r/nextfuckinglevel • u/matori_tester • 1d ago
Billionaire speaker Robert F. Smith tells 400 graduates he's paying off all their student loans ($40 million in total)
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u/malteaserhead 1d ago
Students that graduated the year before
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u/BarfingOnMyFace 1d ago
Or the year after. Or any other year other than this one year.
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u/randomwalker2016 1d ago
What about the guy who worked hard, ate beans and rice, and saved all his pennies to pay his tuition.
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u/mazalaca 1d ago
that guy doesn’t exist because no amount of saving alone would pay your tuition in the US
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u/b00c 1d ago edited 1d ago
I can't relate. Around here education isn't a privilege of the rich ones.
e: priviledge lol. i speak languages, you know.
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u/Hurde278 1d ago
Hey! Some of us poor Americans can read. We may not be able to go on vacation or call out of work sick, afford a home, go to the doctor without going into debt, or send our kids to school without having to worry about the school getting shot up, but at least we have--- I can't keep this going. It's not as fun being an American as I was making it out to be. Sorry if I misled you into thinking it's great
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u/misterkocal 1d ago
You got coal roller…
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u/Hurde278 1d ago
You read what I wrote and thought, "This guy definitely drives a big diesel truck." That's an interesting conclusion to draw haha
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u/misterkocal 1d ago
Naah…I just tried to point out one thing US has but the rest of the world hasn’t. It was the first thing which came into my mind…sorry for that
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u/Hurde278 1d ago
Damn it. My bad. I misunderstood what you said.
I'll trade coal rollers for universal healthcare. Do we have a deal?
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u/Buzzed_Like_Aldrin93 23h ago
This here is a rare interaction! Two humans online misunderstood each other, communicated and found a common ground. (As an American I’ll trade blowing coal at red lights for healthcare any day btw)
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u/Little_Head6683 16h ago
Fun fact. America's literacy rate is 79%, Palestine's is 98%. The average age in America is 39, in Palestine it is 20 years.
The people stuck in a concentration camp are better educated than the people of the richest country in the world.
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u/Greedy_Range 23h ago
I might be bleeding out after getting shot by a cop but at least that gives me time to enjoy my free refill
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u/tvsmichaelhall 1d ago
I hope privilege is spelled differently where you live (or it's a typo), otherwise your message might be a tad undercut.
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u/castlerigger 1d ago
Same, America celebrates this sort of clickbait shit as a success when it’s really just a helpful distraction from the ludicrous cash extraction system of student loans.
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u/EdwardBigby 1d ago
I hope people don't take this the wrong way but as a non American I'm slightly confused why there's a college where everybody seems to be black (also an Asian lady sitting behind the speaker)
I assume it's in a mostly black area but is it a case of no white people applying for this college or the college not accepting any white people? Or maybe I'm just missing the white people
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u/HarkHarley 1d ago
Morehouse is an HBCU, historically black college or university, all of which were founded before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when America was legally racially segregated. They served the needs of their community at the time to educate black students in higher education. After the Civil Rights Act many of these institutions remained but are now open to any student who wishes to apply. Today, about 24% of students at HBCUs are non-black.
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u/Legal_Guava3631 1d ago
HBCUs were founded for the black students that wanted to go to college but PWIs said fuck no, yall not coming in here. Anyone can apply, but it’s not really common for a white person to be seen on campus as a student.
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u/Hey_GumBuddy 1d ago
Well… most of these HBCU’s have a football team. And all football teams have a kicker… so there’s usually at least 1.
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u/EdwardBigby 1d ago
Very interesting. I've never heard of those. Definitely makes sense from a historical point of view but the concept of them existing in a modern day context still seems bizarre to me.
What do most Americans think of them?
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u/TheNextBattalion 1d ago
I don't think most Americans think about them at all.
It's like with women's colleges, which still exist; they were set up when the target audience was barred from mainstream colleges, and they've shifted a bit since that fact has changed.
