The Best Legacy Money Can Buy

I'll buy you a diamond ring my friend if it makes you feel alright
I'll get you anything my friend if it makes you feel alright
'Cause I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love

I'll give you all I got to give if you say you love me too
I may not have a lot to give but what I got I'll give to you
I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love

Say you don't need no diamond ring and I'll be satisfied
Tell me that you want the kind of thing that money just can't buy
I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love

        -- The Beatles, 1964


How can one find fault with Andrew Carnegie’s decision to build libraries in just about any town or city that asked for one? During a half-century, he built more than 2,500 of them; by 1920, nearly half of all American libraries had been funded by the steel magnate (founder of U.S. Steel).

Of course Carnegie’s $2-per-capita expenditure in towns where he built libraries makes him a piker compared to Bill and Melinda Gates. The Washington state couple has teamed up with America’s other most wealthy individual, Warren Buffet, and created the largest charitable foundation in the world.

The worldwide scope of BMG doesn’t keep it from having scale. The current endowment is over $35 billion – or about $6 per capita, including everyone … everywhere.

When I was growing up, choosing a life of service to others was held up as a noble decision – serving as a low-paid, hard working, doer of good deeds was considered to be a high calling.

Today’s young people are being provided a very different model: first, get yours; then, once you have it all, share some of the excess with others.

While Buffet still lives in an Omaha house he bought for $31,500 and tends toward frugality, Bill and Melinda live in one of the most expensive homes in the world (about $125 million), surrounded by luxury and art items worth millions more.

Well, can an argument be made in opposition to having priorities set by Carnegie, Buffet and the Gateses? And how can devoting a lifetime (say, 100,000 hours) to one or more good causes be held in as high regard as endowing enough money to employ thousands of talented folks to do good works far into the future?

At the risk of being viewed as a socialist or just a plain wack-o, I will offer a fairly straightforward argument against philanthropy on the scale of Gates/Buffet, Carnegie or even those who give away mere millions of dollars:

That brand of charity is just plain undemocratic.

It’s a bit like the Sherwood Forest without Robin Hood. The rich “voluntarily” give to the poor – but with strings attached.

Bill Gates has been named (by Time magazine) one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th Century. Since establishing the BMG foundation, he’s been re-certified as one of the top 100 for each of the past four years, this despite business practices that have, on occasion been declared illegal by the courts.

The Beatles notwithstanding, money – it seems – actually can buy love.

Donors clearly influence the direction of major charities like the Red Cross, United Way and World Vision. And executives are often compensated so well that any argument that they are “giving their lives” to serve others seems rather ludicrous.

How many of us would send part of our hard-earned cash to a charity like Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International, which turns more than three-quarters of a million dollars ($766,855) over to the current and past presidents each year when the Whittier Institute for Diabetes pays its director $170,090.

I believe arguments that charities “have” to compensate executives at “competitive” levels is an insult to hundreds of thousands of volunteers and others who work for low pay because they believe in a cause.

And elevating “charity workers” into the upper class seems … well … undemocratic, to me.

Is there a solution to a system that sometimes makes millionaires out of those who are ostensibly doing charity work?

Hmmmmm.

I think I know how to make decisions about who gets helped and how more democratic. But we’re so far from “there” that I won’t share my views for fear of being relegated to the lunatic fringe.

Suffice it to say that a lot of money that started as wages became profits that were put to use by owners/investors/entrepreneurs to fund projects they believe in – often utilizing expensive services provided by others made rich by the same arrangement.

Other money is welcomed – from generous wage earners, small businesspeople, retirees and others who find a way to share some of their modest means – but those donations don’t usually buy influence, let alone control.

Follow the money.

By the way, Carnegie refused to put his name on the libraries he gave away – a rather refreshing side note in a world now filled with programs and facilities bearing the names of those who provided money to causes of their own choosing. So much for giving being its own reward.