Give it
August 23, 2021 10:43 AM   Subscribe

Former billionaire Chuck Feeney, who cofounded airport retailer Duty Free Shoppers, anonymously gave away almost his entire net worth. Cited as an inspiration by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates for the Giving Pledge, he recently closed his philanthropic foundation after giving away $8 billion and lives in a small rented apartment in San Francisco.
posted by PhineasGage (34 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
$8B of value extracted from the government exploiting a tax loophole with foreign travelers.

Almost as impressive as him giving it all away
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:59 AM on August 23, 2021 [12 favorites]


It’s a feat to give it all away and good on him for sticking to it. But a proper tax code wouldn’t have allowed that to happen in the first place. Philanthropy is a weak substitute for taxation and policy-based distribution, because it allows a very few people to make unilateral decisions about the distribution of wealth they accrued using tax-built infrastructure and other people’s labor. That’s an end-run around democracy.
posted by toodleydoodley at 11:14 AM on August 23, 2021 [84 favorites]


nearly $1 billion to his alma mater, Cornell

One of Feeney’s final gifts, $350 million for Cornell to build a technology campus on New York City’s Roosevelt Island, is a classic example of his giving philosophy.

that's... a lot of money to give to an already wealthy institution, now it's merely the 18th largest endowment of US universities
posted by BungaDunga at 11:17 AM on August 23, 2021 [19 favorites]


As tax loopholes go, duty free shopping seems like perhaps not the hill to die on. It's basically just decriminalizing some really low-stakes smuggling that would be nearly impossible to enforce anyway. (Also my guess is the US probably benefits from outgoing duty exemptions more than it loses on incoming products. Lots of foreigners come to the US to shop and bring stuff home, or at least do significant shopping while they're here.)

The fact that he wound up his philanthropic institution, rather than having it carry on forever by only spending the interest off of its endowment, is interesting. You don't see that happening very often. Lots of rich people seem to treat their philanthropic orgs as immortal monuments to themselves.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:15 PM on August 23, 2021 [30 favorites]


This is noble, but shouldn't be possible.
posted by mhoye at 12:19 PM on August 23, 2021 [12 favorites]


Lots of rich people seem to treat their philanthropic orgs as immortal monuments to themselves.

Or as means by which family members and hangers-on can indefinitely draw salaries.
posted by mr_roboto at 12:20 PM on August 23, 2021 [16 favorites]


I think this is an interesting argument aimed at the specific audience of billionaires:
Since you can't take it with you—why not give it all away, have control of where it goes and see the results with your own eyes?
The latter part is an obvious appeal to a Captain of Industry, but the sting in the opener is great. You too are mortal, billionaire. Some of them realize it snd some seemingly don’t. ( True of the rest of us too, I suppose.)
posted by clew at 12:25 PM on August 23, 2021 [2 favorites]


BTW, the final grant was announced in 2017.

I don't know whether the $350 million donation for the technology center on Roosevelt Island was a good idea or not - my first reaction is that it wouldn't be my highest priority if I had $350 million - but it was done with forethought. This wasn't just "some rich guy writes a big check to a huge institution to get his name on a building" type of philanthropy. I'd guess that the other donations to Cornell were also carefully planned (which again doesn't mean they were optimal.)

In general, I agree rich educational institutions have plenty; my two alma maters have a combined endowment of over $3 billion. I give them a symbolic $50 a year. And don't get me started on children's hospitals.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 12:28 PM on August 23, 2021 [4 favorites]


Previously on MetaFilter
posted by jedicus at 12:31 PM on August 23, 2021 [1 favorite]


Bit of a heart stopper there; I assumed the post was because he was dead. It wasn't a big ticket item but Atlantic Philanthropies funneled $4.7m to GLEN Gay and Lesbian Equality Network and similar amounts to Amnesty and other social inclusion charities in Ireland. Normalizing the LGBT.ie world with publicity and advocacy really helped get the Marriage Equality Referendum over the line in 2015. So thanks for that.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:50 PM on August 23, 2021 [21 favorites]


The headline says he "is now officially broke"; the article says he and his wife have $2 million set aside for their retirement. Which is it...?
posted by dusty potato at 12:53 PM on August 23, 2021 [8 favorites]


Imagine if he had spent all that money on lobbying to change the tax code.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:59 PM on August 23, 2021 [8 favorites]


The headline says he "is now officially broke"; the article says he and his wife have $2 million set aside for their retirement. Which is it...?