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u/Legal_Guava3631 1d ago
I’d like to think they don’t care, but it isn’t a perfect world. Some people hate it saying it isn’t fair because they think it’s a school only for black folks and that it’s racist, but the schools literally only exist because of, you guessed it, racism.
Personally, I love it for my people, but it’s a harsh reminder that we had to make our own schools because we were deemed unworthy because of our skin.
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u/This-Is-Voided 1d ago
HBCUs are great and especially needed because we never get places for Black folks to thrive. I go to a HBCU (NSU 🔰) and it provides us access to education and community without the fear of racism. It’s a supportive environment and you can meet other Black folks across the diaspora. We needed them back then and we most definitely need them now. And it’s not just Black people, mixed people, and other minorities attend too. White ppl attend too but it’s not common because they have other options that they could choose from.
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u/AnonElbatrop 1d ago
White American here, never put much thought into it other than “HBCU so popular school for the black community.” Lots of schools that shift in other directions demographically and more with a healthy diversity too.
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u/SpadoCochi 1d ago
That's because you have no idea how recent this is, the how prevalent institutional racism is, and how important it is for black people to have a safer space to operate in.
It's not bizarre, it's a beacon of light.
What's bizarre is that these were ever necessary.
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u/fieldsports202 1d ago
Americans don’t have a negative view of them. There’s white people who attend HBCU’s as well. The HBCU attended if majority black students but there’s white people who attend… the nursing school there has a lot of white students…. It’s very affordable compared to other schools.
Our HBCU has 7,000 students.. the next one 40 mins away has near 13,000 and is the largest HBCU in the country.
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u/YoRt3m 1d ago
Yeah I noticed that too. I checked their website and it seems like all the photos are of black people too. a bit weird I would say, even with historical context. I assume non-black can join tho, hard to believe it's discriminatory, but still weird and obviously the other way around would be more than just "weird"
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u/Claude9777 1d ago
You are correct. Non-black people can and do attend. Many of them getting scholarships to attend for not being black. I attended a predominantly white institution. One of the first black people to attend happened to be the mother of my friend. It was only in 1966. When I was there in 1995, I had classes with over 100 people and I'd be the only black person. On a campus of 30,000, there were a total of 800 black people.
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u/EdwardBigby 1d ago
Other commenter explained it. I had never heard of HBCUs
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u/YoungCubSaysWoof 1d ago
Thank you for asking your question with genuine curiosity. (And thanks to the others who commented with genuine desires to teach and share some knowledge.)
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u/jittery_raccoon 1d ago
White people are allowed to attend and there are some that do. It's not weird because people choose these colleges for the cultural experience. Like they have a niche and everyone that wants to receive their education in that niche goes there.
A different example of choosing a school for college is kids choosing to attend Big Ten schools, which are schools with top athletic programs. These schools are also known as party schools and have huge campuses. The non athlete kids choose it for the college culture aspect.
We have so many schools in the US that choosing your school for the culture it offers is normal
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u/notouchinggg 1d ago
america is still incredibly segregated. almost every city you go to in the states big or small, there’s the black side of town and the white side of town.
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u/Poppanaattori89 1d ago
So inspirational. I really liked this part of his speech:
"Instead of getting the free education you deserve, here's some dirty money that I don't deserve to try to distract you from the fact that I don't deserve it."
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u/WZAWZDB13 1d ago
"I'll have made it back using questionable business practices before you've found a job."
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u/BabyWrinkles 1d ago
He could put $1B that he’ll never spend anyway (<10% of his net worth) into a trust that pays out 4% (generally considered a safe withdrawal rate to only draw down principal while accounting for inflation) and do this for every class going forward in perpetuity.
Just to give some context for how much a billion dollars is.
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u/TerribleBid8416 1d ago
What he doesn't tell you is HE actually won't be paying a cent. His business will and they'll write it off as a loss.
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u/SpadoCochi 1d ago
Reddit is something else man.
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u/MagnanimosDesolation 20h ago
Last time this was posted somebody pointed out that he got convicted of $200 something million in tax fraud. It literally is stolen money.
