The Chan-Zuckerbergs stopped funding social causes
75 comments
·June 30, 2025ggm
nofriend
The reason for the cessation in funding is because of recent political changes. Incidentally those recent political changes also led to a cessation in government charitable donations. I don't think we can claim that either is strictly more reliable than the other. I'm surprised at how readily people will support government intervention while bearing in mind which government would currently be implementing said intervention.
JumpCrisscross
> reason for the cessation in funding is because of recent political changes
The reason is Zuckerberg and Chan have no backbone. These are individuals who command the resources of small nations. Yet their insecurities win out every time, rendering them powerless to take a stand on anything and instead wander to the beats of others’ drums.
karmakurtisaani
> The reason is Zuckerberg and Chan have no backbone.
More likely, the wealthier you are the more tied you are to the system. The US government could make it very difficult for Zuck to conduct his business, which would tank his wealth. This is in particularly true when there's a pseudo-dictator in power.
lasc4r
Or more plausibly they never cared and it was just PR all along.
eastbound
There is a sociologic experiment to do with “The revolution eats its children”.
For as long as I’ve seen Bill Gates donate to all causes that would please the most leftist proponents, the only reaction I’ve seen was indifference/hate.
It’s a sociological reality: Nothing pleases a mob. On one side, leftist characters always end up in a situation where they were not left enough, which, in revolutionary environments, justifies their termination. In France when the left was elected the president was described as “a capitalist, simping for billionaires”. On the other side, if you are rich and perform acts promoted by leftism, such as donating your entire salary, increasing your employees by 30% a year, or like Bill Gates, donating your entire wealth for the world’s hunger and health before your death, your actions are construed as malevolent, probably there’s a “get rich” scheme behind it for Bill Gates, or probably “you had to treat your employees bad if you had to increase their salary.”
For a good person, there is no winning. But we have countless counterexamples of bad people liked by the same population. A lot, lot, lot of people reach this conclusion by their 40ies. After all, it’s not “spine” that people should have, but just mutual love, including some from the bottom to the top.
And perhaps it explains the current trends.
rayiner
Or, Zuck found religion: https://youtu.be/bE7SyQWf4_U?si=RyV1mbdSceXtWr3w
Funding left-wing causes that fit the ideological leanings of Wall Street isn’t “taking a stand.” In 2025, the people “taking a stand” were the ones who had the balls to do things like stand up for color blindness when even hedge funds like KKR were pushing affirmative action. Or opposing mass immigration, which will put you on the wrong side of the WEF/Davos types.
ggm
Yea.. I should have qualified my words "in the world as we used to understand it" or something.
make3
the difference is that one is from elected officials (however flawed, clearly, there is some measure of representing the people's interests in theory at least), and the other is just an individual's decision, not even pretense of representing the people's opinion
lasc4r
>I don't think we can claim that either is strictly more reliable than the other
In the article it was schools that were defunded. Does the government have a history of consistently funding schools?
martijnvds
Sadly, yes.
bickfordb
That or reform charitable giving so that it truly is an arm's length transaction. No preferential tax treatment for payments to charities one controls.
asveikau
In the 1950s, we taxed income over $400,000 at somewhere around 90%. Anything you made less than that was taxed much less, but every dollar above $400,000 the government took most of it, which effectively put a cap on wages.
Won't be popular on HN, I think we need to move closer to that again. Maybe not that extreme, but that's the proper direction. We can then use that income to tackle big problems.
We also need to tax interest, capital gains, dividends etc. at the same rate as wages.
geodel
Maybe first find out why it is not just "we" but whole world moved to far lower tax rate in last six decades.
> We also need to tax interest, capital gains, dividends etc. at the same rate as wages.
"We" can tax every breath of every person alive but we are not going back to 50s for sure.
darth_avocado
But would higher taxes nationally result in better funding for education? We are in a climate where coming to a agreement on what is acceptable in classrooms nationwide seems to be impossible.
gedy
> We also need to tax interest, capital gains, dividends etc. at the same rate as wages.
How about we first bring back pensions and 30 year jobs before we try and fix that?
