The question is: does it bring lasting benefits to the people?
If he gives away a billion once, eventually it will be consumed and then we’re stuck in the same situation again. The rich must give money away repeatedly, that’s the only way to sustain society going forward. For that, solid and robust policy changes will have to be implemented.
Well, yeah, I mean you are not wrong but in this case the guy sold his company for a billion (or rather more) and I assume that company wasn’t running for just a few months. So in order to do it again he’d first have to start another company that reaches that selling price.
Other billionaires of course would need to keep giving back money they continuously amass, yes.
Well, you among many others in this thread are just describing communism, at least on some level.
Wait is this really a good rich person? I have to think something’s up
In the military there were two kinds of officers: the ones moved from enlisted to officer through schooling and hard work and the ones who started their career in ROTC.
The ones who came up from nothing were always the first to help out the workers and rarely pulled rank. They wanted the entire unit to don well and were not above getting dirty. They were also the most highly respected for it.
The worst and most selfish officers were the ones who came out of ROTC as officers and were essentially police, but with rank only. They sucked and no one liked them and any respect they received was only due to their rank, never to them.
I feel humility and the actual act of working your way to the top is the only way to maintain a connection to your humanity. So many of the current ultra wealthy come from money, didn’t work for it, and don’t know how to be a human being as a result of it. The last time that kind of generational-wealth was flaunted while the masses starved and suffered, it was in France, and there were a lot of removed heads. The only thing that saved the rich during the Great Depression was the fact there were a lot of them that lost everything as well. Almost everyone was in the same boat.
Those at the top will learn, soon enough, that they only maintain their wealth through the grace of those near the bottom. Squeeze too hard and their whole world will come down around them.
soon enough,
The cobwebs are forming…
I’m too lazy to read, but they probably didn’t grow up in this wealth they ran into it later and didn’t hold on to it long enough to be corrupted.
Better than most but at the end of the day it would have been nice to give that money to the people that built the company he sold for $1.6B.
I would think there’s a lot of talented people that worked hard to build the value of that company such that he could sell it for a huge amount of money.
Definitely better than buying a yacht, but he still got to decide what to do with the value created by others.
AppNexus employs 1000 people across 5 continents. If the ceo has an extra $1.5B kicking around he could have given every person that helped build AppNexus $1.5M, which is a truly life changing amount of money for your average person.
Yeah that amount of money would change my life I knew there was something wrong about this thank you for pointing this out
Also see Chuck Feeney
Gen Xer, we’re mostly cool. Still some ass hats but most of us try to be cool, do the right things
most of us try to be cool
i’m also gen X. your experience doesn’t match mine
I’d say we Gen-Xers are at a crucial age in human development where, for whatever biological or other reasons, people lean into their base beliefs hard. Much like booze, age reveals who you really are.
Sorry man. I hope you’re ok.
not really, but thanks. for some reason gen x went “i love fascism.”
https://williamfleitch.medium.com/why-did-generation-x-go-so-hard-for-trump-ab5ce5ac8659
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/10/gen-x-politics-explained-republicans.html
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-gen-x-went-maga/
personally: a lot of the dudes i grew up with are absolutely full-blown “my purpose in life is to be better than everyone else, and trump is going to give me that” mentality
again, i’m glad that your experience is better, but please don’t assume that it’s across the board
the maga fascist cult is a fucking cancer that afflicts every age group. make people afraid, give them an “enemy” to hate, profit
fucking nazis
I hear you and agree, I know some people I grew up with went full maga. I think my use of “most” could have been “some”. Which probably applies to all generations, sadly. Also, fuck Nazis. 💯
Boomers: we went to woodstock! Free love
Gen X: I know just the way to rebel against that!
(I kid, of course)
Seeing the Woodstockers of yesteryear become the Boomers of today means that my secondary retirement plan is a bullet. If I ever so fundamentally betray my values like that my friends and family have explicit instructions to put one through my brain stem and put me in a hole. There is no event, experience or injury that exists that can turn me into a conservative without first removing all parts that make me myself. At that point, that is no longer the Skul you once knew, that is a zombie, and it needs to be put down. I will never, ever understand how yesteryear’s free love hippies became today’s “fiscal conservatives”.
