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In reply to the discussion: "REPORT: Wal-Mart Heirs Give Next To Nothing To Their Charitable Foundation" [View all]JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)Last edited Thu Jun 5, 2014, 12:13 AM - Edit history (2)
Like the rest of the billionaire "philanthropic" foundations, it is devoted to the pet social engineering projects of its founder and controllers. This one is most heavily involved in sustaining the corporate school reform.
http://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/educationreform
This bogus movement, a war on teachers and children and the public education system, is largely the product of financing from Walton, Gates and the Broads. While there is a lot of neoliberal logic driving it, one wonders how powerful it would be without the ample foundation money creating most of the astroturf for it.
It makes no difference whether the Waltons put their swag into more luxury homes or a pretend charity. Either way, they are making the world a worse place. It doesn't even matter if the charity does good. They shouldn't have the money in the first place.
No one should wield this kind of money as a private individual. 99.999% of it should be expropriated through a 100% inheritance tax above a few million in assets. I'm not a fan of the state owning anything, so we need to come up with models of collective ownership of capital at the levels of localities, regions, industries, states and nations. Foundations should exist: but as bodies under the control of larger collectives than the whims of some robber baron who decides it's time to play "philanthropist" and reshape society according to his singular vision -- which almost inevitably means, according to his own economic interest disguised as some charitable project (like the Gates' promotion of more tech in education).
Who says they, or Gates, or Bloomberg, or Rockefellers, should decide what society becomes simply because they or their parents or their great-grandparents were successful in gathering wealth under the capitalist system? Fuck them all. They are the wealth hoarders.