ALAN'S LETTER

Have the richest among us responded to the crisis? If you were to read the headlines you’d certainly think so: $100 million for racial justice here, $10 billion for climate protection there. But the truth of the matter is that, with the exception of MacKenzie Scott and perhaps two or three others, it’s been business as usual (aka hoarding).

If the average charitable deduction tax saving is, say 50% (could be as high as 74%), it means that we the public are taking $60 billion out of the Treasury and letting the wealthy decide what kind of public investments should be made.

So along comes Jeff Bezos with a $10 billion commitment to address climate change. Wow…sort of. It’s kind of a macho thing: Gates saves us from Covid, Zuckerberg saves democracy, and Bezos saves the planet. Bezos is named philanthropist of the year by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. First, he didn’t give away $10 billion, he pledged to give it away over TEN years….The climate crisis can’t wait ten years.

Senators Klobuchar and Warren have introduced two seemingly unrelated bills, but they could be, in part, two sides of the same coin (an appropriate cliché here because we’re talking about money).

The COVID-19 crises have prompted me to think about what four questions I might ask at a Seder: First, as the light at the end of the tunnel seems to be getting brighter, what will you miss as we return to the new normal?

What’s the idea behind the Crisis Charitable Commitment? It’s simple. Wealthy individuals and foundations and donor advised funds are sitting on a lot of money. We have a major crisis. We have to get that money out the door to help ameliorate the crisis. That was and is goal number one.

Am I crazy to wonder what kind of world we live in when you get congratulated for getting a COVID vaccine shot? Congratulations are deserved by those among the donor class who are not just spending their money on art or private space ships but instead digging deep to address the multiple crises created and/or highlighted by the pandemic.

In a word…Bezos. He and his ex-wife have $250 billion. If you earned $1 per second, $60 per minute, $3600 per hour every hour of the day, every day of the year, and assuming you didn’t have to pay any taxes, you, too, could have $250 billion…in just 8000 years! If we can put a person on the moon, we can change laws now to solve the problems of both wealth inequality and rich man’s philanthropy–before the rich own the moon, too.

Especially in this time of crisis, far too many foundation trustees and 0.1%ers are echoing the sentiments ascribed to Marie Antoinette. “Let them eat cake” is “a saying that shows insensitivity to the realities of life for the unfortunate.” The antithesis is “stepping up to the plate.” As President Biden said in his Inaugural Address, “Our ‘better angels’ have always prevailed…enough of us came together to carry all of us forward.”

A Dickensian theme runs through my writings. Oliver Twist (nonprofits) begging his master (the donor class) for more. During the Christmas holiday we had the wealthiest Americans putting Scrooge (from A Christmas Carol) to shame. And now Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times [for 650 billionaires in the U.S. who made $1 trillion since the pandemic began}, it was the worst of times {25 million Americans are unemployed….)