# Donating huge $$$ to the poor (1% wealth thread spinoff)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donating-huge-to-the-poor-1-wealth-thread-spinoff/1008247>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [September 29, 2024, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donating-huge-to-the-poor-1-wealth-thread-spinoff/1008247 "2024-09-29T18:02:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\
**Post date:** [October 7, 2024, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donating-huge-to-the-poor-1-wealth-thread-spinoff/1008247/61 "2024-10-07T21:56:56Z")

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> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#):
>
> Americans already give over $500 billion per year to charity. Your $10 billion won’t move that needle.
> 
> [An estimated $1200 billion has been given in economic aid to Africa over the last 30 years](https://africanarguments.org/2022/08/how-useful-is-aid-to-africa/). $10 billion will just disappear.
> 
> That’s not to say it couldn’t help someone someplace. The known best ways of doing that is to know your recipients. Will they be poor in America or poor in other parts of the world. If in America, why are they poor and what do they need to get out of that hole? A UBI? How about free health care? (SSI costs $65 billion a year and the bureaucracy is atrocious.) If in other parts of the world, get a seriously deep understanding of the culture first. Focus on a particular problem. End a disease. Build home solar cells. Bankroll small businesses. Think long-term and don’t expect results for years. The countries won’t have a democratic structure. Here’s an idea. Sink a billion into bribing leaders with the promise of another billion only if you see that the rest of the money hasn’t been wasted or skimmed off.
> 
> Or bribe warlords to stop their wars. Wars create poverty, need, health crises, and unemployment.
> 
> There are people who have spent their entire lives attacking this problem. Read my link above for what lessons they have learned and act accordingly.

A billion dollars is both a lot of money and not that much money. It’s a lot of money for me and I could use it to give 10,000 families a $100,000 check with would be more than 80% of Americans earn in a year. Helping 10,000 families helps, but it’s not going to affect any long-term systematic changes.

Most people don’t really know how much things cost or how to implement big sweeping changes at scale.

For example:

> [@Broomstick](#):
>
> Alternatively, purchase existing building stock in big cities, rehab/modify into affordable housing, and basically do the same thing. If I spent 500,000 (including build-outs and financial losses from selling below market) on each unit that’s 20,000 units. Drop that into a big city with a lack of housing and see what effect that has. The people profiting from Real Estate speculation will squeal but, again, what do I care? I’m a billionaire.

What “Big City” do you think you can “just drop” 20,000 low income housing units? New York? Toronto? San Francisco? In any of those cities $500k is already basically “low cost housing”. And you don’t think there are other people profiting from real estate speculation who are also billionaires with city government connections who will listen to them when they squeal?

And even if you could, what’s 20,000 homes in a metro area of anywhere from 5 to 20 million people?

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