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Elon Musk is notoriously skeptical of charity, preferring to deal with his for-profit ventures, which he believes will supply extra transformative change for the world.
As CEO of Tesla, “I’ve completed extra for the atmosphere than any single human on Earth,” he advised the New York Instances final 12 months. (He wasn’t exaggerating for impact — he appears to essentially imagine it.) Simply final week, he attacked MacKenzie Scott, the billionaire philanthropist who divorced Jeff Bezos in 2019, for her personal (considerably extra beneficiant) charitable work.
“‘Tremendous wealthy ex-wives who hate their former partner’ ought to … be listed amongst ‘Causes that Western Civilization died,’” Musk wrote in an X submit that was later deleted.
Regardless of his outward derision, Musk did arrange a charitable basis again in 2001. And it does give out some cash. Typically.
However the basis seems to be according to Musk’s basic disdain towards non-profit work, giving ammo to his detractors who see him as much less of a visionary and extra of a trolling profiteer hell-bent on buying energy.
See right here: The Musk Basis’s file of giving is, based on a New York Times analysis, “haphazard and largely self-serving.” The non-profit has a complete of zero full-time employees, only a board that features Musk and two volunteers, and it “has failed in recent times to present away the naked minimal required by legislation” to justify his tax breaks.
After all, there’s no legislation compelling billionaires to present away cash to charity. However American tax legislation dangles some vital incentives for them to take action.
Musk seemingly managed to shave a pair billion off his $11 billion tax invoice in 2021, due to the $5.7 billion he donated to the Musk Basis, based on the Instances.
“The tax system definitely favors and encourages the mixture of philanthropy once you’re new at that ultra-high web price stage,” Amir Pasic, dean of the Indiana College Lilly Household Faculty of Philanthropy, tells me. And once you create a basis, you may preserve some management over the way in which the funds are disbursed, he added.
In Musk’s case, based on the Instances, that meant giving thousands and thousands of {dollars} to Cameron County, Texas. After all, that call was introduced shortly after a SpaceX rocket explosion littered the area with shrapnel. Different donations went to 2 colleges — one walled off inside a SpaceX compound and one other constructed subsequent to a housing compound for workers.
“The best way I see Elon Musk is that he’s actually pushing the bounds of the choice approaches to philanthropy,” Pasic stated.