He’s renting in San Francisco, so both?
posted by DangerIsMyMiddleName at 1:08 PM on August 23, 2021 [79 favorites]


Feeney's said his philanthropy is born of out guilt, and is fond of that no pockets in a shroud proverb. More than a billion dollars went to educational and philanthropic programs in Ireland, including the LGBT support BobTheScientist notes. $38 million of a $90 million package funded aging and dementia programs in Northern Ireland.
posted by Iris Gambol at 1:45 PM on August 23, 2021 [4 favorites]


Yes, it's unfair that the tax code allowed him to get this wealthy. Yes, it's a great achievement to have successfully and very intentionally given it away. But I've been impressed by him succeeding at not being a jerk: I've heard numerous stories about how unassuming and down to earth he has been, stories going back a long time. If true, it's most definitely an outlier in a long established trend.
posted by ivanthenotsoterrible at 1:56 PM on August 23, 2021 [18 favorites]


The headline says he "is now officially broke"; the article says he and his wife have $2 million set aside for their retirement. Which is it...?

It's both. In America, this is considered broke because they will likely spend all that on end-of-life healthcare. In other words, they have money, but that money is all accounted for and expected to pay things in the future.
posted by deadaluspark at 2:15 PM on August 23, 2021 [14 favorites]


It's kind of extreme, but looks good compared to what his partner in DFS did -- achieving the ultimate pinnacle of of social climbing of his family becoming royalty (by marriage, at least).
posted by MattD at 2:42 PM on August 23, 2021


It's both. In America, this is considered broke because they will likely spend all that on end-of-life healthcare.

This is considered broke by whom? There are so many people in the US who are entering end of life with literally 0 assets, many without even a safe place to live, and I really doubt they look at someone with 2 million dollars (!) set aside and think "ah yeah, same situation".
posted by dusty potato at 3:12 PM on August 23, 2021 [5 favorites]


Broke? No. Not much more than is necessary for a comfortable, but not extravagant, retirement that our factory worker grandparents got to have? Yes.

See, friend, we didn't look askance at our grandparents because they didn't ever have a million or two in the bank. They had pensions and Social Security instead. Now you have to actually have the money in your own account so people can point at you and say "look at that horrible rich person over there!"
posted by wierdo at 3:35 PM on August 23, 2021 [3 favorites]


Since you can't take it with you—why not give it all away, have control of where it goes and see the results with your own eyes?

Because a billion dollars lets you lead a life of unimaginable luxury and lets your children lead a life of unimaginable luxury and will let their children lead a life of extreme-but-mostly-imaginable luxury.

Or you could go the Elon Musk route and try to start a colony on Mars (he might be crazy, but I think he's genuine in this desire) which is its own kind of cool.

Not everyone wants that, but it's not exactly hard to see why some might.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 3:53 PM on August 23, 2021


Perspective is everything, and Feeney's broke for a billionaire. Anecdotes from a longtime Feeney pal, bolding mine:

Feeney’s friend Niall O’Dowd, founder of news website IrishCentral, who has known Feeney for more than 25 years, says he didn’t know Feeney was rich until he was featured in Forbes as one of the richest men in the world.

“That’s because he acted poor, meeting me in scrappy diners and leaving me with the check. I put up with it because he was always worth the price of the coffee and the scraped-out onion bagel. His insights were incredible,” O’Dowd wrote in his blog. He recalls a few other incidents.

“Once, he took me on a long walk to a public library in Connecticut so he could pick up magazines for free there. Another time, I met him at the Merrion Hotel in Dublin, sampling the free Sunday newspapers. A few weeks later, he was up to the same trick at Fitzpatrick’s in Manhattan.”
-- The Giving-While-Living Superhero, a 2014 Outlook Business magazine profile archived at The Atlantic Philanthropies website.

O’Dowd and Feeney remain friends despite such shenanigans. Also, library magazines and hotel newspapers aren't free.
["Glenn, Glenn, Glenn... the library isn't free. It's paid for, with tax money." -- J. Stewart, The Daily Show, Feb. 22, 2010]
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:06 PM on August 23, 2021 [8 favorites]


But here's O'Dowd again, writing in 2009 about Chuck Feeney's efforts during the Northern Ireland peace process:

In Northern Ireland [Feeney] played a critical role as the documentary [RTE's "Secret Billionaire"] shows. He was a key figure in securing the involvement of President Bill Clinton in the process, which transformed the drive for peace. He stepped up with his own money when Sinn Fein desperately needed an office in Washington to assure their own hard men that the peace process was working. It was a vital intervention.

