Steve Jobs refused to talk philanthropy with biographer - Page 2

I'm surprised by how many people buy into this idea. "It's my money, I earned it." It's pretty sad when people are so ungrateful of what they've been given by the society (and God if you believe that) in order to be able to "earn it". Health, rule of law, free mkt (not free to maintain), everyone around you baring some form of costs when you compete with them, luck, relationships, etc. Nothing is "fully earned" by yourself without the above.

HE TOOK IT WITH HIM!!!

Seriously, there is a concept in Judaism (also in Christianity but it's - tellingly - rarely spoken of) wherein if you talk about your charity, it is displeasing to God. The gift that pleases God most is the one no man knows about. The gift you give in secret.

Jobs was not Christian or Jewish (as far as I know) but it's not an 'exclusive' idea and he could have adopted the concept at many points along his spiritual journey.

I had a feeling you were being sarcastic, but just to let you know, that "sarcasm punctuation" to me, in my browser, looks like a small box with a "2E" inside it. Is that what a sarcasm punctuation mark is supposed to look like?

The sarcasm punctuation in your initial response does not render correctly on many platforms.

It just shows up as a garbled character on my work PC (Windows 7). It also is garbled on my iPad's Safari browser (iOS 5).

If you were using the forum's standard smilies, then something must be broken, so please inform the site administrators. If you were using some other character set/font/emoji/whatever, you might want to stop using something that is so clearly causing confusion.

You're welcome.

There is no evidence whatsoever that the Jobs' were making significant anonymous contributions. It's merely wishful thinking from the Cult of Steve. While he may well have done so (from all indications I kinda doubt it though) there's no real reason to assume he did.

And you know what? It's all right if he didn't. Any giving, anonymous or otherwise, should be none of our concern.

!!!!!!

I did not know that.


What is it there, just the standard rectangle? Or is it n͚̭̥̥̫̆͊̍̇̈́o͍̳͕̘̥̓̏̈ͤ̋̀͢͝n̜̠̬ͩͧͬͪ͆͐́́s̸̨͚̦̭̟͖̺͊̇̓ ͐ͭ̽̈e̪͎͉͖̖̹̦̦̜͆̅ͨͭ̅̐̃͡n̥̱ͣ̅̏ͯ͐̐͘͡ͅs̷̢͉͇̞ͨ̑̂͒͛́͝e͍̳ ̫͎͓̖̍ͮ͊̌ͩ̚͞ͅ ̛̰̭̂̂̕͢l̤̣͙͚̩̰̗̣ͧͬ͋͂̑ͤi̎̇͏̹̫͓k̷̍̇̇͐ͩ́҉̛͙̯̣ę̡͚̜̤͙͎̗ ̙̳̀̊ͥ͛̓̈́̃͘ ̥͕͚̹̣̜̦̭̳ͬ̆̆̂ͭ̅͛t̠̍͋̒̐̐͊h̵̺̘̠͕̬̲̮̏ͣ͆̋͋ͣi̼̳̮̱͛̏ͥ͠ș̶ ̦̙̫͕͗̊ͪ?͖̼͖̻̉ͯ̆ͪ̉ͫ


I suppose I will, then It's standard Unicode, though that's strange.

give your head a shake man.
...then read your post again.

True, there is no direct evidence. However, Laurene Powell Jobs is very involved in a number of educational nonprofits. People who sit on the board of charities tend to have some sort of monetary involvement.

Go ahead and look at the donor list of any large performing arts organization, museum, etc. Look at the names of the board of trustees, board of directors, officers, etc. Then look at the donor list. Even at the highest levels, there will usually be at least one anonymous donor, often several.

Assuming the Jobs family wealth is in a private trust (Laurene was an investment banker before she married Steve), there would be no public records of their charitable activities. The only people that would need to know would be the charities themselves, the Jobs tax attorney, and the IRS. Nothing would go through the probate courts.

Remember that there are significant tax benefits, especially for the Jobses whose vast fortune is mostly in fully-appreciated shares of Disney. They can donate shares without paying capital gains and write off the full market value at the time of the donation. Let's say the Jobs trust donated $1,000,000 in DIS shares. Let's say Steve paid the Disney share equivalent of $5 for those Pixar shares, but DIS is trading at $35. That means the trust gets a million dollar writeoff but the out-of-pocket was only $142,000. If the trust sold the shares, it would get dinged by the 15% long-term capital gains tax, meaning the charity would get $850,000 while the out-of-pocket would balloon to $292,000.

All we know about his "stance of philanthropy" is that he doesn't discuss it.

