Just in time for Christmas (or maybe Chanukah) another
billionaire has pledged to leave half his fortune to charity. Not
that Facebook CEO and Time magazine’s “Man of the Year”
Mark Zuckerberg needed any arm-twisting. He was — he texts —
happy to spread half the wealth. It’s right there on his Facebook
page.
At only 25, Zuckerberg is already worth about $7 billion,
give or take a few million. It used to take guys like Andrew
Carnegie or George Hearst a
lifetime to amass that kind of fortune. The
Carnegies first had to sell the
chickens and borrow £20 from
relatives to immigrate to America. In
Pittsburgh, young Andy worked his
way up from bobbin boy. Zuckerberg, by contrast, was a spoiled
computer prodigy from the get-go, always with the best tutors and
teachers. No stoking boilers in a textile
factory twelve hours a day, six days a week for
this Harvard grad.
What gets missed in these self-serving headlines is the
remarkable generosity of not-so-wealthy Americans. Americans who
earn less than $20,000 a year give twice as much of their income to
charity as those making $100,000. If you earn less than $25,000 you
probably give 4.2 percent of your income to charity. That’s a big
deal even though Zuckerberg probably tips his doorman more than
that. My not very subtle way of saying that for most of us, our 4.2
percent hurts a LOT more than Zuckerberg’s 50 percent, which
doesn’t hurt at all.
IT IS BELIEVED the United States has
170 billionaires. So far 60 have taken the
Giving Pledge, which is what you sign on to when Bill Gates or
Warren Buffett calls you up during dinner and shames you into
giving away half your fortune, preferably before your soup gets
cold. And it won’t do any good to get an unlisted number. Bill
Gates has your unlisted number — unless you make under $25,000 a
year or own a Mac, which is pretty much the same thing.
What did billionaires do with their money before Bill
Gates packed his bags for his little guilt trip? Well, it seems
19th and 20th century billionaires also gave away their fortunes.
Yes, even the Captains of Industry — dubbed “robber barons” by the
pro-slavery, proto-fascist and “insipid
muddlehead” (Nietzsche’s phrase) Thomas Carlyle
— were civic-minded and generous.
Carnegie put charity at the heart
of his Gospel of Wealth, warning that “the man who dies
rich dies disgraced.” Meanwhile, old skinflint John D. Rockefeller
confessed: “I never would have been able to tithe the first million
dollars I ever made if I had not tithed my first salary, which was
$1.50 per week.” These men didn’t believe it was enough
to be incredibly successful or to create millions of jobs, or
figure out new, innovative ways to make everyone’s life
better.
In fact, Carnegie went into
poor, underserved areas and established schools in places where the
government proved — not surprisingly — incapable.
Carnegie was a meritocrat who
wanted to give hardworking Americans “ladders
within reach upon which the aspiring can rise.”
Zuckerberg has done likewise in Newark,
New Jersey, only he’s giving
$100 million to failing public
schools so they can continue to fail students for another decade
and turn out another generation of doomed illiterates (by which I
mean the incompetent teachers and administrators). Sort of the
educational equivalent of propping up corrupt third world dictators
with U.S. foreign aid.
The “robber barons” also established free libraries and
art museums because they wanted to bring culture to the plain
people, mostly because every time they holidayed in Europe they had
to listen to some boring Brit lecture them about how uncivilized
Americans were. Today their money is being used to fund exhibitions
of shock-the-bourgeoisie art, because board members of these
charitable foundations get a kick out that. Makes them feel
superior. If that’s not exactly what John D. had in mind, tough
titty. He’s dead.
Personally, if I had $7 billion I would use it a bit more
constructively. I would buy MSNBC and fire Keith Olbermann. Then I
would order the station manager to play nothing but Green
Acres reruns. I would take the other $6 billion and place a $6
billion bounty on Osama bin Laden’s head. And none of this dead or
alive stuff. I want him Bonnie and Clyde dead. Eventually, one of
his inner circle will succumb to the temptation and push Osama and
his donkey (also named Osama) off the side of a cliff.