You can count on the finger of one hand the number of billionaires who would have originally agreed to meet Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, then widely considered a terrorist, in a safe house in Dublin at the height of The Troubles like Feeney did. He did it because he wanted to understand the Republican viewpoint and felt it could help. I was at that meeting and will always remember that encounter between two of the most extraordinary men I have ever met.


Chuck Feeney paid a million dollars and covered the costs of that DC office for three years.
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:20 PM on August 23, 2021 [10 favorites]


Amassing 8 billion dollars and then giving it away reminds me of the adage about a clever person being able to get out of jams that a wise person wouldn't get into in the first place
posted by cubeb at 5:19 PM on August 23, 2021 [8 favorites]


I'm not in favor of anti-tax billionaires or AnCap yahoos who bend the tax rules for their own self-interest. I doubt this guy spent all his money for the best good in the world, as people have noted above. I feel very uncomfortable making this point because of how it might come across, but taxes go to whatever a government is currently focused on.

1/4th of Federal Taxes, in the American system, go into the Military Industrial Complex. If your donations and contributions are toward charities that actively make the world a better place for folks and mirror or support the social services in the US, and aren't just money laundering/ tax haven schemes, I feel it's a bit better than supporting the MIC, even if 3/4ths of your dollar go to non-military government expenditures.
posted by Philipschall at 5:53 PM on August 23, 2021 [4 favorites]


This is considered broke by whom? There are so many people in the US who are entering end of life with literally 0 assets, many without even a safe place to live, and I really doubt they look at someone with 2 million dollars (!) set aside and think "ah yeah, same situation".

I dunno, if he'd thrown himself entirely on the (threadbare) safety net, people would probably be unhappy about that instead.
posted by BungaDunga at 7:52 PM on August 23, 2021 [6 favorites]


For every kindly Irish billionaire giving his money away to decent causes, there are (almost all the rest of the) billionaires funding conservative horror shows. When we let the very rich decide who deserves money, many deserving people and entities get nothing.
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:49 AM on August 24, 2021 [6 favorites]


I met Chuck Feeney a couple of times when I was young and impressionable -- and more relevantly, a student at the Cornell Hotel School (RIP) and a work-study employee in banquets. He was amazingly nice by the standard of alumni, kind of inspirational to Young Me, etc. I get that DFS could be considered a tax loophole gig, but it was founded to get around specific country import tariffs in 1960 and he sold out in 1996 -- modern tax engineering was not the source of Chuck Feeney's wealth. You can blame LVMH for avoiding taxes. I love the fact that he planned to get his children sorted and then give away the rest. I've given $0 to Cornell and will continue that trend, but I'm all for people giving away their wealth, and all for letting them do it however they want. Anyway, he doesn't need me to defend him, but in a world full of actual, verifiable evil, let's not hold Chuck Feeney to the standards of itinerant monks from Assisi.
posted by Vcholerae at 2:13 AM on August 24, 2021 [15 favorites]


Chuck Feeney actually paid for my grad degree at Cornell. I was not the most worthwhile investment, as I never completed my PhD and left with a Masters. I'll be forever grateful though, as it allowed me to start my life out in the US on the right trajectory and with no student debt.

I'll note a couple little appreciated aspects of his philanthropy - he insisted that the stipends be generous (by grad student standards) and that they covered five full years, so I was actually not having to pinch every penny; he specifically allowed applicants to be from anywhere (not just the US) and had no citizenship or permanent residency requirements (this was HUGE - I'm actually unaware of any similarly sized programs for non-citizens or permanent residents - most international grad students had to TA throughout grad school and this was a huge additional burden). Finally the fellowship covered a stipend, fully paid health insurance and tuition - this tuition really covered anything at Cornell because of Cornell's "any person, any study" policy - so I was able to take a popular science writing course for example, even though it had nothing to do with my field of graduate study.

So he was generous, but he was also thoughtful about his generosity.
posted by peacheater at 5:50 AM on August 24, 2021 [27 favorites]


Also should note that I had no idea it was him at the time - we were just told that the program was funded by an "anonymous billionaire". The Chuck Feeney - Cornell connection came out later, and we put two and two together.
posted by peacheater at 5:51 AM on August 24, 2021 [2 favorites]


there are (almost all the rest of the) billionaires funding conservative horror shows.

Depends what you mean by conservative, and I'm sure there are other measures, but political donations from billionaires seem to be split pretty evenly between Ds and Rs.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 8:16 AM on August 24, 2021 [2 favorites]


I dunno, if he'd thrown himself entirely on the (threadbare) safety net, people would probably be unhappy about that instead.

