While the media fawns over Michael Dell hitting the $1B mark in "donations" to UT Austin, let’s look at the predatory math behind the headlines. This isn’t a gift to the public; it’s a masterclass in how billionaires use the Trump-era tax code to privatize our social policy.
Dell isn't donating "hard-earned cash." He’s offloading highly appreciated stock to his own private foundation to wipe out his tax liability. Every dollar he "saves" in taxes is a dollar stolen from the public treasury—money that should have funded basic community clinics and rural hospitals. Instead, it’s being funneled into high-tech "AI medical hubs" that serve as high-interest monuments to his corporate interests.
The "20-year promise" of his child investment accounts is even more insulting. He’s promising a few thousand dollars for a child in 2045, paid for by the massive tax breaks he gets today. Meanwhile, those same parents are drowning in healthcare costs. Family premiums have jumped nearly 50% in a decade, and high-tech centers like Dell’s only drive those costs higher by forcing an "innovation arms race" that hospitals pay for by hiking your rates.
We are literally subsidizing billionaire legacies with our own medical debt. This is the endgame of extreme neoliberalism: a world where the 0.1% decides who gets to survive based on which social problems look best on a building. We don’t need more billionaire "favors"; we need a tax system that doesn't treat the middle class like a piggy bank for the elite.
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@b4t this is childish. The bottom line is that the president and this business are engaging in incredibly unethical and borderline illegal activity and making it “look like” a charity. When in reality it’s not even close to that. The only people this helps is MD and the president personally. It doesn’t help you or me or even the kids who they’re “investing in”. Want to help so bad? Keep people employed. Stop being a bunch of greedy pricks and try being ethically and morally corrupt. But if you aren’t going to be those things and get called out on it don’t be pi---d about it. At the end of the day, people like MD are pieces of sh-t who maybe at one point or another were good people but aren’t anymore. They think they matter or are important. When at the end of the day until Dell and EMC merged I knew nothing about Dell and wouldn’t have even considered working at that company.
What bothers MD and others are that they’ll just be another guy in Home Depot. Do you really think if MD walked into Home Depot anyone would know who he is? Nope and that’s what eats at him everyday. It’s pathetic and sad. He’s pathetic and sad. Because he missed out on the meaning of life. Which is living it.
@b4t I always find this "you're on your own" speech funny because it completely ignores how the real world works.
Businesses don't exist in a vacuum. They rely on public roads, courts, police, contract enforcement, educated workers, stable currencies, power grids, ports, and decades of publicly funded research. Funny how government is the enemy until a corporation wants a tax break, a subsidy, a bailout, or a tariff to protect its profits.
And "anyone can start a business"? Sure. Anyone can buy a guitar too. That doesn't mean they'll make a living from it. Most businesses fail, not because every owner is lazy, but because markets are competitive, capital isn't unlimited, timing matters, and luck is real. Pretending otherwise is just something successful people tell themselves to believe they earned every single advantage.
Calling people lazy for pointing out problems is another classic. By that logic, nobody should have complained about child labor, 16-hour workdays, unsafe factories, or discrimination. We have weekends, workplace safety, overtime pay, and labor rights because people complained—and then forced change.
And "just get another job" isn't an answer if millions of people are dealing with the exact same issue. When a problem affects an entire workforce, it's probably bigger than individual choices.
The funniest part is the double standard. If an employee needs a safety net, it's "socialism." If a Fortune 500 company needs billions in bailouts, subsidies, tax breaks, or government contracts, suddenly it's called "protecting the economy."
Personal responsibility matters. Nobody is arguing otherwise. But pretending systems don't matter while benefiting from those very systems every single day isn't self-reliance—it's selective blindness.
Oh, and let's not forget my favorite part: the people who say "nobody owes you anything" are often the same ones praising billionaires for donating a tiny fraction of their wealth while cheering when they spend millions on accountants and lobbyists to avoid paying more in taxes.
Apparently, contributing through taxes—the thing that actually funds the roads, schools, courts, emergency services, and infrastructure they use every day—is "government theft." But making a voluntary donation that comes with a press release, tax deductions, and your name on a building is somehow the highest form of generosity.
If taxes are evil but charity is noble, then why work so hard to avoid the taxes that make your success possible in the first place? That's not self-reliance. That's wanting all the benefits of society without paying your share of the bill.
@1pm sounds like you need to move to a socialist country, if you depend on someone else for a safety net you will always have a excuse for a short coming or failure. A company or the government can not take care of you. You can only take care of yourself. Anyone can start a business, but few are willing to put in the required time, & effort to do it right. Lazy is complaining about something & failing to act, again you have the option to seek other employment, or shoot for the moon and start a successful business and employee hundreds of people. Complaining about anything accomplishes nothing, actions speak louder than words.
@1xn Wow. Dell pays me less than you pay in taxes......
