Twitter’s Jack Dorsey pledges $1B of Square stake to fight off coronavirus

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey pledges 1 billion dollars of his stake in Square to help fund relief efforts during the coronavirus crisis. Yahoo Finance’s Melody Hahm shares the details.

Video transcript

JULIE HYMAN: It's live. I'm Julie Hyman. We have been talking and tracking, talking about and tracking all of the various companies that have been either repurposing their operations to make things for the coronavirus effort or otherwise.

Now, we're going to talk about one individual at a company who's doing something. That's Jack Dorsey of Twitter. He's pledged $1 billion of his stake in Square, the other company of which he's CEO, in order to help this effort.

Melody Hahm has been following this for us, so, what's the structure of this donation? Where's it going? Tell us all about it.

MELODY HAHM: Yeah, Julie, so that's about 20% of his net worth, and, as you mentioned, he's the chief executive of both Square and Twitter, and in an effort to make it a transparent process, he started a Google Doc, in the same way that we're sharing ideas to make a log of all of the contributions he's made.

To date, he's only made one of $100,000 to America's Food Fund, which provides meals to the vulnerable and a lot of children who previously have relied on schools to give them their meals. The GoFundMe fundraiser was only started six days ago, and they've already raised $13.4 million from the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Laurene Powell Jobs, so, of course, it's a cohort of really illustrious tech folks who are banding together here.

But I have to say, this is notable. We tend to take a cynical look when we say, oh, Jeff Bezos's 1% net worth and Mark Zuckerberg's 5% of his net worth. 28% of someone's net worth is a significant chunk right here, and I think what I find particularly interesting in writing a piece on this, is about his note in his tweet saying that he wants to support causes like universal basic income.

As we know, that was presidential candidate at the time Andrew Yang's central campaign tenant. A lot of people rolled their eyes at it, saying, how would you be able to come up with $2 to $4 trillion to give every American a check for $1,000? Does that sound familiar at this moment in time?

So it's very fascinating to see lawmakers from both sides, whether it's the people like Mitt Romney or Ro Khanna, basically coming up with that argument, saying, hey, in addition to that $1,200 check for people who make $75,000 or less, every American, in order to stay afloat, in order to really reignite a lot of economic activity even from their homes, they should be given a little bit more income.

Of course, this is something that has its fair share of critics, has not fared well in places like Finland. There is a pilot program happening all across California right now through Y Combinator, and there, you know, the results are mixed, where, of course, people are not actually dedicating those resources to drugs and alcohol, which is what some of the most fervent critics say. But at the same time, does it actually provide that balanced income, that [INAUDIBLE], was specifically, in order to mitigate automation. Of course, we could have never perceived a pandemic to be the real black swan here.

And the last point I want to make is, I think overall when you think about the landscape of technology, it's so fascinating and sort of ironic that some of the tech leaders are the ones who are the most vocal for UBI. So Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, they are very huge proponents perhaps because they see it right in front of their eyes, that they are relying on automation.

So this is something that I think will get reignited more and more, even outside of the pandemic conversation.

- Hey, Mel, it's Rick. So those tech executives calling for UBI are basically saying the government should do more to help people. It would be interesting if somebody like Jack Dorsey actually said, I'm giving a lot of money here, and I'm calling on my fellow billionaires and tech entrepreneurs to also give money, kind of like the Giving Pledge.

MELODY HAHM: Yes exactly.

- Any talk about something like that happening?

MELODY HAHM: Yeah, well we saw even Howard Schultz, right? The Starbucks previous-- or honorary-- founder, you could say, who is giving those checks to Seattle workers. So I think to a certain extent, they are galvanizing within their own communities, and, yes, oftentimes UBI became a cocktail hour reception conversation, right? It wasn't actually seen as a practical mode of implementation.

But to your point, I think to be honest, the private sector is not relying on the federal government, or they do not feel like it is enough. So I can anticipate Dorsey starting a coalition, to a certain extent.

I want to point out, though, in the tweet he said that after they mitigate the pandemic, so emergency crises like that, after those initial donations, then he'll turn his attention to girls' health education and UBI. So it's still unclear as to whether things can happen concurrently or perhaps he'll dedicate that $1 billion to front-line workers and food services versus starting a program like that.

JULIE HYMAN: The fact remains also, he has a full plate, as he usually does.

MELODY HAHM: Exactly. We've already debated, two CEO roles. I don't know if he has enough spare time.

JULIE HYMAN: Exactly. Melody, thank you so much.