I'm not saying he should be broke, I just think it's a bit absurd to call someone "broke" who remains wealthy.
posted by dusty potato at 9:43 AM on August 24, 2021 [2 favorites]


I get that DFS could be considered a tax loophole gig, but it was founded to get around specific country import tariffs in 1960 and he sold out in 1996 -- modern tax engineering was not the source of Chuck Feeney's wealth. You can blame LVMH for avoiding taxes.

Heck, there's plenty of blame to go around. Feeney created The Atlantic Philanthropies in 1982, and two years later shifted his entire 38.75% stake in Duty Free Shoppers to his foundation via a complex Bahamas-based asset swap to minimize disclosure and taxes.

That second link, to a 2012 Forbes article, details how the DFS business empire grew by fleecing Japanese travelers and avoiding taxation. In 1964, the same year as the Tokyo Olympics, Japan lifted foreign travel restrictions (enacted after World War II to rebuild the economy), allowing citizens to vacation abroad. Japanese tourists, along with their massive store of pent-up savings, surged across the globe. Hawaii and Hong Kong were top destinations. DFS targeted this market and sold Western luxury items at a 200% markup; Feeney and company had tour guides on the payroll who herded tourists to DFS stores before they had even checked into the hotel so they couldn't spend money anywhere else first.

After successfully predicting, then preparing for, the rise of Japanese tourism in Guam, Feeney and DFS looked to US-controlled Saipan. The tropical island had been a WWII battleground, the site of massive, horrific Japanese military and civilian losses in June and July 1944.

When he arrived in 1974 on a small, propeller-driven aircraft, Feeney found the island still bore the scars of the fighting. But it had better beaches than Guam and a spectacular coral reef along its western shores. It was also becoming a place of pilgrimage for Japanese remembering their war dead. [DFS accountant, Alan Parker, said] "We went to the government authority and said, 'We will finance the building of an airport, the redoing of the runway in return for a twenty-year concession on the duty free in Saipan'."

"Then we did the best tax deal in the world," said [DFS tax attorney, Anthony] Pilaro. "We made Saipan the biggest tax haven in the United States, waving the flag. We had legislation enacted that exempted Saipan-sourced income from being taxed. We built the whole thing. It was a gold mine. No tax." DFS paid $5 million toward construction of the terminal, and when the civilian airport opened in 1976, DFS operated everything -- the duty-free stores, the gift shops, the cafés, and eventually the four hotel shops and a downtown store. -- The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune Without Anyone Knowing, by Conor O'Clery, 2007.

That 20-year concession began in 1976, and in 1996, LVMH acquired the majority share of DFS Group, buying out partners Feeney, Parker, and Pilaro. [Parker and Pilaro were minor stakeholders. Co-founder Robert Warren Miller (Feeney's old Cornell classmate) opposed the sale, and before a presumptive lawsuit could reveal that Feeney's stake was owned not in fact by him but by The Atlantic Philanthropies, Feeney outed himself in a The New York Times article.]

... and here's the 2012 Forbes article again, with a philanthropy detail: Operation Smile, a charity that corrects cleft palates in children from poor nations, is a classic Feeney cause: a one-time $250 investment to cover the cost of a simple surgery that will markedly improve every day of the patient's life. He's given $19.5 million there.

In conclusion, Chuck Feeney is a land of contrasts.
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:45 AM on August 24, 2021 [3 favorites]


I get that DFS could be considered a tax loophole gig, but it was founded to get around specific country import tariffs [...]

So, this is a really bizarre statement and it's been nagging at me all day. What are tariffs if not taxes? What is a loophole if not a method of getting around taxes? Each country has its own tariffs, so of course it had to do with specific countries. How is getting around specific country import tariffs not a tax loophole gig?

[...] in 1960 and he sold out in 1996 -- modern tax engineering was not the source of Chuck Feeney's wealth

So, given that tariffs are in fact taxes, you're saying that it wasn't modern tax engineering occurring between 1960 and 1996 that resulted in his wealth? What was it, abstract expressionistic tax engineering? Mid-century tax engineering? Is there something I'm missing?

I get that the guy had contradictions and did what appears to be substantial good in the end, but the statement that this wasn't related to exploiting tax loopholes is like saying that a ticket resale business has no relation to ticket scalping.
posted by I EAT TAPAS at 12:32 PM on August 24, 2021 [2 favorites]


The fact that billionaire donations are split between the parties doesn't tell you that some billionaires are liberal. It tells you how conservative the Democratic party is.

The billionaire donor class isn't donating to socialists.
posted by AlSweigart at 5:20 PM on August 24, 2021 [3 favorites]


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