I'd be willing to bet that he donated more money to charitable activities than anyone reading this. But we can only speculate. Whether he gave away $0 or $1B, all we know is that he didn't want to talk about it.

It was the standard rectangle on my iPad. On my Windows box, it was box with some embedded characters as someone else described.


Well, there's the issue: assuming that everyone's browser default is for Unicode character encoding.

Firefox on my Wintel box is set for Western (ISO-8859-1) encoding. I finally saw the sarcasm mark when I switched page encoding in the browser to Unicode.

Sure are a lot of asswipes on this thread. None of us know how much or little he gave to charity. He didn't want to discuss it, yet many construe that as some sort of confirmation that he was a jerk. Geez. If he had gone around making a big deal about his charitable giving, the same people would be whining that he was doing it for the publicity. Bottom line is no ones knows and it's really no one's business. I would be willing to guess he gave quite a bit. But no one really knows. And that's the way he wanted it.

Some weird tall skinny rectangle with squiggles in it. I assumed it was the Chinese character for jerk or something to reinforce your point. I apologize for not recognizing it as sarcasm.

How do you really know why Gates donated initially?

Hey, no problem. Didn't know it didn't show up!

That is, of course, total BS.

Gates has donated the majority of his wealth to doing things for others around the world - mostly in education and health care. His efforts have saved lives and supported research to help find cures and treatment for numerous diseases.

Buffett has pledged to donate half of his wealth to charity upon his death.

How is either of those "pseudo-philanthropy"? Have you donated >50% of your net worth to charity?

We don't, although some guess that his mom told him to loosen the purse strings. This was right about the height of the company's visibility while the Department of Justice was investigating the company for antitrust behavior.

you can join the dots after remembering his public image, and the mounting public opinion.:

http://5z8.info/malicious-cookie_h0u...lder-goats.mov

also some other links about the Job's family's' charity activity.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...729373784.html

"But Ms. Powell Jobs's activities paint a picture of a family deeply involved in supporting education reform, women's issues and other philanthropic causes, as well as Democratic Party candidates and issues."

plus an early interview where Jobs talks about philanthropy

http://www.redmondpie.com/steve-jobs...-playboy-1985/

"On philanthropy
PB: So what do you do?
Jobs: That’s a part of my life that I like to keep private. When I have some time, I’m going to start a public foundation. I do some things privately now.
PB: You could spend all of your time disbursing your money.
Jobs: Oh, you have to. I’m convinced that to give away a dollar effectively is harder than to make a dollar."

there are too many people on here saying there is no proof of anonymous donations. Please go off and think about it until you can understand that statement.

I think Steve was very product focussed, and anything that didn't contribute directly to better products he did not want to know about.

I actually found the book quite boring. There was not much revealed that was not already common knowledge to fans of the man. It might have been more interesting to the general public I guess.

I agree with you to a point, but sometimes making it known that you are doing it can help encourage others.

Larry Ellison's Giving Pledge is a good example:

http://cms.givingpledge.org/Content/...son_080310.pdf

A wise man does not speak about that with which he is not familiar...

My guess is Steve wanted to do good -- not set up another PUBLICITY stunt philanthropy.

Personally I think that Charities have gotten out of hand -- and they don't solve a damn thing. I'd much rather have the wealth spread out, than to have kids making bake sales so that they can beg for book money.

If the Philanthropist/ King doesn't like you -- he won't shower you with his lordly beneficence.

I really want a nation that can decide it's priorities and drive solutions -- not a nation that solves flood damage by holding a church pot-luck. The fact that so many people are so misty eyed about yet another "charity" is what is so messed up with our psychology. There aren't any problems we cannot fix as a nation if we have the will to do it.

I respect what Bill Gates has done since he left Microsoft. But let's face it, he was as much of a "horrible person" as Jobs was while he was CEO of Microsoft. If you want to compare Jobs to Gates, compare Microsoft CEO Bill Gates to Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Don't compare Retired CEO Bill Gates to CEO Steve Jobs. If you make the comparison properly, you'll find that what Steve Jobs did was pretty typical of people who are successful in business.

People almost worship Gates now... but they don't remember that he STOLE most of that technology he sold with Microsoft. For about a decade, real innovation ceased on desktop computers as the Microsoft hegemony bundled OS with computer and controlled the marketplace for office apps.

I'd much rather 100,000 people who can take care of their families than one rich "generous" former crook.

The road kill following Microsofts dirty business practices could make a few books.

I hope that you realize that city government typically has nothing to do with how schools are run or funded.

It's like shooting the dog catcher because your mail didn't arrive on time.

He couldn't do anything with the money after he died.

J.

