All fired up

[Pixelated]

In the wake of the Notre Dame fire, we've seen news reports of billionaires (mostly in France) offering to donate staggering sums of money to help with the repairs and rebuilding.

The reactions, I suppose, should have been foreseen.

"See?? All these rich people COULD help out with the Flint water disaster, with Puerto Rico, with homelessness, with kids in cages, with world hunger, but they DON'T!!!"

My usual response is "And you know FOR A FACT that they are donating nothing to these or other causes, do you? You have full access to their banking information?"

This is usually brushed aside, sometimes with "Well, they're not donating $700 billion Euros to [whatever cause]!"

And? So? Until otherwise decided, it's still THEIR damned money. If they are making a big deal out of donating to Notre Dame, it's probably because it was a huge news item to begin with (yes, they could indeed donate anonymously but again ... that's not a requirement. I donated a small amount to the three Louisiana churches and put MY name down. Does that mean my small contribution doesn't count?)

Not to mention the fact that I can't see a French billionaire walking into Flint and reworking the water system there without having to go through a shitload of bureaucratic paperwork. Ditto with Puerto Rico.

And somebody needs to explain to me just how these same billionaires are supposed to walk into an ICE facility and walk out with all those kids. Please, put THAT one on YouTube. Make it a pay-per-view and you probably could solve one or more of those other issues.


Am I the only one getting irritated with this? Or am I just on the wrong side of this argument?

[Judecat]

From what I understand they are making the donations to the French Government because the French President is talking about how they are going to rebuild. The French government cares about restoring Notre Dame.

On the other hand, the American President is not making Flint or Puerto Rico a priority, so who exactly are they supposed to donate the money too, not the American government. Are they supposed to go to each family and say, " here's a couple of grand, go fix your water supply". Or "here's the money to fix your house that got blown away by the hurricane. "

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

In this case, that's just Federalism. The Federal government does not renovate or directly usurp state control of local infrastructure/constructions.

One of the big fails the United States has is that it's citizens DON'T monitor their municipal/state governments and tend to vote National Party lines. This (for historical reference) was an unthinkable outcome or at the very least was very argued against as being reality when the Constitution was ratified. Theoretically there should be a "National Fund" for stuff like this, but it would turn into a partisan shitshow fairly quickly.

So stuff like Flint relies on weird "on the side" donations where donors have to figure out who to talk to to get things like:

Musk donating to Flint schools:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/08/us/el...rnd/index.html

Musk offering to fix Homes:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/08/us/el...rnd/index.html

This isn't to talk up Musk, just doing things like "donating to fix pipes" is actually an exceedingly hard thing to get handled and part of it is really just US culture which in many ways really despises or considers any extra money you give to the government you being a sucker. I'm not saying rich people can't do it, I'm saying it's by degrees harder.