This should come as no surprise, but it’s certainly a disappointment. One of the attributes of a great businessman is keeping their word.
Hahahhahaha just kidding.
Aditya Chakrabortty reports in The Guardian [guard] that all of the big-talking French billionaires who pledged hundreds of millions of euros to repair Notre Dame have apparently decided to hang onto their money, instead. Getting a bit of free press for being a philanthropist following a catastrophic fire: priceless.
Pinault and former trophy wife supermodel Linda Evangelista
Barely has the fire been put out before some of the richest people in France rush to help rebuild it. From François-Henri Pinault, the ultimate owner of Gucci, comes €100m (£90m). Not to be outdone, the Arnault family at Louis Vuitton put up €200m. More of the wealthy join the bidding, as if a Damien Hirst is going under the hammer. Within just three days, France’s billionaire class has coughed up nearly €600m. Or so their press releases state.
You can see where this is going:
Pinault and current trophy wife Salma Hayek
“The big donors haven’t paid. Not a cent,” a senior official at the cathedral tells journalists. Far humbler sums are sent in, from far poorer individuals. “Beautiful gestures,” says one charity executive, but hardly les grands prix.
That prompts a newswire story, after which two of the wealthy donors, the Arnault and Pinault families, stump up €10m each. Followed by silence.
Let them eat cake.
[I know “let them eat cake” is not what Marie Antoinette said. It is, however, a “tumbril remark” – what has become a suitable thing to say to a ci-devant as you help them into the back of the pickup truck for a ride to the killing field.]
Pinault’s current yacht. He liked it so much he bought the company. So, he can drive this thing around as a “show floor model” or something. I suggest he name it the “Déduction Fiscale” (tax write-off)
There is a deeper story here that I probably don’t need to dig out and flourish about: ultra-wealthy plutocrats like to make a big deal out of how much they give for causes, but they retain control of how it’s spent, which is often a problem. Also, they don’t tend to come clean about how much, proportionally, they are spending. For example, proportional to his wealth upon his death, Andrew Carnegie’s foundation would have been the equivalent of about $300,000 to your average multi-millionaire today. That’s what a new Rolls Royce costs. Some wealthy philanthropists say they are leaving everything to good causes but that usually means they’ve set up tax sheltered foundations for their kids, so we’re going to have generations of tax-free leeches clamped onto the body politic.
As ever, it’s not what they say, it’s what they do.
Don’t forget the 66% tax deduction they would get anyway for the donation, so even the 100M EUR are just 34M for them. Basically nothing on their level of too much money.
I also see it as a pretty good opportunity for Macron. He could go along the lines of, well we gave the tax reduction to companies as they give back to the public anyway. Looks like we were mistaken, they are actually greedy bastards, so let’s just revert the law and slap on some extra rich peoples taxes (he should be politician enough to say this with a straight face). Also an additional appeal to the public to grass root finance the rebuilt of Notre Dame would probably work. Et voilà – instant reelection.
Ah, who am I kidding nothing like this will ever happen, because money…
Do they still auction of submarines on ebay? Those boats do not look so solid after all… (asking for a friend)
nastes
As I understand it, this sort of thing, publicly promising great sums of money and then being slow, sometimes absent, in payment, is pretty common in wealthier social circles. Trump has had a habit of making promises, complete with the giant check thing, and then stiffing the charity until someone makes a stink about it.
Working as a contractor it was far more common for the people with money to have issues paying. A few going so far as to, essentially, say that ‘I should feel privileged to have worked on their house so I should work for free’, I was told that their recommendation would get me ‘lots of work’. I explained that I didn’t lack work. Work that payed was quite another thing and that while I valued their recommendation I really would like for them to pay me the agreed upon amount at the agreed upon time: $3500, now.
I guess it is the nature of the beast. You don’t get rich by letting go of money easily. It’s the science of buckets: quick to pour into and slow to pour out of means you tend to have a fuller bucket. Given that an economy is better characterized by the movement of money rather than the holding of money it makes sense that if you want a better economy you need to get the money into the hands of people who will move it. Poor people are great at moving money. Hand a poor person $100 and it will ricochet around the economy in a chain reaction of bills being paid and products being purchased.
Hey, you don’t get rich by giving your money away!
Or paying taxes.
Or not exploiting workers.
A construction worker I know once told me about a rich guy who didn’t fully pay the workers who built his house. The next spring the roof of his newly built house started leaking. Apparently, one of the pissed off workers had intentionally created a hole in the roof he himself had made.
Quelle surprise!
I remember thinking at the time when all that money was pledged that it wouldn’t happen, but I didn’t know it was “a thing” wealthy people do to boost their public profile. It’s just another sleazy form of marketing. How despicable.
A Modest Proposal
How long until the Pope starts excommunicating French zillionaires?
Andreas Avester @ # 5: … a rich guy who didn’t fully pay the workers who built his house.
That reminds me of another story of the same stripe, in which everything in the house worked well except that the chimney would not draw, even though everyone who looked up through it could see no obstruction. Eventually the owner gave in and paid the remaining debt, and the builder came back and dropped a brick through the clear glass across the flue.
Rob Grigjanis@#7:
There is a Russian proverb “the rich cannot eat money”
My addition is “… but the poor can eat the rich.”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1pMVfpKBuyI
This is a good example of the difference between speech and action. Even though both are actions, not all actions are equal.
voyager @#6
Yet this behavior still seems odd for me. When some rich person fails to give to charity the promised amount of cash, people start talking about it thus creating negative publicity for the person who failed to deliver what they promised. Or are wealthy people counting on the rest of the society having short attention spans and failing to notice publicly available information about how somebody didn’t fulfill their promise?
Marcus @#9
Do you remember where you heard it? I have never heard such a proverb in Russian language. I asked my Russian speaking acquaintances, and they haven’t heard that either. I tried googling for “богатые не могут кушать деньги” (this is how I would translate the phrase into Russian), and I didn’t really get any results either. I’m puzzled. If such a Russian proverb existed, I should be able to find it in Russian language.
I recently saw this about Epstein, and it certainly looks very pertinent:
https://twitter.com/AnandWrites/status/1150394211516190728
Andreas @#13
I do not know if it helps you any further, but I know the (supposedly Russian) proverb along the lines of:
“The rich cannot eat money, so it is fortunate that there are poor folk to grow their food”
Suspiciously, via google I only find it cited as a russian proverb, without any sources given; usually on sites that collect proverbs.
To add to your data:
A sample of two Russians and one Pole I know also never heard of it. With this we are slowly approaching a representative sampling of the population of Russia and Poland ;-)
Good luck finding the origin!
nastes
Do you remember where you heard it? I have never heard such a proverb in Russian language.
Some googling about indicates that it may be an Assyrian proverb. (!)
[quotes]
So I guess my version would be “The rich would have to eat money if the poor did not provide food, assuming the poor refrain from eating the rich.” or something like that.
There was a cartoon once which showed the despair of the elites who had “Gone Galt” when they realized there was nobody in their fortress enclave to do the actual work. But….I am an ENTREPENEUR! I don’t dig ditches or work a hoe!