Submitted by An_Old_Big_Tree in Philanthropy
Would the rest of us win more often in societies without a superrich? Well, defenders of the rich caution, any society that grinds down grand fortune would also be grinding down the billions that make philanthropy possible. Who would want to do that?
Philanthropy, proclaims one 2013 study from the global bank Barclays, has become “near-universal among the wealthy.” Most wealthy worldwide, pronounces Barclays, share “a desire to use” their wealth for “the good of others.” Headlines regularly trumpet this good at every opportunity. Bill Gates fighting neglected tropical diseases! Bono fighting poverty! Diane von Furstenberg pledging millions for parks!
Philanthropists’ publicists have skillfully clouded the core facts: the superrich as a class don’t actually give all that much — and they get back plenty from what they do give.
At first glance, the basic giving numbers in the United States look impressive. In 2015, gifts of $100 million or more alone totaled over $3.3 billion. But the aura of generosity fades the moment we start contemplating what the superrich could be contributing. In 2013, for instance, America’s fifty largest charitable donors gave away $7.7 billion in charitable gifts, a 4 percent increase over the year before. That same year, the wealth of the Forbes magazine billionaires list increased 17 percent.
So, the rich don’t give all that much to charity. What do they get in return for what they do give? For starters, tax breaks. Costly ones. The general rule: For every three dollars that 1 percenters in the United States contribute, the federal government loses one dollar in lost tax revenue.
America’s wealthiest also get the heartfelt thanks of institutions near and dear to their hearts.
The superrich have a sweet spot for cultural palaces. Los Angeles will soon be home to the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a billion-dollar edifice that will house the Hollywood memorabilia of the billionaire filmmaker behind Star Wars. Los Angeles already also hosts The Broad, a $140-million contemporary art museum funded by billionaire Eli Broad that opened in 2015, and the Marciano Art Foundation, a newly completed museum that billionaire retailers Paul and Maurice Marciano have installed in a grand old Masonic Temple.
Meanwhile, despite a state law that requires California public schools to offer music, art, theater, and dance at every grade level, arts-education programs in the budget-strapped public schools of Los Angeles remain woefully “inadequate,” the Los Angeles Times reported late in 2015, with thousands of school children “not getting any arts instruction” at all. Nationwide, budget cutbacks have left millions of children without art education, especially in communities of color. In 1992, just over half of African-American young adults studied art in school. By 2008, that share had dropped to just over a quarter.
Millions for showcasing Star Wars memorabilia, pennies to help poor kids create and enjoy art. Even some billionaires find these sorts of philanthropic contradictions difficult to swallow. As financial industry maverick Bill Gross notes: “A $30 million gift to a concert hall is not philanthropy, it is a Napoleonic coronation.”
What else do the superrich get from their philanthropy? They get control over the public policymaking process. The think tanks, institutions, and organizations the wealthy underwrite shape and distort our political discourse. They define the bounds of what gets discussed and what gets ignored.
The foundations our mega rich endow, notes policy analyst Joanne Barkan, fund researchers “likely to design studies that will support their ideas.” These foundations engage “existing nonprofits or set up new ones to implement projects they’ve designed themselves.” Projects in place, they then “devote substantial resources to advocacy selling their ideas to the media, to government at every level, and to the public,” even directly bankrolling “journalism and media programming.”
Peter Buffett understands this dynamic from the inside. He runs a foundation created by his father Warren Buffett, by some accounts America’s most publicly spirited billionaire. In elite philanthropic gatherings, notes the younger Buffett, you’ll see “heads of state meeting with investment managers and corporate leaders,” all of them “searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left.” And their answers, Buffett charges, almost always keep “the existing structure of inequality in place.”
Peter Buffett dubs this comforting charade “conscience laundering.” Philanthropy helps the wealthy feel less torn “about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need.” They “sleep better at night.”
Through all this, income and wealth distribution remain a concern that few philanthropic foundations dare to address. America’s Foundation Center recorded nearly four million foundation grants in the decade after 2004. Only 251 of these referenced “inequality.”
Some philanthropic heavies, most noticeably the Ford Foundation, have recently announced a commitment to addressing inequality. But philanthropy’s observers remain skeptical about how much difference this will make. Societies most dependent on philanthropy, notes foundation veteran Michael Edwards, remain the most unequal, and those nations — mostly in Scandinavia — that have the highest levels of equality and social well-being have the tiniest philanthropic sectors.