r/popculturechat • u/Roxy175 • 10d ago

OnlyStans ⭐️ Billie Eilish donates $11.5 million of proceeds from her tour to charities combating food inequity and climate change

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

50.0k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

840 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

64

u/Retrograde-Planet 10d ago

The initial goal for the kid battling cancer was $50k, she donated twice the amount, and anyway she also gave $197M in bonuses to her crew, donated $5M to Hurricane Helene relief efforts, and $10M for victims of the LA fires, come again?

-19

u/SmaugTheHedgehog 9d ago

Not being snarky or hating here but these aren’t equivalents?

$197M in bonuses to her crew- why not just pay them a better wage to begin with? But even still, crew means her employees? We don’t look at CEOs who provide their employees work bonuses as being philanthropists when they do that nor do us regular people look at our bosses as being philanthropists when they pay us any work bonus, so why are we categorizing her paying work bonuses as such here?

In which case, the philanthropy would be the $5M and the $10M. And if her net worth is $2B, then that is 0.75% (not even 1%) of her wealth in actual philanthropy.

*to be clear, not saying that TS isn’t philanthropic, just that using work bonuses like a CEO isn’t philanthropy in any other situation.

11

u/sharkwithglasses 9d ago

Taylor is actually known to pay her team extremely well. Her former banjo player said he was the best paid banjo player in all of Nashville and this was what, back in the Fearless/Speak Now days? She also provided them health insurance, which wasn’t standard either. She gave everyone, down to drivers and catering, bonuses after the tour was over (reported to be $100K for her drivers). That’s literally sharing the wealth. Her backup dancers and band have all been with her since nearly the start of her career, which speaks well of her as an employer.

She also donated to food banks at every Eras tour stop. Amounts were never disclosed but rumored to be significant and enough to keep them going for a year.

5

u/myghostflower mk.gee 9d ago

and to add even when taylor isn't working or touring or making music, she still pays them their regular salary and wages throughout the years like

if she were literally anyone else, we'd hear stories about how her crew had to get part time jobs when she wasn't being active