In my opinion, giving away something that means nothing to the giver is nothing to admire. Buffett and Gates both measure their wealth in the tens of billions of dollars. Giving away half of it still leaves them with tens of billions of dollars. I give them credit for having a conscience, since it is clear by their numerous press conferences and exhortations to other rich people to donate that they understand that nothing they have done in life justifies them controlling that much wealth. But the fact that they publicize the "gifts" makes it clear that they are buying an improved public opinion of themselves (for a price of virtually nothing, since the subtraction of the money has no effect whatsoever on their ability to purchase anything on earth they want). They don't want to go down in history as comprehensive greedheads, however I think generosity is more than the absence of abject stinginess. Get back to me when Bill Gates donates his quarter billion dollar house and moves into a studio apartment if you want me to sing hosannas.

How much I have donated is, of course, an ad hominem irrelevancy. Gates and Buffett could give away 99.9% and it would have less effect on their standard of living than a normal person would experience giving away 10%.

The etymology of "philanthropy" is about the love of humanity. I believe that is a secondary motivation for Gates and Buffett.
That makes their philanthropy pseudo-philanthropy.

A very inaccurate post.

I think he gave a lot to charities as an anonymous donor. Alot of the richest give money and make it public for people to see what a great person they are. A lot of it is about their image in the world.

People in general are being overly judgmental of the Jobs. Of course they have given to charity. It's just not meeting the expectations of some, and there's no evidence if they gifted anonymously.

I read about his residence in Palo Alto and that he wanted his kids to grow up in a normal neighborhood. Sounds like an honest way to raise a family. Not what your typical greedo would do.

I do think however that he could have created a foundation or some truly spectacular non-profit organization or even a university but that's me and unfair to hold someone to that type of approach to how they share their wealth.

In principle I agree with the folks saying that it's nobody's business who Steve Jobs donates his money to.

Except that... He *sought out* a biographer to write the story of his life. The story includes intimate details about his relationship with his family, his drug use, his business successes and failures, his moral foibles.. honestly his views on philanthropy seem pretty tame compared to what he revealed to Isaacson.

So yes, his charitable donations are his own business. Just as his relationship with his first daughter is his own business. But it is incongruous for him to make 98% of his own business public record, but then to keep that little tidbit private.

Plus Gates attends secret meeting on decreasing world population by mass murder with things such as GMO's. He might look Good on the outside, but he's evil on the inside.

All the others seemed to do 5 years

Woodside is a very small town; many people involved in the town government are also involved with the schools. They're not necessarily employees of either the government or the school system.

In a large city, you would be correct, but Woodside is small, population 5300. It is one of the richest small towns (per capita income) and those people like to meddle.

And you had zero trouble ASSUMING it was the other guy's fault.

I notice you still have made NO direct apology to the guy you called out for ridicule. That's pretty telling. For the record, "I didn't know you couldn't see it" is NOT an apology. Not that he's asking for one, HE is too classy.

You might try giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt in the future, but if I came at this using the very same worldview you did, I should ASSUME you're incapable of that.

This is sadly all too true. Most of your charity dollars are scattered to the four winds. If you want a good cry (laugh?) about human cynicism and corruption, check out some of the studies that have been done about all the money donated to various "9/11" relief funds. Almost all of it vanished with nothing to show for it.

lol, nice try.

Given his stated opinion on wealth, I wouldn't be surprised if he'd either donated most of his wealth anonymously, or set up private trusts to invest it so his wealth could 'keep on giving' indefinitely in order to continue doing 'something wonderful' after he was gone.

Actually, I'd bet on the latter. He created Apple to use as a tool to enact his vision. I assume he would do the same with the monetary system, rather than just disposing of it as a one-time thing.

Neither one of these comments are based in reality or fact. Since Jobs preferred to donate anonymously there is no way either of you could know what he in fact did or did not donate, or what charities, if any, he supported. Period. The old "everyone knows that" cop-out is just plain stupid, or as you so blythely put it: "big bullshit". You don't know, you can't know and yet you are willing to pass judgement in blind ignorance.

The second quote is truly "pretty straight forward, really." Wrong in such fundamental ways as to be completely out in left field playing soccer on a baseball field. And based on these wrong-headed comments - Steve Jobs is dickish because he didn't care if macinthe408 knew all about every penny he gave to every charity. Nice.

Except that your cute little backwards ? doesn't show up that way on my iPad 2. It's just a blank square. Your "sarcasm" tends to be a bit obtuse a lot of the time.

Sarcasm? You ought to leave a hint if that is your goal. Rather you painted yourself as a jerk and simpleton.