HaZeust
At that point why not just go to state-controlled capitalism? That way of life was MUCH closer to competing socio-economic theories to capitalism - than capitalism itself. I saw Sanders' Rogan podcast, I heard his plea - it doesn't work well in today's system.
One of the best things about the freedom of moving from job to job and not relying on pensions or 30-year contracts is that it enables and empowers everyday workers to have the innate, untenable, inalienable "check and balance" on the labor market to choose who they give labor to at any given time - and picket them as well. For the average person: You SHOULD be able to move jobs at any time, you SHOULD be able to not feel pressure of unrealized benefits of a pension 30 years down the road when you do, your housing SHOULD NOT be directly based on your employer ("company towns"), and normalizing systemic status-quo changes that makes it hard to decide/change who cuts your checks is NOT a step in the right direction.
Sanders was right when he said folks in managerial positions - and above - need to care more about their workers, but the businesses that drive the labor market banded together - perhaps unknowingly through a status quo "collective conscious" - to make MOST of your pickings in MOST same-tier jobs look very much alike. There are many ways to fix that in practice across other nations today, like sectoral bargaining; where union experts in a given trade collectively bargain for what SHOULD be an effective minimum wage or minimum benefits package within that trade - instead of the government doing it for them. There's also works councils in Germany that have a similar effect.
fake-name
Maybe we can't do your idea without the quoted idea.
HaZeust
Of course, this won't be popular on the HN crowd, but I'll say it anyway: What we need is securities tax.
Absolutely any conversion, collateral, or divestiture of securities need to be taxed at the rate of those securities at that time. A lot of plutocrats are playing the system by just basing their loans and the collaterals thereof, and their payments for things, on stocks and securities because they are "unrealized gains".
If securities are enough of a bearer instrument to give loaners confidence for otherwise no-collateral loans, they're enough of a realized gain to be taxed when you use them for a purchase - or alongside one.
penguin_booze
You're telling me the t[r]ickle down irrigation doesn't work? Oh naw! Whuvuda thunk this would happen?!
downrightmike
Their social funding was just creative accounting that moved money so it couldn't be taxed, but still gave them full control and then never did deliver anything.
msgodel
I think what you meant is the right way to turn people into serious enemies.
jimbob45
The article heavily implies that it was a “yeah…nah” thing but does very little investigative work that could corroborate their anonymous witnesses. For all we know, there was a school shooting or a spate of suicides in which case I think everyone here would agree with closing it.
Also I’m not from the area but how are disadvantaged youth coming from Palo Alto at all? Isn’t it one of the highest CoL areas in the nation? Also isn’t it pretty crime-free and well-maintained? How disadvantaged can you be if that’s where you live?
protocolture
>The right way to fund national needs is taxation.
What is a "National Need".
JKCalhoun
Education is one.
protocolture
So Education isn't a state need or a personal need?
Why is Education a National Need?
maxglute
TIL Pricilla's was a pediatrician.
At least have the gilded age decadency deceny to build some muesums.
dfxm12
It was part "decadence", part practical. The tax code in the past was gamified to promote philanthropy (or at least erect buildings with your name on them), rather than simply not paying.
maxglute
Perhaps tax code can gamify building more funding/naming more schools so Chan can keep throwing money at education. At this point probably easier to appeal to 0.01% vanity/legacy than properly tax them.
benatkin
Museums are getting the same fate as libraries - e14n. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36998643
asveikau
As a parent, I can't imagine the chaos that ensues when your kid's school ceases to exist overnight. Keeping that school running is less than pocket change to them. I feel like their action is morally quite shameful.
brunocvcunha
Did you read the post?
> CZI has promised a parting gift totaling $50 million to the community. Parents were told students will receive $1,000 to $10,000 for their future education based on age, and the school district received $26.5 million in grant funds last month. The district declined to comment for this article.
And after the end of the 2025-2026 school year is far from overnight.
sonofhans
Yeah, you’re talking about money, but the important thing for a kid is losing their entire context. It feels like being fired, but without understanding why. Money is entirely beside the point.
duxup
>It didn’t have the special education system or disciplinary rules that are required of charter schools, the former administrator said. But students wore recording devices dubbed “speech pedometers” so that software could analyze the speech patterns of children and the adults around them. The technology was designed by a nonprofit to encourage staffers to talk more with students in ways that studies suggest encourage brain and language development.
