Ned Pepper's Outrages

Friday, July 16, 2010

BILLIONAIRE PHILANTHROPISTS

Friday's NYT contains an article that probably gave heart to many readers.
In it, the co-founder of Microsoft, Paul Allen, announced he was going to follow Bill Gates and donate a sizable portion of his estimated 13.5 billion (!) fortune to "charity." Continuing the feel-good tone of the article, it was noted that Mr Allen had already
"given away" $1 billion through "foundations and nonprofits". Up to now, lucky beneficiaries of Mr Allen's largesse have been the Allen Foundation and the "Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum".
Last year's leading donors were the Drukenmillers who gave "away" $705 million to (wait for it) their "family foundation."
Bill Gates has apparently given money for AIDS relief in Africa, among other things.
Now Ned understands that some observers might take heart at these apparent instances of the very rich trying to give back some of their obscene wealth to the society that allowed them to prosper.
But Ned finds the whole idea abhorrent.
Ned far prefers that the country return to those halcyon days of yesteryear, the Eisenhower Administration, when income was taxed at a marginal rate of 90% for incomes over $200,000, and the country prospered very well, thank you. Well, except for all those black folks set upon by dogs and lynched for being uppity enough to demand the rights guaranteed them by the US Constitution. But we digress.
If his readers prefer a less onerous rate of taxation, how about the Kennedy tax cuts that lowered Ike's marginal rate to 70%, and ushered in an era of enhanced prosperity, until Lyndon Johnson frittered it away in Vietnam.
Don't get Ned started on Reagan.
No, friends, Ned does not subscribe to the unhinged idea that certain persons in society should be trusted with a sizable portion of that society's wealth, and then be trusted to "give it away" without any approval by society at large, least of all to "family foundations."
On the other hand, if these persons wanted to donate their wealth to a fund that would be administered by and for the American people, now that would be different.
Until then, Ned will not join the crowds at Massa'a back door, thanking him for the leftover corn bread.

No comments:

Post a Comment