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u/MercenaryBard 1d ago
Seriously why can’t people just be stoked that we live at the mercy of the charity of billionaires? Personally, I get tears in my eyes and salute the giant flag I keep in my bedroom whenever I see a single one of the countless GoFundMe’s for cancer treatment get fulfilled.
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u/AnatomicalLog 1d ago
Oh yeah baby keep radicalizing
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u/Poppanaattori89 1d ago edited 1d ago
Not sure if this is meant in the negative sense or the positive one. "Radicalism" as a term is used dublicitously. Level-headed people wanting to strip power from those that use it to uphold societal structures that oppress others and destroy the environment are called "radicals".
Those that radically think that economical gains or the benefit of the few are more important than democracy, community and the surival of humanity are called conservatives or neoliberals. So there's radicalism against the status quo and there's radicalism against what is just, what is right, what is fair, what is sustainable and what is useful. The first one is courage and the second one is evil or less dramatically corruption. But what they are called among those that conform are the exact opposites.
The thing that people seem to constantly forget is that practically every single nation is the product of rebellion. But as a result of intellectual laziness, pure apathy and the conformity to the status quo, it is seen that the rebels of yesterday are heroes and the rebels of today are villains and there's no overlap whatsoever.
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u/Donuil23 1d ago
as a result of intellectual laziness, pure apathy and the conformity to the status quo, it is seen that the rebels of yesterday are heroes and the rebels of today are villains and there's no overlap whatsoever.
That is beautiful. Is this your line, or can I attribute it to someone specific?
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u/Poppanaattori89 1d ago
Well, thanks, friend. I think it's "original" in that I didn't directly quote anyone.
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u/Donuil23 1d ago
I'm writing it down as a poppanaatori then. People will think I'm referencing some ancient scholar, lol
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u/Gavooki 18h ago
At the same time, perpetuating the problem of high tuition costs.
If people keep paying for inflated costs, you're just going to get more inflated costs but they don't seem to teach that in college.
Lotta money to learn what you could read for free at a library or watch on YouTube these days.
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u/happyanathema 1d ago
Imagine if all billionaires paid the fair share in taxes, education could be free for all.
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u/blazurp 21h ago
This billionaire was part of one of the largest tax scams in US history.
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u/happyanathema 19h ago
Nice, so he's trying to improve his PR by giving a donation that he will write off his tax bill.
God our system is so broken.
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u/0dHero 1d ago
There is no such thing as a good billionaire.
But we can move this guy to the bottom of the list...
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u/Placeholder4me 1d ago
I wouldn’t go that far. Where do you think he got the money to afford that?
https://www.axios.com/2022/12/02/robert-smith-tax-fraud-death-kepke-brockman
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u/FritterEnjoyer 1d ago
Eh, the billionaire that gets caught doing tax fraud isn’t any better or worse than the billionaire who doesn’t. All it means is the billionaire who got caught had worse accountants than the ones that didn’t.
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u/Wirococha420 1d ago
How the fuck the education of 400 people is worth 40 MILLION DOLLARS. A Million is enough to live the rest of your life at ease, we are talking about 40 times that.
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u/alkbch 1d ago
A million is absolutely not enough to live the rest of your life at ease, especially not if you’re 22 with 60 years ahead of you.
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u/Merry_Dankmas 1d ago
To stretch out $1m over 60 years if you're 22, that would be $16,666 per year. That sure as hell ain't comfy lmao.
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u/JedPB67 1d ago
Where the hell are you living that a million dollars equals an easy lifetime amount? If you’re 20 years old and live to 80, a million dollars works out to $16.6k a year.
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u/Paul_my_Dickov 1d ago
I'd need more than a million dollars to live the rest of my life at ease.
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u/Admirable_Loss4886 1d ago
Imagine being 5 credits shy of graduating and seeing this happen to what could have been your class
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u/Additional_Tax_4752 1d ago
Does it cost 400k per student in usa? Here in uk it would cost 60k for the whole thing including cost of living lmao
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u/iDEN1ED 1d ago
40 mil for 400 students is 100k each.