You won’t… The so-called “hippies” turned Trumpers never actually believed in anything, they just enjoyed the music, vibes, and aesthetic.
I should know, my dad is one of them.
I was told my whole life that I’d become more conservative as I got older and started working and paying taxes, etc. Literally the exact opposite has happened. If anything, those things radicalized me against capitalism.
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Idk about most. But, yeah, Gen Xers are roughly 45-65yo right now, so there’s definitely a whole lot of ladder pulling being done by that group.
Oh, sorry, forgot you were here
That’s stupid to just “give it away” because there are so many unsolved problems in the world you’d think they’d use it to start another company which improves recycling rates or invest in nuclear power.
You might want to actually read the first sentence of the article before posting… Jus sayin’
“Brian O’Kelley banked less than $100 million after selling his $1.6 billion startup AppNexus to AT&T—and gave the rest to charity.”
Gave the rest… to his employees… right??
Lol, they probably set up a foundation and now don’t have to ever pay taxes again
And he is still wealthier then the average citizen… So what did he accomplish?
He accomplished donating 1.5 billion dollars to causes and charities, and still got to live worry free for the rest of his life. I’d say at that point he shouldn’t be expected to live like a struggling laborer just to prove himself to unimpressed dickheads who don’t recognize a good thing.
He accomplished an ideal that if every other billionaire upheld and followed suit, we wouldn’t have the problems we do.
[replied to the wrong comment]
The Woz™ recently commented on this topic: https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23765914&cid=65583466
by SteveWoz ( 152247 ) on 2025-08-11 20:36
I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not what I live for. I have a lot of fun and happiness. I funded a lot of important museums and arts groups in San Jose, the city of my birth, and they named a street after me for being good. I now speak publicly and have risen to the top. I have no idea how much I have but after speaking for 20 years it might be $10M plus a couple of homes. I never look for any type of tax dodge. I earn money from my labor and pay something like 55% combined tax on it. I am the happiest person ever. Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about Happiness, which is Smiles minus Frowns. I developed these philosophies when I was 18-20 years old and I never sold out.
More than what was expected.
More than you have, I’d guess.
Sounds good
Put it in the bank and live off the interest
He sold the company for $1.6bn, but he had a 10% stake. So his stake was worth $160m. He kept $100m. So he gave away $60m.
He did not give away a billion dollars. The article headline and the article itself is written in such a way that it arguably obscures the facts and confuses.
It’s great he gave away $60m but it’s got little to nothing to do with his opinion that he doesn’t believe in billionaires; including that in the headline makes it seem like he gave away a billion dollars.
Good for him tbh, being a billionare WILL slowly corrode your mind and soul
Oh. I thought this was The Onion for a second when I saw the title.
I reserve my praises until I learn how exactly he gave away the money. Family-controlled foundations that only do political lobbing while avoiding taxes are a thing .
well political lobbying would be good if it’s lobbying for socialism i’d say
I would argue that legalized corruption is bad, even if you happen to agree with the cause.
Lobby for removing that legalized corruption?
Well, the current method of taking the high ground to make change for good ain’t exactly working out too well.
I wasn’t able to find details with a quick search, but it sounds like it wasn’t his own foundation:
After the AppNexus sale, O’Kelley and his wife carefully chose which causes to support. Their donations focus on education, social justice, technology access, and healthcare initiatives.
https://www.ceotodaymagazine.com/2025/08/could-you-give-away-1-5-billion-like-this-ceo/
Perhaps the only good billionaire is one who isn’t.
I honestly hope that’s the case. “Hopeful” is a nice change of pace.
Perhaps the only good billionaire is one who isn’t.
Duh
Their donations focus on education, social justice, technology access, and healthcare initiatives.
Okay, but you realize the could just be the Gates Foundation, right? Or whatever bullshit charity Zuckerberg runs?