@qp you really don’t get it do you? The desperation between the ultra wealthy and people like us is hugely disproportionate. Michael Dell, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos are all con-men. You don’t make billions without sc--wing people over. That’s exactly what they’re doing to you. So while they’re getting tax write offs, I’m paying 60K in taxes this year because I make enough but I’m not a 100M or billionaire.
It’s the guilded age all over again. Wake up buddy. You are being taken advantage of.
@qp What’s actually sad is how quickly you confuse charity with justice. No one is upset that money was donated; they’re questioning why a system exists where a handful of people get so rich that they can play gatekeeper with who deserves help. That’s not generosity, that’s a power imbalance.
Building a huge company doesn’t make someone morally untouchable. Those businesses rely on public infrastructure, workers, and systems they didn’t build alone. Pretending it’s all just ‘their hard-earned success’ is convenient, but not honest.
And the whole ‘if you don’t like it, start your own company’ line is lazy. It ignores reality. Not everyone starts from the same place, with the same access, safety nets, or opportunities. That’s just a fact.
People aren’t refusing to ‘look in the mirror.’ They’re pointing out that a society shouldn’t depend on the goodwill of billionaires to function fairly. If your best defense of the system is ‘be grateful for scraps or build your own empire,’ maybe the problem isn’t people complaining, maybe it’s the system you’re defending.
What kind of a world do we live in that people complain about a donation? This is a sad reflection of the entitled world we live in.
Start a multi Billion Dollar company, employee 100K employees, pay them well, provide generous time off / work life balance, then donate the fruits of your labor & have people complain about it? People need to grow up look in the mirror & ask more of yourself instead of blaming others for your failed reality which you created for yourself.
Not happy with the situation, look for another Company to work for, or start a company & donate 100 % of your profits if that makes you feel better.
Gee... just now figuring out what wealthy people have been doing for DECADES and have been doing under literally every president for the last 60 years?
Slow learner you are.
@dt Look, here’s how this actually hits a regular person, plain and simple:
You’re basically picking up their tab
When a billionaire writes off a billion dollars, that’s hundreds of millions in tax revenue that just... vanishes. But things like your kids' schools, the roads you drive on, and local emergency services still need to be paid for. Since that money isn't coming from the top anymore, the burden shifts to the rest of us—the people whose taxes are taken directly out of their paychecks before they even see them. You’re essentially subsidizing their "charity."
They get to play architect with your society
Normally, we’re supposed to have a say in where public money goes through voting. But when someone does this, they’re deciding—unilaterally—that "AI Research" is the top priority. You might think that money would be better spent fixing the local ER or making childcare more affordable, but you don't get a vote. They’re using tax-exempt dollars to push their own private agenda on everyone else.
The "Closed Loop" hustle
This is the part that really stings. They donate the money, get a massive tax break, and then their own company (Dell Technologies) swoops in to sell the servers and infrastructure to the very hospital they just funded. It’s a genius business move disguised as kindness. A regular parent doesn't get to "donate" to their kid's school and then get a guaranteed contract to supply the cafeteria. For us, that's a conflict of interest; for them, it's just "strategic philanthropy."
Two different worlds
In the end, that AI hospital will be state-of-the-art, but it’s often a boutique project. Meanwhile, the public hospital where you take your kids might still have five-hour wait times because the general tax pool is drying up. It creates a world where the ultra-wealthy build their own shiny future while the public services everyone else relies on just keep struggling.
It’s not that the hospital isn't a good thing—it’s just that the game is rigged so they get the tax break, the profit, and the praise, while the middle class quietly fills in the budget gaps they left behind.
@dt So when you use your HSA and all the other tax breaks, do you post on LinkedIn about it and expect hundreds of people to line up to thank you?
It's also a question of scale. Billionaires benefit from the infrastructure disproportionately, and so should pay more than others to support it.
So you're saying you don't file for any deductions or tax credits with the IRS? You don't use an HSA or 401k to avoid tax liabilities. And surely you don't apply for a homestead exemption right? I mean all of that would be "evading" taxes that could go to the public good.
@dj if Dell donate 1B$ in a hospital, where do you think the money will be invested: in a huge datacenter for AI contracted to Dell back, so is a win to win, he evade taxes and get fress revenue and profit.
@dj But do we even need AI medical hubs?
Every donated dollar that comes from private individuals is better than having the government tax, taken at the point of a g-n, individuals and wash the money through the bureaucracy and the donated dollar is then only worth 30 cents to the organization.
Perhaps we should start a charity that helps all of the people who have been laid off by Dell. He wants to help people, just not the people who work for him.
This has nothing to do with Dell as a company or money associated with the company
@a7 Except it wasn't a donation, it was a redirection of funds from taxpayers to MDs personal bank account(s).
Can’d disagree.
Sadly Dell is full of libtards who will tell you “keep crying” or other bs
Totally agree. Meanwhile the inside of his company is rotting. It’s all about how it looks though today. Not reality.
Thank you for the layoff information.
Boo fu--ing hoo, parents will cry about living costs no matter what. Imagine saying a $1,000,000,000 donation isn’t enough.