How to Give Away a Fortune

LostCorpse

LostCorpse

LostCorpse

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www.newyorker.com

How to Give Away a Fortune

An Austrian heiress recruited fifty people from all walks of life to redistribute twenty-five million euros—if they could agree on how to spend it.
www.newyorker.com www.newyorker.com
guterrat.info

Home - Guter Rat (Good Council) - Citizens' Council for Wealth Distribution

In Austria, wealth - and therefore power - is unequally distributed. Against this backdrop, millionaire heiress Marlene Engelhorn is initiating a nationwide, democratic citizens' council entitled "Guter Rat".
guterrat.info guterrat.info

An Austrian heiress recruited fifty people from all walks of life to redistribute twenty-five million euros—if they could agree on how to spend it.

In January, Erna was having a coffee in her living room in Vienna when she opened a letter from something called the Guter Rat für Rückverteilung, or the Good Council for Redistribution. “Guten Tag Ernestine!” the letter began. “How wealth is distributed across the country shapes how we live together and influences how well a democratic society functions.”

The Good Council, the text went on, would comprise fifty Austrians selected by lottery—Erna was among ten thousand who made the first cut—and meet for six weekends to come up with proposals for how to address inequality in Austria, where the richest one per cent controls half of the country’s wealth. Additionally, the council would have twenty-five million euros to distribute as it saw fit, money provided by Marlene Engelhorn, who was described in the letter only as the council’s “Auftraggeberin,” or principal client. The letter emphasized that the council would make decisions “freely and without influence.” Those selected as members would also receive twelve hundred euros per weekend as compensation for their time and labor.



it continues on in the link.
i thought it an interesting article some thing possitive

its a long article but others might find it interesting. i need to re-read it again!
 
I would have probably binned the letter assuming it was a different take on the Nigerian Prince scam!

It sounds fascinating, though. I'm definitely going to keep an eye on it, I hope they provide summaries of the meetings.
 
Surely 25 million would be very easy to do good with though, its not that much money when you start doing big deeds like getting a few dozen homeless people and families off the streets and into homes. Your funds would vanish and you would have helped the poorest in society which sounds like the aim here. Giving 50 people 1200 per weekend sounds unnecessary.
 
dave28 said:
Surely 25 million would be very easy to do good with though, its not that much money when you start doing big deeds like getting a few dozen homeless people and families off the streets and into homes.
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Yup, this sort of stuff just smacks of publicity-seeking/wanting praise/kudos.

If the goal was to find the most efficient way of giving away unwanted wealth in order to do good then she could simply refer to this website rather than consult a bunch of uninformed random people: https://www.givewell.org/

As for the big stuff, 25 million is a drop in the ocean, things like tackling homelessness don't just require funding but policy changes etc.. and partly comes down to political will.
 
givewell is great i'll investigate that further.

but it seems like the goal was about bring some balance to the wealth in that spesific contry. certainly an interesting experement.
if it was publicity i'd expect a wider news article disemination. i only spotted it as it came through a firefox feed.
while the person giving the money away, will have to work / get a job, thats optional i think. and they wont be with out money forever.
 
LostCorpse said:
but it seems like the goal was about bring some balance to the wealth in that spesific contry. certainly an interesting experement.
if it was publicity i'd expect a wider news article disemination
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It's been reported in multiple publications - I'm not sure how wider dissemination would imply something different about the goal as most of that is outside of her control.

She's given away 25 million but the cost of running this experiment was apparently 3 million, so that's already more than 10% of the amount given away lost to bureaucracy. And then these were the causes - buying some land and preserving it, donating to a children's program at an orchestra, LGBT counseling, it's just some nice feel-good stuff and little to do with the stated goal:
The largest amount, more than €1.6 million, went to the Nature Conservation Union, which buys untouched land in order to preserve it. More than two hundred thousand euros went to the children’s programs of the Salzburg Philharmonic. Tens of thousands more were directed to efforts such as a counselling center for L.G.B.T.Q. youth, a children’s soccer league, a newspaper distributed by the homeless in Vienna, and a coalition of civic-minded scientists which tries to inject scientific findings into the mainstream discourse.
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She's kept up to 3 million for herself but also this isn't necessarily her main inheritance, this family is super rich, her grandmother was a billionaire and both of her parents are alive, there are more inheritances still to come beyond this one from her aunt.

She might need to get a job in a year so she says but presumably, she's still going to be living in a nice place without a mortgage etc.. and who knows what she's due to inherit in future.
 
dowie said:
She's given away 25 million but the cost of running this experiment was apparently 3 million, so that's already more than 10% of the amount given away lost to bureaucracy. And then these were the causes - buying some land and preserving it, donating to a children's program at an orchestra, LGBT counseling, it's just some nice feel-good stuff and little to do with the stated goal:
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sounds like 25mil wasted.

would have been better putting that 25mil in the stock market or even a bank, using the dividends/profits/interest to fund things like community orchards or whatever, things that don't cost much but benefit the community and encourage social interaction and bonding.
 
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