I feel like this is one of those stories that’s supposed to be heartwarming but is also an indictment of our society. Taylor Swift is apparently donating some of the proceeds of her Eras tour to food banks in the cities where she’s toured, including in Las Vegas and Seattle. One food bank, Second Harvest of Silicon Valley, received a giant donation from Taylor that will help them feed half a million people this month, which is fantastic. The Eras tour is expected to net Taylor about $500 million according to some estimates. Taylor hasn’t made the donation amounts public, which is classy, but I’m estimating they were at least five to six figures.
It’s no “Cruel Summer” for food banks in areas where Taylor Swift is having concerts. In addition to playing sold-out-stadiums, the singer has put money from her hefty ticket prices towards making large donations to local food pantries and banks across the country.
Second Harvest of Silicon Valley, a food bank primarily serving San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, received a huge donation from Swift on July 28, chief philanthropy officer Shobana Gubbi told Insider.
Gubbi said the day they received the donation was the “best” and added that employees at Second Harvest were “so excited.”
“We are so grateful to Taylor for using her platform for good and for supporting food banks across the country during her Eras tour,” Gubbi said in an email to Insider. “Here in Silicon Valley, where the level of need has risen again to peak pandemic levels, her generous donation will assist in our ongoing efforts to provide nutritious food.”
With an estimated net worth of over $740 million, the Eras tour could make Swift a billionaire. Forbes previously estimated that the tour could make Swift about $500 million to keep for herself.
Gubbi said she could not provide the exact amount of money Swift donated. Still, he said the funds are unrestricted, meaning the donation can be used for anything Second Harvest decides — and according to Gubbi, 95 cents out of every $1 donated goes directly back into providing their services.
Pre-pandemic, Gubbi said, Second Harvest served about 250,000 per month. Now, she said they serve about 500,000 a month, and nearly one out of six people in Silicon Valley need food assistance.
She also gave $100k bonuses to the truck drivers, dancers, and crew who were working on her tour which is great. Taxes on bonuses are typically pretty high but that’s still a life-changing sum of money for regular people. Taylor has a long history of making generous donations to charities and individuals, and it’s something about her that I respect. It’s also smart image management which I’m certain is one reason why she does it–Taylor cares a lot about how she is perceived. Obviously it’s really cool that Taylor is donating so much money to these food banks, but it’s also kind of crazy that this tour is going to probably make her a billionaire. The fact that she can make so much money from one tour with hugely inflated ticket prices while more and more people are suffering from hunger…the disparity of that is uniquely American and not in a good way. Silicon Valley is also affected by hunger so severely because of its astonishing housing costs. It was that way when I lived there five years ago and was a teacher–in one of the wealthiest zip codes in the entire country, you’d also have schools where 90% of kids were eligible for something called “second chance” breakfasts because food insecurity was so pervasive. A lot of kids didn’t get breakfast at home so the school provided it. Clearly it’s only gotten worse in Silicon Valley, and in communities across this country. Taylor does a lot more than many other almost-billionaires, I’ll give her that. But dang, this story just shows how unequal things are in America.
I mean, she SHOULD. Because hey guess what? With great wealth comes great responsibility. And I know American society doesn’t see billionaires this way, but we absolutely should. Also, we should tax the ever-loving hell out of these bastards.
And while I hesitate to applaud a rich person for doing what they have a moral obligation to do, it remains true that most rich people don’t do enough–if anything at all–to benefit our society. So yeah, good on Taylor for this.
That’s my take also. Thanks to the likes of Musk and Bezos the bar is in hell.
good for her for being thoughtful and giving back. it isn’t her fault for being a successful singer where hundreds of millions of ppl worldwide are willing to shell out thousands of dollars (inflated by POS ticketmaster) to see her. she’s not the root of America’s disparities…there’s not enough room to explore that here. I can’t tell if this is a critique on capitalism or her. Why can’t we just applaud her for doing good things in the midst of her extreme privilege (where few from her situation do) and leave it at that?
Rich people and how our society treats them absolutely IS the cause of America’s economic disparities–maybe not the sole cause, but a MAJOR factor. Your comment is exactly what I meant when I said above that “Americans don’t see billionaires this way”. It’s terrifying to see how brainwashed people are into believing the false narrative that rich people got to where they are because they worked hard (and not because they had help), their money is their money (and not from inherited wealth) and “it’s not their fault” that they’re rich or whatever other weird excuse we want to give them for not feeling any moral obligation to give back.
Do you know that the wealthiest 400 billionaire families in the US pay an 8.2% Fed individual tax while the average American taxpayer pays 13%? Do you know that if we taxed them MORE as we SHOULD then as a society, we’d have more money to pay for school lunches, childcare, college tuition etc? I don’t know about you but I want the poor and middle-class to have a better quality of life–ya know, like rich people do.
Not to glom onto all your posts, but I’m so sick of the myth of meritocracy. People love Swifty and that’s great. This isn’t really about her as a person as much as her as a phenomenon. She was born rich, had all the resources to launch a music career as a teenager, and while she benefits from being the epitome of conventional attractiveness by American standards, she also is the beneficiary of some of the best marking and PR in existence. She has talent. She’s done good things. Nearly every member of a church or community choir also has talent and has done good things.
Swifty is a cultural phenomenon because our society made her one, so her pay back to society should go without saying. I’m not saying we shouldn’t praise her. Yes, let’s elevate spreading the wealth, paying staff fairly, and contributing to communities. But let’s make that the norm, not the exception so unique that we’re blown away by it.
