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GEICO is Terminating Insurance Coverage of Tesla Cybertrucks, Says “This Type of Vehicle Doesn't Meet Our Underwriting Guidelines” (www.torquenews.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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GEICO, the second-largest vehicle insurance underwriter in the US, has decided it will no longer cover Tesla Cybertrucks. The company is terminating current Cybertruck policies and says the truck “doesn’t meet our underwriting guidelines.”

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[–] 14 points 2 years ago* (23 children)

Wait, how is Warren Buffett nepotistic? He's giving the vast majority of his wealth to charity. He gave his kids each $17.5M to start their organizations, and then donated like $5B total to their organizations once they proved their management skills. But he pledged to give away most of the rest (almost $100B), and has already given away about $50B (latest pledge is 99% of his assets).

I really don't see him as nepotistic, he's pretty much the best kind of billionaire.

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  • [–] 29 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    Buffett himself is a nepo-baby. His father was a congressman who's connections were very helpful when starting out in business and investing.

    Sure it isn't Emerald mine money, but you can't tell me being the son of a 4-term congressman didn't give him a leg up.

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  • [–] -4 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    Sure, but he didn't start with millions or anything to invest, he started with money that he, himself, had saved up. He certainly didn't have a normal childhood (he bought his first shares at 11), but this timeline doesn't show much financial assistance from his parents, it shows a lot of hard work.

    That's a very different story from people like Elon Musk or Donald Trump.

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  • [+] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)
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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Look at his history. He started out selling gum and candy to kids at school, then took increasingly demanding jobs (delivered newspapers and whatnot) until he went to college, after which he worked for his professor (IIRC, I don't recall specifics).

    And he never was a day trader, so he's not the type that's making money on the margins off other traders, he's actually investing and sometimes buying a controlling stake in companies that he believes in. If you look at his lifestyle, he very much doesn't look like your typical billionaire, he lives in the same house he bought in his 20s, and generally lives a pretty modest life, especially given his wealth. Yeah, he makes a ton at his job, but he seems to be doing it because he loves his work, not because he loves money.

    In my mind, he's basically the best possible example of a billionaire. He didn't do much of anything shady to get rich, he worked hard in his youth and invested wisely the rest of his life. And he started a pledge for other billionaires to donate the vast majority of their wealth, leading by example by giving away half of his wealth to drop from #1 to #2, and now to #10 or so.

    If you're going to criticize billionaires, start with Gates, Bezos, Musk, Trump, or Zuckerberg, not Buffett. Buffett is about as ethical of a billionaire as you can get, and while there's room to criticize him, he should be nowhere near the top of the list.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    You're underestimating the effect of his father knowing the right people. Yes, there was no "small million-dollar loan" and yes Warren actually hustled quite a bit to capitalize on the advantages given to him by his father, but that doesn't erase those advantages when talking about his success.

    Hard work is not the thing that got him where he is. If it were there are millions of people working multiple who should also be billionaires. Or, better yet, no one should be a billionaire at all and we make it so people don't have to work multiple jobs to survive, but I digress.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Hard work is not the thing that got him where he is

    No other investor has his track record, or anything close to it, so I really do think it comes down to hard work.

    Whether the type of work he did should be compensated as well as it was is certainly a valid discussion to have. That said, he's pretty much the top of his industry and extremely well-respected by his peers, so it makes sense that he has an outsized portion of the wealth of those in his industry. That said, I absolutely agree with Buffett that we should have higher taxes on the wealthy (like Buffett) because that level of wealth concentration doesn't benefit anyone, including the wealthy individual.

    What got him to the top of his profession absolutely was hard work. What got him to become one of the richest people in the world was that plus the tax system and other legal structures that reward that work. In other words, "don't hate the player, hate the game."

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  • [+] 16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (13 children)
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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (12 children)

    Without reviewing the structures, this is just a trust me bro

    You can literally see the donation of $48B. The pledge itself isn't legally binding, but he has been consistently donating. He's 94, so I don't think it'll take long to see the proof in the pudding.