>“It was beyond naivete,” the former administrator said. “It was hubris.”
What the heck?
Education is hard, and it's surprising how much "gee whizz" type tech / ideas are out there that supposedly fix things like a magic wand. And in the meantime, no disciplinary rules?
dmix
Maybe I'm getting old but I don't remember education being seriously broken when I was growing up. It seems to have become a playground of random new ideas that administrators in offices dream up every year. I've heard some crazy stories from family who works in education where this sort of thing wouldn't stand out.
duxup
It’s not clear to me what anyone means by broken. Difficult maybe.
crawfordcomeaux
Cracks show up when viewed from a lens of "wait...was that domination-oriented, dualistic, whitewashed, imperialistic, nationalistic, colonial indoctrination in the form of education?".
unethical_ban
Nope! Next. Cell phones and parental non accountability are probably bigger issues.
southernplaces7
Way I see it based on admittedly limited information, these two are either kowtowing cynical liars who financed this entire chain of social causes for the sake of scoring a certain type of PR value with a certain kind of social demographic and now no longer give a shit because another kind of social posturing is de jure.
Or, they're cowards who can't in the least minimum stand up for the causes they claim to strongly, morally support and are willing to discard them at a moment's hint of sacrifice or trouble.
If the latter, then how cowardly indeed. If you're already a fucking centibillionaire, then what a truly absurd, spineless shit of a human being with zero internal firmness you'd have to be to screw over thousands of people who had really come depend on these programs...
All because you might, possibly, have to stand up to one screaming orangutan and maybe lose a few billion out of a wholly gargantuan fortune that you will never ever be able to spend in a lifetime.
Either way, the saddest part is the people who'd come to depend on these things, now affected by their loss.
s1artibartfast
or option 3) the social programs didnt work.
> But former leaders of the school who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private information said Chan had grown distant in recent years as the school’s academic performance faltered
>The East Palo Alto project was the billionaire couple’s second major intervention in a city’s education system, after a controversial 2011 gift of $100 million to the Newark public schools. Some experts and community members claimed that the money was largely squandered.
Jedd
A reminder that "No Such Thing As a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy" by Linsey McGoey (2015), is an excellent analysis of philanthrocapitalism.
(Spoiler - this book does not provide a ringing endorsement of dubiously acquired wealth being dubiously applied through a commercial / for-profit prism.)
ars
"said Chan had grown distant in recent years as the school’s academic performance faltered"
If Chan's experiment isn't working, why would we expect her to keep funding it?
The part at the end about it taking 20 years or whatever makes no sense, a child is not in school for 20 years.
max_
"The East Palo Alto project was the billionaire couple’s second major intervention in a city’s education system, after a controversial 2011 gift of $100 million to the Newark public schools. Some experts and community members claimed that the money was largely squandered"
itsthecourier
when I was making some money finally I could afford to pay for my siblings college.
I told them since the beginning: I'm doing my best, I cannot be sure to be able to pay it until the end. do your best and figure out how to help of I need you.
fortunately I was able to pay all of them until the end. but the lesson is: thank the supporters, hope for the best but understand the uncertainty
apical_dendrite
Chan & Zuckerberg acted much more responsibly here than Elon and Trump:
> CZI has promised a parting gift totaling $50 million to the community. Parents were told students will receive $1,000 to $10,000 for their future education based on age, and the school district received $26.5 million in grant funds last month. The district declined to comment for this article.
They understood that they were breaking commitments that they had made to parents, and that they were putting an unexpected burden on a local school district, and they tried to address that.
By contrast, Elon and Trump abruptly broke commitments that the US made all over the world. Stopping clinical trials midway, leaving food and medicine sitting to rot in warehouses, etc.
MilnerRoute
I was just reading the Washington Post, and I saw the full-length headline.
"The Chan-Zuckerbergs stopped funding social causes. 400 kids lost their school."
"Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg’s retreat from funding social issues forced the closure of a school Chan opened for disadvantaged families in Silicon Valley."
The right way to fund national needs is taxation. If the process is depending on charitable funding, the funds should be put into a safe harbour so this kind of "yea... nah" outcome can't happen.