So well-said and I agree with every single word of your post, Bettyrose, even down to your analysis of Swift. Let’s make it the norm, indeed.
i’m not glorifying her as this bootstraps self-starter that made it where she is purely on her own. she made it in an industry that strongly favors those with resources and she had lots of it. two truths can exist, she had A LOT of help to propel her to where she is and she’s talented and makes music that resonates with people. if the point is that there are fundamentally flawed ways we approach ensuring living standards for everyone to be successful/happy/fulfilled, then sure….there’s a lot of pitfalls in capitalism and the divide between the rich and poor is a fundamental flow in our government. But i fail to see why this needs to pinned to her specifically and in an article where you acknowledge she’s done more than many others. why not just say this is the standard ultra-wealth individuals should be setting?
Literally NO ONE is pinning any one thing specifically on Swift. It’s an article about her philanthropic deeds after we’re finding out that this tour will likely make her a billionaire. Any time a billionaire is mentioned in any article, we should use it as an opportunity to talk about the wealth gap and taxing the rich–Taylor is no exception.
“why not just say this is the standard ultra-wealth individuals should be setting?”
Carina, Bettyrose, myself and others here all made that point but the article isn’t about billionaires in general–it’s about Taylor Swift so that’s why we mentioned her specifically. People are literally saying what you ask us to say here: it’s nice she gave back but that every billionaire should.
my question is why juxtapose her philanthropy with a also a slight about wealth disparities bc she’s going to be a billionaire? in all the articles that mention other billionaires or ultrawealthy individuals (Oprah, Kendall Jenner (not sure if she counts anymore..), Rhianna, Beyonce, Martha Stewart etc.), this has not been mentioned. there are a lot of ultra wealthy ppl highlighted in articles with no mention of wealth disparities, and yet we can’t talk about Taylor doing a nice thing without reminding people she’s a rich lady, privileged and image conscious and interested in how she’s perceived so she donates. Margot Robbie is getting 50 million from Barbie, where’s her footnote about wealth disparities? I can kind of understand how important it is to talk about wealth disparities, but then include all the other high net worth individuals rather than associating this critique on one person after they do something nice.
If she and other millionaires were taxed more she wouldn’t have to donate to food banks. But I commend her for doing it.
And that is one of the fundamental issues with many societies today, not just the US. I earn a bit more than I need each month so in addition to giving some assistance to my now retired mother as she only has her state pension and benefits to live on I have a regular donation to a local food bank. I’m effectively being taxed at a higher rate because I choose to redistribute some of my resources. It’s so wrong.
^ This.
Kind of but –
– most poor people work. Most poor people are vastly, vastly underpaid. I think we should have a stronger social safety net in this country (including universal healthcare) but i detest the fact that businesses effectively make poor people who frequently need a hand out or up out of hard working people whose pay does not match anything in terms of real money. (I am hoping that I have worded this in such a way that exclusively highlights the fact that I think that people should be fairly compensated for their work and not that I think the working poor are deficient in any way. I have trouble explaining myself on the internet.)
Credit where credit is due.
I didn’t know food insecurity was so pervasive in that area, considering how wealthy it is. Wow. I’m glad they are providing meals for the kids, but it shouldn’t have to be this way.
I don’t have stats, but I suspect it has the greatest wealth disparity in the U.S. The Bay Area has the highest rate of homelessness in the U.S., so rates of food insecurity aren’t fare behind.
Good for her! Rush is a band that i follow and when they would tour they would have huge roasting racks filled with chickens roasting right on stage and those chickens when done would be brought to the homeless shelters and other homeless places. They also had huge banks of washers and dryers doing laundry for the homeless. They figured there was room on the stage to do something good for others and boy did it smell good.
If the rich (especially billionaires) were taxed appropriately there would not be hungry children and citizens in one of the richest areas of the world. It’s a sad state of our society and in the end always leads to a revolution with unpredictable outcomes.
There should be no misplaced hate for Taylor here. She is doing the right and responsible thing as multi-millionaire/potential billionaire. She has always been generous with her time and money.
This would be more heartwarming if everything she does wasn’t calculated- her people clearly wrote that press release – and it wasn’t a massive tax write off. I reaming unimpressed with her as a human.
Wow this is just such a sad and bitter take.
Do you think the kids and families getting food care if she got good PR? Also she isn’t releasing it the food banks are.
They don’t care AT ALL. It’s money meant to benefit people that don’t have it and whatever her motivation is is really irrelevant IMO. If it was all about PR, I suspect they would have made the valuation of the donation public for bragging rights or whatever.
@Lisa, not bitter, just realistic. I’ve worked in both PR and the non profit sector. Celebs who need good press do this. And she does.
Ps tell me you’re a Swiftie without telling me you’re a Swiftie. You all think the sun shines out her a$$.
@Kitten – if it’s not for PR, why do we know? Everything she does is for PR. Literally everything.
Nazi boyfriend who likes watching black women made to gag…her PR IS ON POINT
Spill, how about a snickers?
To whom much is given, much is expected.
As for the republicans who hate to provide programs for those in need, they can kiss my a$$. The nonsense of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” is lie that they don’t even adhear to. Most of those conservative bozos have been born into wealth of have like Clarence Thomas gotten something for giving something.
All that patriotism when there are people in the country that you profess to love who are starving. What a disgrace.
Well I think this is fantastic. Good for her. She doesn’t have to give money. Her public image always rebounds no matter what. I really think she is doing this because she actually cares. The same way Oprah actually cares. Some rich people do like to give back. Let’s talk about the ones that don’t. Those are the ones we should be upset with.
Exactly @Me says: Miss Swift could be a shit human (like Donny), but she’s Not…
SHE’S A GOOD HUMAN AND A KIND SOUL <3