    Here are some notes from his Wikipedia page:

    In 2008, Buffett was ranked by Forbes as the richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of approximately $62 billion. In 2009, after donating billions of dollars to charity, he was ranked as the second richest man in the United States with a net worth of $37 billion.

    ...

    As of 2023, Buffett has given over $50 billion to charitable causes.

    I will note that the last figure probably includes the money given to his kids' organizations (not directly to his kids).

    And a quote about inheritance for his kids:

    "I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing"

    He has a pretty consistent track record of philanthropy and statements about philanthropy, so I would be really surprised if he changed that in the last few years of his life. I guess we'll see though.

    why are you worshiping some gereatric nepo baby

    Where did I say I was worshipping him? I'm merely saying I think what he's doing is admirable and that he doesn't qualify as a "nepo baby." If you look into his history, he worked hard throughout his early life to save and invest, and I see no indications that his parents gave him a huge inheritance or kickstarted his career in any meaningful way. Yeah, his dad was a House Rep for 8 years (6 of those consecutive), and here's a quote about him on his father's Wikipedia page:

    'Unshakably ethical, Howard refused offers of junkets and even turned down a part of his pay. During his first term, when congressional salary was raised from $10,000 to $12,500, Howard left the extra money in the Capitol disbursement office, insisting that he had been elected at the lower salary.' His wife said he considered only one issue when deciding whether or not to vote for a bill: 'Will this add to, or subtract from, human liberty?'

    That doesn't sound like the kind of man to give his son an unfair advantage...

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    It's not charity to give money to an organization you (or friends or relatives) control, it's a way to keep your assets under your control without having to pay taxes that would otherwise be required.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

    That would be true if he were secretly using those charities to enrich himself but there's no evidence of that at all.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    I think you're missing the point - it's not that he's enriching himself - he's already done that. It's that the charity carries out his will, not necessarily the will of people who need charities.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Charity is about who benefits, not about who decides how to provide that benefit.

    The idea of choosing a charity based on the donor's will of how it will get spent describes almost all types of charity. If someone donates to any charity at all, they have made a choice on how to allocate their resources and they just take it on faith that that's the people who need it the most.

    Furthermore, any given dollar of his can only be spent once. The money he spent on himself enriches himself. It's a considerable amount of money but it's a tiny fraction of the money he controls. Any dollar he gives away can't be spent to enrich himself.

    Finally, Buffet has donated over $57 billion. How is he supposed to distribute that? Fly a plane around the country and dump cash out the window? Send a huge check to the IRS? Give it all to your favorite charity? The obvious answer is that he sets up an organization that will analyze existing charities for need and effectiveness and then distributes his assets accordingly.

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  • [+] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (6 children)
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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    If you have better sources, I'm happy to review them.

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  • [+] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)
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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I haven't watched the YouTube video (I generally distrust what Reich says), but here's what I see from the other sources:

    currentafairs

    Mentions Buffett once, and only when mentioning the pledge to Gates' foundation. The article seems to mostly be about the Gates' foundation taking credit for things they didn't do. I'll certainly read through the rest of the article, but it definitely seems to be a criticism of that org, not Warren Buffett.

    inequality

    Talks about The Giving Pledge (created by Buffett) and how those who have pledged aren't donating their money fast enough (i.e. their money is growing faster than their donations). I don't really see this as an issue, since the problem should correct itself when they die.

    The article also complains about most donations going to foundations or DAFs, but honestly, when you need to move that much money, that's probably the most efficient way to do it. So I guess I don't understand the criticism.

    apnews

    This one is about wealthy people avoiding taxes generally. I don't know how this applies to Warren Buffett, whose wealth is in the US and AFAIK isn't being hidden in tax shelters like offshore banks or trusts. His tax bill is relatively low (this article claims 0.1% from 2014 to 2018), but I think that's countered by his statements about increasing taxes on the rich (he is registered Democrat, if that matters to you at all).

