British billionaire to donate £190m to Cambridge University

TBF that’s Oxford. It’s time for a second university to compete at sending graduates to run the country.

Would you rather have them Trump level trained instead? 

Article says he's the largest UK tax payer, while being the 64th richest person in the UK (according to the times rich list). So he's probably one of the few, who isn't fiddling his taxes.

There was a social media post a while back that suggested rewarding high tax payers with something grand but trivial like a Gold Number plate that allows them to use bus lanes.

Chris is a pretty cool guy. Came from nothing and has enjoyed incredible success. He has quite a few scholarships for underprivlidged kids to go to top schools.

There's an argument I saw a while back.  They use the example of the US Congress but pretty much the same applies to the current pack of jokers in parliament. >I realize there's some very weak sense in which the US government represents me. But it's really weak. Really, really weak. When I turn on the news and see the latest from the US government, I rarely find myself thinking Ah, yes, I see they're representing me very well today. >Paradoxically, most people feel the same way. Congress has an approval rating of 19% right now. [According to PolitiFact](https://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2017/apr/14/arnold-schwarzenegger/congress-really-less-popular-hemorrhoids-and-herpe/), most voters have more positive feelings towards hemorrhoids, herpes, and traffic jams than towards Congress. How does a body made entirely of people chosen by the public end up loathed by the public? > I agree this is puzzling, but for now lets just admit it's happening. >Bill Gates has [an approval rating of 76%](http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/favorables/major_political_figures), literally [higher than God](https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/07/only-half-americans-approve-gods-job-performance/353141/).  >Even Mark Zuckerberg has [an approval rating of 24%](https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/03/30/poll-shows-facebook-popularity-tanking-and-people-dont-zuckerberg-much-either), below God but still well above Congress.  >In [a Georgetown university survey](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/11/18129809/amazon-polling-popular-confidence), the US public stated they had more confidence in philanthropy than in Congress, the court system, state governments, or local governments; Democrats (though not Republicans) also preferred philanthropy to the executive branch. >When I see philanthropists try to save lives and cure diseases, I feel like there's someone powerful out there who shares my values and is doing right by them. I've never gotten that feeling when I watch Congress. When I watch Congress, I feel a scary unbridgeable gulf between me and anybody who matters. And the polls suggest a lot of people agree with me. >In what sense does it reflect the will of the people to transfer power and money from people and causes the public like and trust, to people and causes who the public hate and distrust? >Why is it democratic to take money from someone more popular than God, and give it to a group of people more hated than hemorrhoids? >And if the people want more money to be spent by private philanthropists instead of Congress and they use the democratic process to produce a legal regime and tax system that favors private philanthropy *their will is being represented.* Edit: apparently ElectronicFerret was so incensed and enraged the the very idea of anyone failing to utterly agree with them and kiss their feet the only way they could emotionally cope with it was to block me. They also seem to have totally failed to follow the argument. it's not > 'I don't like them' it's that people **trust** the government even less than they do wealthy private citizens. They could do 100 times as much? The total wealth of every billionaire in the US combined, every penny they and their families have amassed over centuries is about 6 months operating budget for the US government. So the government should be able to do hundreds of times as much good every 6 months. Instead they use the money to buy yet another fleet of stealth bombers and use it to explode another middle eastern country.

You could fund spending for maybe a year or two and then be back to square one

Wishful thinking, but that could never happen. Billionaires don’t have a billion dollars of cash. They have ownership in companies, largely that they created. You could make billionaires sell their holdings, but to who? Other billionaires? Who has the cash to buy it then? At a certain point the wealth is a capital allocation tool. It’s not like a single person can reasonably spend over 100M. The vast majority of that capital is allocated to productive projects. If you force sell and distribute, that’s devastating to productivity. Let’s say we implemented your plan tomorrow. One effect would be unprofitable companies having to liquidate all assets in order to pay the tax. A billionaire might hold a billion dollars in a biotechnology company, but that company doesn’t have a billion dollars to give him. That company spent a billion dollars already developing products and now has IP, which is valuable, but can’t be taxed. Overnight, thousands of biotechnology companies would close and fire every employee because they are largely unprofitable and funded via capital until they find products. This is just one industry example. This affects literally every single industry.

Capitalism cannot have a max score, that's stagnation.

They should get a libarary named after them but no one needs more than 50 mill. Once they hit it all money goes into public funds

And that max score includes asset value.

Yea, let's just start taking stuff from each other by force. Classic Listnook.

No, they still are.

He's new money, they tend to less evil.

Is it? I feel like it’s pretty common to name parts of a university after the people who donated to fund it. I personally think that it’s stupid but I don’t think it’s rare or unusual by any means

Why? It's extremely common to get things named after yourself if you donate a ton of money like this

I'm amused he's decided to fund Cambridge University, while he studied at Oxford.