable careers, at hand over the huge wealth they’ve generated to nonprofit entities that may advance their political opinions.
The primary, the Patagonia founder and inexperienced fanatic Yvon Chouinard, bought a glowing sendup on Thursday, in a characteristic that gushes over his “disregard for enterprise norms” and “his lifelong love for the surroundings” and states, level clean, that “the Chouinards… have established themselves as among the many most charitable households within the nation.”
“Hopefully this can affect a brand new type of capitalism that doesn’t find yourself with a couple of wealthy individuals and a bunch of poor individuals,” Chouinard, 83, is quoted as saying in an “unique interview.”
Effectively, each hero wants a foil, and Chouinard is in contrast favorably together with his right-wing counterpart, Barre Seid, recognized as “the one different instance in current reminiscence of a rich enterprise proprietor who gave away his firm for philanthropic and political causes.”
However wait: “Mr. Seid took a distinct strategy in giving 100% of his electronics firm to a nonprofit group, reaping an unlimited private tax windfall as he made a $1.6 billion present to fund conservative causes, together with efforts to cease motion on local weather change.”
The Occasions wrote about Seid’s $1.6 billion charitable donation in a separate piece three weeks in the past. That contribution was “organized via an uncommon collection of transactions that seem to have prevented tax liabilities.” Possibly we missed the half the place Seid was hailed as a visionary philanthropist.
What’s most galling is that, of their quest to hail Chouinard and sully Seid, the Occasions bought it flat flawed. Chouinard has employed exactly the identical tax maneuver as Seid, however on a grander scale provided that the worth of Patagonia is roughly twice that of Seid’s agency, Tripp Lite.
The one tax Chouinard can pay is on the two % of his agency—the voting shares—that he’s put into the belief that may management Patagonia, and even there he’ll solely pay a paltry $17 million present tax.
Furthermore, the household’s management of the nonprofit that may maintain the overwhelming majority of Patagonia inventory signifies that the household might but rake in tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} from the restructured enterprise even because it steers the untaxed earnings into pet political tasks.
That is what occurs when bias meets monetary illiteracy and gross incompetence: Two New York Occasions tales, three weeks aside, paint a liberal as a hero for executing the identical transaction for which the paper’s reporters had simply villainized a conservative.
Originally posted 2022-09-15 20:29:53.