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u/cagemyelephant_ 1d ago
Here in the Philippines as a scholar in a state university my parents paid less than 800 usd for the whole 4 year course.
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u/SebVettelstappen 1d ago
No. 400k is an absurd amount, even for private colleges. Go to a state university with a bit of financial aid (Easy, as long as you apply you’ll be certain to at least get something) and you’ll pay under 10k a year
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u/No-Village-6104 1d ago
Studied in Italy, it cost me about 20e a year and I got about 2500e from the university each year + dorm room and cheap meals.
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u/BerakGoreng 1d ago
Can you imagine being that guy who pushed his graduation to the next semester because of some trivial reason?
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u/ExpeditingPermits 1d ago
Didn’t this happen in 2023? A quick google search show it o my cost him 34 million.
I’m all for it, but nothing new
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u/Colseldra 1d ago
Didn't that one rich guy pay for an entire highschool's college tuition in Florida and it basically revitalized the town
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u/traceyandmeower 1d ago
I’m so very happy for these graduates. Let’s hope they pay it forward and have outstanding careers.
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u/burgonies 1d ago
What about the kids that worked two jobs and didn’t take a loan?
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u/Admirable-Way-5266 1d ago
Did he actually pay out? Or was this just a tax dodge/empty promise?
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u/Fiery_Hand 1d ago
If they dodge taxes like that, it's ok. Better than dodging anyway while not contributing at all.
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u/Excellent-Jicama-244 1d ago
Yeah, that's basically what taxes are. Enforcing socially useful giving. If you're actually doing something socially useful with the money, it's hardly a dodge.
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u/No_Currency_7952 1d ago edited 1d ago
On the surface yeah, but there's always a catch. And he is a part of the largest tax scheme from the 90's so lord knows how much taxes he has been avoiding since then. All the settlements and philanthropies collectively probably barely scratched the amount he saved avoiding taxes.
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u/skatopher 1d ago
All donations can be tax deductible with some limited exceptions
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u/idkfly_casual 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don’t think people understand this. If you made $100M in 2024 and you donate $43M of it, you are absolutely out $43M. You can deduct some of it from your taxes as a charitable donation and that lowers your taxable income for the year, but you don’t get that $43M back. It is a deduction, not a credit.
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u/vertigo1083 1d ago
The vast majority of the country does their taxes through services like H&R block and Turbotax. They stay ignorant because it's easier to just automate it for themselves every year. I'd be willing to bet that if you went out into a city street and asked 100 people how a tax deductible works-
More than half will be wrong. And a good amount of the wrong ones will be staunchly confident in their knowledge.
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u/Rokea-x 1d ago
It’s totally insane to me to know that the ‘supposed greatest country in the west’, etc etc.. needs billionaires to come down and pay for their own students loans. It sounds like a bad movie. And i would beleive that if the gun violence situation and the public health care situation wasnt even more stupid. Sorry guys, do better
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u/Sethypoop 1d ago
I'm just imagining the look on the faces of those who graduated in the previous year.
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u/Sooowasthinking 1d ago
Finally a billionaire doing something purposeful and helping out his fellow humans.
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u/SlickRick734 1d ago
It warms my heart when these people give back to the society that made them successful, instead of hording all their pennies. 🥰
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u/Solitary-Dolphin 1d ago
These guys accumulated a $100k student loan on average? Studying what? Next level foa sua
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u/theaussiewhisperer 1d ago
Take our wins where we can get em boys and girls, these ones are few and far between. I hope all those ladies and gentlemen prosper for eternity
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u/VinceGchillin 1d ago
it's fuckin nuts that there are individual human beings to whom this amount of money is a drop in the bucket, when it's actually lifelong, crippling debt for most of us. We have a moral duty to destroy this system and make something more human.
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u/URThrillingMeSmalls 1d ago
Hey look someone releasing these kids from a life of indentured servitude while I still have to pay my loans and I’m not mad, rather I’m happy for them. It’s called empathy and what we should be giving our neighbors instead of this only upset about it when we don’t feel like we get a slice of the pie.
