I recently had a Portlandia moment. For the uninitiated, Portlandia, the tv comedy series that parodied the city’s eccentricities, was one of the two best things to come out of Oregon, the other being my stepson and daughter-in-law’s winery, AtoZ Wineworks. The most famous episode of the show describes how true Portlanders, when ordering chicken at a restaurant, ponder everything that could have led up to that chicken being on their plate: where the chicken came from; how it was treated; who its parents were; even to the point of visiting the farm where it was raised.
I got my COVID vaccination last week along with congratulations from family and friends. I had to ask myself if I’m crazy to wonder what kind of world we live in when you get congratulated for getting a “jab” (my preferred description of the vaccine shot, as used by New Zealanders). I suppose in the broadest sense one could be considered either successful or lucky at being able to get the vaccine. But perhaps the congratulations are actually in consideration of how the vaccine got into our arms (the chicken on the plate): people administering the vaccine, all the people involved in delivering it, the current Administration and CDC that managed the process, pharmaceutical companies that produced it (chalk one up for Big Pharma), and, of course, the scientists who developed the vaccine. (I apologize to anyone I left out.)
The questionable use of congratulations was brought up in the Fran Lebowitz’s Pretend It’s a City on Netflix. It is a wonderful short series, and I particularly enjoyed the point she made that when a Picasso (or other major art piece) is sold at auction, the upper-class audience doesn’t cheer the artist but rather congratulates the buyer with applause for spending an obscene amount of money and most likely making that art inaccessible to the public.
The art market is a good example of what is wrong with philanthropy. For those of you who are not ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWIs), here’s how this works. An UHNWI named Rich has income one year of $100 million (peanuts compared to the $1 trillion that 650 billionaires made in just the last year!). Rich pays $25 million in taxes, about half of what the tax bill would have been before Reagan began the tax-cutting-for-the-rich process in 1980. With the taxes not paid, Rich buys a $25 million painting. Since there are only so many yachts one can buy, other UHNWIs also buy art, thereby pushing art prices up. In ten years the painting is worth $50 million, and Rich donates it to a museum, probably exhibited in the Rich gallery. The tax deduction is worth $15 million.. So Rich buys the art piece with money that should have been paid in taxes, allows the public to see his painting for a $15 billion tax deduction (personal profit), determines what art the public gets to see, receives the goodwill (down payment on that seat in heaven), and deprives the government of money it could use to more broadly support the arts.
Of course, there is an important role for philanthropy to play, providing an independent voice and choice, but it’s not because the government can’t do things well. Perseverance. NASA’s incredible accomplishment, is one recent example of government at its best (hopefully the Covid-19 relief bill will be another). So why is it okay for Bezos and Musk to spend money privatizing space rather than helping people on the ground who are in great need?
Taxing the wealthy fairly is overdue, but what we must do now is encourage the UHNWIs to voluntarily dig deep, double the historic average of charitable giving, and use their under-taxed wealth to compensate for government’s revenue shortfall and shore up the nonprofit sector.
Which brings me back to congratulations…deserved by those among the donor class, listed on our website, 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.