THERE ARE NOW hundreds of people in the United States with so much money that they will never be able to spend their net worth, no matter how many Picassos or mansions or personal jets they buy.
Last year, for the first time, everyone in the Forbes 400 index of the super-wealthy was a billionaire. Sales of 200-foot-plus yachts and other indulgences of extreme wealth are at record highs. Income for the top 1% of Americans has more than doubled in the last quarter of a century, while that of the bottom fifth barely budged. The rich, in short, are getting steadily richer, both in absolute terms and compared with the rest of society.
Yet with the sainted exception of Warren Buffett and maybe Bill Gates, virtually all of them refuse to give any meaningful fraction of their wealth to the less fortunate -- or even to give a decent fraction to such endeavors as art or medical research, which they'd benefit from.
Consider the numbers (which are based on current estimates in the recent Slate 60 index of the year's leading philanthropic donors and the net-worth estimates in the Forbes 400). The 60 leading American donors gave away $51 billion in 2006, according to Slate. They were led by Buffett, whose spectacular $44-billion donation -- mainly to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, whose primary cause is healthcare in the developing world -- was the largest gift anyone has ever given. These donors had an estimated combined net worth of $630 billion last year, meaning that they gave away 8% of their money, on average. Sounds magnanimous, until you consider that the Dow Jones industrial average rose 16% in 2006 -- which suggests that, as a group, the leading donors contributed less than they gained.
Now subtract Buffett and his generous gift from the group, and the rest of them begin to look downright miserly, handing to others a mere $7 billion of a combined net worth of $584 billion -- or just over 1%. Numbers from the philanthropy watch organization Giving USA show that Americans as a whole annually give away about 0.5% of their net worth. So, except for Buffett, society's top givers donate to others at only a tad higher rate than the population as a whole. That's, well, pathetic. And that's just counting \o7top\f7 givers, not the super-rich who give away little or nothing.