    So I don't think the issue here has anything to do with Buffett himself, the issue is the tax law doesn't account for unrealized gains. Or in other words, don't blame the player, blame the game. The closest Buffett gets to tax shelters is his stock donations to his kids' foundations, but my understanding is that those are charitable orgs, so I don't see a ton of difference there vs donating to other orgs like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which he has donated way more to vs his kids' orgs.

    My personal view here is that any compensation above some amount (say, $400k) regardless of source should be taxed at the current rates, and those assets stepped up in basis appropriately. I don't like Harris' proposal though because it's based on wealth instead of income, but I think Buffet himself would approve a change here. If we handled it that way, the income from stock grants and whatnot for extremely highly compensated employees (like a CEO) would end up being taxed as income (short term gains), and therefore would be functionally equivalent to a cash salary, which is what it's intending to be.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    If you're not being purposefully obtuse I'll save you the time from what the argument is. Wealth of his magnitude is a detriment to society, doesn't matter if he's saint Joseph or the pope. You're saying "he's the best kind", deflecting from all of them being bad. If you don't see that, then it's fine. Just an economical opinion on where to go with society from the stalemate we seem to be in regarding workers and compensation.

    I do feel like you're being blind about the nepotism definitions though, you don't need 200 billion from a family slush fund to qualify. The very act of what their parent's profession is changes networking and exposure opportunities. Doesn't matter if Daddy has ethical values, the name recognition and reputation you're proclaiming gives an advantage.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    I see two arguments here:

    1. Billionaires existing is a symptom of a larger problem
    2. Someone having a better start than you makes them a "nepo baby"

    For the first, I and Warren Buffett somewhat agree, and I'll quote him here:

    "I continue to believe that the tax code should be changed substantially," wrote Buffett. "I hope that the earned-income tax credit is increased substantially and additionally believe that huge dynastic wealth is not desirable for our society."

    "Perhaps annual payout requirements should be increased for foundations," he added. "Some time ago, I testified before Senator Baucus in favor of increasing and tightening estate taxes."

    ...

    "I believe the money will be of more use to society if disbursed philanthropically than if it is used to slightly reduce an ever-increasing U.S. debt," wrote Buffett.

    That said, I likely disagree with his specific solutions, though I haven't bothered researching to figure out what those are, because he's clearly not particularly interested in crafting policy.

    For the second, I largely hold to this definition of nepotism:

    favoritism (as in appointment to a job) based on kinship

    Someone giving their kids the best education they can isn't nepotism, that's normal parenting.

    Someone giving their child an job they're not qualified for absolutely is. If you want to see examples of that, look no further than Trump and his kids.

    When I look at the top billionaires, most of them are largely self-made. For example:

    • Elon Musk - dropped out of college and co-founded zip2, largely with money from investors
    • Bill Gates - dropped out of college and founded Microsoft, which was pretty much bootstrapped
    • Jeff Bezos - graduated from college, worked his way up in his career, then started Amazon when the internet was getting big (parents did invest $300k)

    I don't really consider any of them to be "nepo babies" because their parents didn't give them an undeserved job or anything like that. And honestly, none of their parents were particularly rich, except maybe Musks. Each of them had incredible luck and capitalized on the early days of consumer computing, but that doesn't cheapen the work they put in.

    Do they deserve hundreds of billions? Probably not. But I don't think they really benefited from nepotism like Trump's kids, Kim Kardashian, and others did. There's a huge difference between someone who had a good start and builds something great through their hard work and someone who is handed a pile of cash or a prominent position and rides that.

    If you show evidence that their success is largely dependent on their parents, I'll believe you. But if they largely built their wealth themselves, that's a harder sell. I think each of those I mentioned earned their wealth, I just think our tax system dramatically increases wealth accumulation past a certain amount, and that's what needs to be changed here.

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