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u/Ok-Sea6316 1d ago
"When things get really bad and the mobs start killing billionaires in the street, remember I was one of the good billionaires"
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u/SomeCup8378 1d ago
Reddit is a “special” place. I opened the comments to see how many I’d have to read before the bashing/politicizing started. 3. It started by the third comment.
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u/unoriginalname17 1d ago
If we absolutely must have billionaires I wish we had more like this. But also if we just taxed them we could all go to school for free.
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u/randomwalker2016 1d ago
What about the guy who worked hard, ate beans and rice, and saved all his pennies to pay his tuition?
He'll get his tuition repaid?
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u/They-Call-Me-Taylor 1d ago
Why does it seem like the response was so subdued. That is pretty huge news, I expected a much louder response.
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u/mythorus 1d ago
Ok wait, so first of all, why does a graduate have a student loan of $100k in average? Second, if he is a billionaire, just saying $1 bln, it’s 4% of his wealth. Seems a lot, but less than a years plus by interest only. So imagine you are having a net worth of $100,000 and giving $4,000 to the students, would you be celebrated the same way?
And again, why is education only affordable for the rich?
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u/ConsistentKale2078 1d ago
This is what makes billionaires great! They are out there and do this quietly. These people are great, the others need to melt away.
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u/RustySheriffsBadge1 1d ago
I mean this is really cool and doesn’t take away from his awesome donation…. But it sucks that we are dependent on billionaires charity and their feelings.
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u/SkinnyObelix 1d ago
I'm going to be the devil's advocate here, and I want to make sure to applaud this guy for his actions. But if he was taxed appropriately and that money was spent on education, you'd get far more than 40 million and far more than 400 graduates...
It's something that has been bothering me where on one hand certain individuals are paying for the surgery of a kid, but on the other hand they're doing everything to avoid taxes. It quickly becomes a PR/Ego move.
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u/Lazy-Abalone-6132 1d ago
Would be funny if his company buys out any of the future employers of these graduates will work for to then just restructure and sell their companies and lay off their workers. :)
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u/BigDayOnJesusRanch 1d ago
I feel bad for the kid that was one credit short and graduated next quarter.
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u/already-taken-wtf 1d ago
“Smith paid off the debts of his 2019 classmates that same year, a pledge gift that reached $34 million. After listening to feedback, Smith expanded his plan, extending it to cover debts accrued by the family members of those Morehouse graduates.” https://morehouse.edu/aid/financial-aid/loans/student-freedom-initiative/robert-f-smith
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u/Picture-Desperate 1d ago
In ancient Rome free bread was given to the mob to keep them happy. Nothing has changed!!
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u/AggravatingShine4052 1d ago
This is as "nextfuckinglevel" as a kid starting a lemonade stand to pay for their parents medical bills. It may not work, but even if it did, the kid should've never had to do that.
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u/2DamnBig 1d ago
TAX THESE MOTHERFUCKERS. This isn't uplifting, college should be free for all. Free college was stolen from these kids and he gives a pittance back so he can pretend to be the good guy? FUCK YOU
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u/MrTristanClark 1d ago
Don't support this guy, he's an infamous tax cheat. He'll probably try to use this as a write off too. Fuck this guy.
https://nypost.com/2022/08/17/billionaire-tax-cheats-lavish-spending-revealed/
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u/Pistonenvy2 1d ago
not to undermine how generous this is but this is like me (having a net worth of maybe 30 grand) giving away 120 dollars.
the outcome is good, but the conversation should be about how much better society could be if billionaires were just paying their fair share by default. we wouldnt need philanthropy at all if these people just paid their fucking taxes. even if they paid half as much as we all do our society could fund literally every insane thing we want.
the amount of wealth being hoarded is beyond comprehension.
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u/HaveNoFearDomIsHere 1d ago
Good on him. But this should not be an issue for the richest country in the world. Education should be free.
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u/Shburbgur 1d ago
Shouldn’t have some billionaire come in to save the day. Not getting to the root of the problem, education shouldn’t be profiteered from to begin with. What a sad country
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u/gasman147 1d ago