I think it’s the Cuck Foundation
There’s nothing wrong with billionaires in themselves, that’d be stupid. A billion’s js a number slowly losing it’s value as time goes on. It’s how the money’s acquired that matters.
A lot and overwhelming amt of billionaires in places like america make their money thru fistfucking their entire country and the destruction of society, but they don’t notice money’s just a number, a value and once that society’s destroyed you can’t eat money. Like I said nothing wrong with making money but it depends on how you make it.
Soft disagree. I think even numerical wealth past a certain number is a sign of, at best, incoherent markets.
Most billionaires make their money from coming out of the right womb.
Which is why inheritance tax is a thing even tho most find ways to avoid it.
As long as they pay their dues, instead of leaving us plebs to run their own state for them, which granted a lot of them don’t, idrc. I want to make P’s as much as anyone else but if the game’s rigged against my favour we need to change the game.
Same way how in sport people win and lose, that’s not the issue, but the game has to be fair, we can’t allow doping, the playing field has to be even.
You are aware that the billionaires don’t pay any tax at all and keep it in panama? You want to change the game, be contrary to some other opinion than billionaires being an insane plague (yes themselves)
He’s not wrong. Being circled by scavengars like some kind of dying leviathan is not a sane way to live.
if i ruled the world no single person would have more than 1bn, hence why it would never happen. (id be very unqualified)
Most of the assclowns running shit now are horribly unfit. At least you have some perspective.
A lot of people say and/or think that until they have a billion dollars, unfortunately. Absolute wealth corrupts absolutely, absolute power corrupts absolutely, so on and so forth
why didn’t he pay a bunch of that to the employees?
Because that’s against how the system works. Shareholders can and will sue your company if you don’t maximise profits. I honestly do not believe that we will achieve an acceptable distribution of wealth under capitalism.
That’s a certainty as equitable distribution of wealth is diametrically opposed to the fundamental working of the capitalist system.
$100 million invested into dividend stock would gross him $1-5 million per year. About 1/3 of that will be paid in taxes, depending on what kind of dividends those are.
Me personally, I think I’d be happy with $10 million but I guess you get hungry when there’s a lot of food in front of you.
Depends if you want rich people play money or just comfy people play money.
Also if you want to say buy a beach front house in california or a nice mountain home in Colorado. That alone can run you a few millions dollars upfront not to mention a the on going costs.
100m is honestly not a lot of money if you plan to not for for the next handful of decades and want to actually enjoy a rich life style.
10 mill will put you in a nice middle class home and keep you living a middle class life style for the same length of time.
Wealth to life style scales pretty well from 10 to 100 million dollars when your looking at a 35 year span.
In the US, the middle class generally encompasses households earning between two-thirds and double the national median income. For 2023, the median household income was $77,719, putting the middle class range between roughly $52,000 and $155,000.
now we have income vs earned/taxed 10mm.
155k pa puts you in the 22% federal tax bracket, since it’s progressive let’s assume 16% tax over all your income, this leaves you with 140k. and this is the upper end of the middle class. not just somewhere within.
if you just spend your 10mm at 140k pa it would last 71 years. okay, inflation is a bitch, but still …
if you put it in some ETF you usually beat inflation with about 8.5% pa, which is taxable I guess. but it’s only the gain you pay tax on off course.
so if you make 8.5% of 10mm and lose 3% to inflation, and tax 16% on the remaining gains you are left with 3.9% (=390k) after taxes pa to all eternity.
so unless you assume all variables worst case (living in most expensive city, getting divorced every year etc) I’d call 10mm way above middle class
and these numbers are fur 10mm, not 100.
and want to actually enjoy a rich life style.
I guess my imagination is not good enough but I cannot imagine what I’d need much more than 1M per year in passive income for. 100K every 5 years easily gets me the car I want, 2M up-front would probably be enough to get me the house I want. Perhaps another 2M for a second house in some warm climate. I could pay for all of that in 1-5 years of passive income if I had $10M in investments.
I’ve been to Monaco. I’ve seen rich people. I didn’t see anything there I wanted.
