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Bill Gates and Warren Buffett urge other wealthy people to sign The Giving Pledge: a promise to give half their wealth to charity. Sounds generous but it's infinitely stingier than most people's charitable giving.
Gates is worth $89 billion, Buffett $65 billion. If they gave 99.99% of their wealth to charity, Gates would still be worth $8.9 miillion, Buffett $6.5 million. Their lifestyle could still be lavish yet they would have saved countless lives, for example, by providing health care and education for some of the billion people who live on less than $2 a day.
So all those fat cats who signed The Giving Pledge get a PR bonanza for their well-trumpeted "largesse" without suffering a bit except for a few less zeros in their account, when they had the power to save so many lives. It's like seeing someone about to get run over and turning away because you wanted to stare at your diamond ring.
Speaking of diamonds, many celebrities, for example, Jennifer Lopez, Christina Aguilera, Vivica Fox, Salma Hayek, and Barbara Streisand have collections of extremely rare pink diamonds. All those stones do is sit in a display case, probably in a vault. How many lives those performers could save by selling the rocks and donating the proceeds to the poor. But they'd rather stare at the display case.
In contrast, the average middle class person gives 3% of income to charity. So if s/he earns $70,000, s/he gives $2,100. That atop forced charity: taxation, which typically leaves that middle-income person with only about $40,000. That $2,100 could well hurt their lifestyle, even their ability to pay for health insurance or rent on a modest apartment. They certainly are donating a more painful share of their income than are the wealthy who brag about their donations (See all the donor names in fundraiser programs and on wall plaques in museums, theatres, and symphony halls) and urge others to do so. So many rich Hollywood stars headline fundraisers to extract serious money from middle-class people.
Taking my argument further, to not be hypocritical, the wealthy who urge others to give should donate all their assets except the perhaps $40,000 a year needed to live just above the standard of the people they urge others to donate to. Otherwise they're saying they deserve to live better than the would-be beneficiaries. Isn't that elitist? And given that a disproportionate percentage of the beneficiaries are people of color, isn't it racist for the celebrities to insist on living better than them?
It seems to me that to avoid rank hypocrisy, elitism, and even racism, those who urge others to donate to charity have a particular obligation to fully walk the talk.
Of course, many of the wealthy would offer excuses for why they shouldn't give away so much of their wealth:
OBJECTION: No one's perfect. I give plenty in charity. If others gave as much as I did, there would be much less poverty.
MY RESPONSE: Yes, and I don't want to discourage you from your giving. It is valuable but remember that you suffer far less pain from your contributions than do the middle class people you urge to donate money. A $500 donation hurts a middle-class person's lifestyle far more than a million-dollar donation affects yours.
OBJECTION: I'm not asking people to go into poverty. Why should I?
MY RESPONSE: Because if you really cared about the people you claim to care so much about, you'd be repulsed that you're sitting in your mansion staring at more zeros in your bank account when that money could save lives or provide desperately needed education.
OBJECTION: I earned my money, so how can you blame me for my success, even after I give away millions?
MY RESPONSE: As Michelle Obama said, no one gets wealthy without help. You won in the genetic lottery: healthy, smart, and not born to parents living on $2 a day. You probably got a good education. You probably received help along the way, if only from good employees you paid a relative pittance to. You thus have an obligation to give away everything except what you need to live a middle-class existence. And if I'm being purist about it, you should live right at the level of the people you want to help, in other words, take a vow of poverty.
The takeaway
Are you giving too little or too much in charity? Are you walking your talk?
As far as I'm concerned, the American middle class is generous while the wealthy should be moreso.
Marty Nemko's bio is in Wikipedia. His new book, his 8th, is The Best of Marty Nemko.
