The Problem with Philanthropy

Everybody loves a philanthropist, right?  And this was a great year for philanthropy.  It was the year of the “Giving Pledge,” when 40 of the wealthiest Americans pledged to give away at least half of their money–around $600 billion.  The pledge was organized by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warrent E. Buffett, who hoped it would stimulate conversation about philantrophy among the mega-rich and bring on a wave of genreous giving.  That hasn’t happened.  Well, the discussion, maybe, but apparently not the giving.

Let me say right off that I’ve never been big on charity–on charity events for rich people, on walls with rich people’s names on them, on programs listing the wealthy people “who made this program possible.”  And yes, in the service of truth and transparency, I admit that my name–though I am not wealthy–has appeared in a few of these places, and I do make charitable contributions.  But let me tell you why I have trouble with charity and lean more toward justice.

Think about Carnegie and Rockefeller.  They took their pound of flesh out of the working man and woman, and then gave them back libraries and public buildings with the benefactors’ names carved on the front.  More than such gifts, I believe that working people need a fair wage–money to spend the way they wish to spend it, on the health and well-being of their families–and that the government should be responsible for the public buildings, through taxing those who have enriched themselves upon the labor of others. 

The fact is that when the wealthy give, they also to a great extent control who benefits from their largess.  They hardly ever give a trillion dollars to “whoever needs it most.”  And anyway, who could decide better than these wealthy people themselves, they may think.  In actual fact, the government can plan comprehensively, through social programs that they have discovered are efficacious, whereas individuals give typically to what is “sexy.”  Drug offenders are not sexy.  Neither are old people and disabled people.  Protitutes are not sexy.  And certainly prisoners are not sexy.  Children are sexy.  Cancer is sexy, etc., etc.  Well, you see what I mean.

We have entered into a new Gilded Age, with more discrepancy in the wealth of households than at any time since the 1920′s.  We are now being compared to those countries in S. America, where such shameful discrepancies have long existed.  In spite of being in one of the most difficult recessions this country has ever known, people in the top 1% continue to own as much wealth as all those the bottom 90%.  Bill Gates himself has as much wealth himself as the bottom 40% of all households in the United States.  At a time when our politicians are considering whether or not to continue the Bush tax cuts, I would ask what in God’s name are they thinking, if they don’t revoke these cuts.

Well, hey, what’s a rich person to do?  They can’t change they system any more than you or I can.  Actually, they can.  All of us can and should work to change our unfair tax system.  We should all work to ensure that in the business world, rules of fair play are put in place and enforced.  But people who have a great deal of money also have a great deal of influence with our lawmakers–no news here–so they have great potential to move the justice needle over to the FAIR side of the spectrum. 

I would suggest that instead of spending their time and energy giving away money (and it does take considerable time and energy), thereby calling attention to their own virtue, rich folks could begin to think “justice” instead of “charity” and then work hard to change a system that condemns so many to lives of poverty and hopelessness.  To make this shift, though, the wealthy would have to begin thinking in terms of “us”– not “us” and “them”–and I wonder if this new vision of humanity might be just too much to ask of most of them.