Those of us near the bottom or in the middle of the income scale get the impression that those at the top are vain, smug, heartless beasts who think only about themselves. Some of them probably answer this description but not all, and although I wouldn’t want to spend much of my time defending the super-rich, I’d like to spare a thought in this book for those who, often through no fault of their own, happen to be better off than ourselves.
I’d have headed this entry ‘philanthropy’ but I’ve never liked the implication that only those who are well-off can love their fellow man. And there’s something very patronising, very unsocialist (with a small ‘S’), about a few individuals deciding who gets how much.
Nevertheless, it is philanthropy we are talking about: people who have cash to spare and who give it away. This introduces a necessary corrective to the capitalist system which is motivated by individualism, if not selfishness.
If wealth has a way of accumulating in a few hands it is only because money is the measure of success in business. The wisest businessmen and women know that you can have enough and more than enough, and that you can only spend so much. Jim Manzi, one of the creators of the Lotus spreadsheet, said, “With $5 million you do what the hell you like. With $50 million you can do what the hell you want in a jet.” According to another modern millionaire, $10 million is enough to get by on these days. If there are almost 1000 billionaires on earth (up from 140 in 1986, according to Forbes Magazine, which
doesn’t even bother to count the millionaires) that amounts to a lot of money either to be given away or to be left uselessly in private bank accounts. Fortunately at least some of this cash is controlled by people with social consciousnesses who devote as much time to giving away money as they do to accumulating it. It doesn’t really matter why the rich give their money away – it may be out of vanity or the search for status or the need to leave a legacy; all that matters is that they are giving it away. And it follows that if you want to change the world but you don’t personally have the funds you can still do your bit by sitting next to the right person at dinner. One conversation can be worth a year of campaigning.
If you happen to be very rich yourself you might want to add up what you are really going to need for you and your dependents (you don’t want to spoil your children by leaving them too much) over the next few decades and relish the process of handing out bundles of cash in brown envelopes to whoever you think will make best use of it. As you do, reflect on the words of the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie: “The man who dies rich dies disgraced”.
Sources
Institute for Philanthropy:
www.instituteforphilanthropy.org.uk The Network for Social Change: thenetworkforsocialchange.org.uk
Childhood
Too many kids these days are spoiled but then again too many aren’t. While some grow obese in Europe and America, almost 211 million of them in other parts of the world are obliged to work for a living, often in conditions of near slavery. And hunger remains the main challenge for many of the world’s children to overcome. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the huge advances that have been made in understanding and valuing childhood. The main change that has occurred within the last hundred years in every developed country (and which we can expect to see extended to every developing country) is that cash now flows from parents to children rather than vice versa. Children have been released from production and let loose in playgrounds. Their status has simultaneously risen and they have acquired political and social rights. They are increasingly recognized as people and
childhood is seen not just as a pre-adult waiting room but as an essential time of personality formation. We should be encouraged that, in some places and in some families at least,
children are respected and consulted (they have a surprising amount to say about their lives when you ask them and listen to the answers); and that charities exist to attend to the particular needs of children which are never the same as the needs of adults. The concept of
C H I L D H O O D
“Cash now flows from parents to
children rather than vice versa.”
ChildLine – a phone line which children can contact without fear that the adult world will threaten or belittle them – is nothing short of enlightened.
And there are many ways in which society generally tries to make childhood more pleasant. David Bodanis describes one example of the interests of children and adults coinciding:
“The Evelina hospital is the first new children’s hospital that’s been built in London in a century. There’s a giant atrium in the middle, and the contract with the company doing the cleaning says that the window cleaners need to dress up as superheroes. The children in bed – many with grave illnesses – delight in seeing Superman and Spiderman dangling just inches away from them, on the outside of the glass; apparently for the cleaners it’s one of the best parts of their week.
The government has wasted a fortune on consultants, bureaucracy and reorganizations of the NHS. It’s always defended in cold management-speak. This simple arrangement with the window cleaners cuts through all that.”