Rich People Giving

I love my dad. I think of him often. He died in 2001, far too young at age 71. Like many in his generation, he grew up with meager means. His father died when he was 7, leaving his mother to care for the 4 boys alone. She never remarried. My dad never attended college and worked retail his whole life. He wasn't an entrepreneur or a financial savant. He and my mom, a nurse, scrimped and saved in order to send their 7 kids to Catholic grade school and high school. When I was a senior, I finally made a varsity team. I asked for a varsity jacket - a sign of prestige at my school. Some of my friends had them as sophomores and most had them as juniors. I wanted to fit it. I asked my dad frequently about the varsity jacket. I remember the last conversation. He was working at the Lion Store in Southwyck mall. I asked if I could have money to buy the varsity jacket. He said, "I'm sorry, I just can't. We don't have the money."

All of that is a preface to this story: when we drove around town we would occasionally be in a neighborhood with large homes. It was a visual reminder of the wealth some had achieved but my parents had not. And he would invariable say, "You know what? Those homes look beautiful, but they're not happy." I heard that message for years. When I went off to college I met people of very different economic means, including people with money. And one time, on a school break, when my dad said, "You know what, they're not happy" I replied, for the first and only time, "You know what dad? Some of them are!"

We all have biases about money. There are 813 billionaires in the United States and I think that's 813 too many. No one knows what a billion dollars actually is and most of the 813 have more than $1 billion. Nonetheless, some of those billionaires are committed to sharing their wealth. Here are a few examples:

Chuck Feeney

Chuck Feeney co-founded Duty Free Shoppers, stores found in many airports. His goal was to give away all his wealth while he was alive; he called it Giving While Living and advocated it for others. Before his death in 2023, Feeney gave away $8 billion, leaving a small but comfortable amount reserved for he and his wife for retirement.

MacKenzie Scott

MacKenzie Scott is an author. She was married to Jeff Bezos from 1993-2019. Like Feeney, she pledged to give away the majority of her wealth during her lifetime, writing:

MacKenzie Scott's Giving Pledge

According to her website, she has given away $12,366,332,000 ($12.37 billion) to 2,316 organizations. She also makes her donations available via a download. Forbes real time billionaire list has her at $31.2 billion as of 5pm ET on Friday, August 9 2024 (the last day of trading before I wrote this article).

Scott's case illustrates an interesting conundrum: she has given away an enormous sum of money. Yet, since her wealth is in investments and stocks, she continues to make an enormous sum of money. The practical aspect of this means that she and her staff must sort through thousands of requests and vet as many organizations. This is true for all who make large donations to disperse organizations (as opposed to one or two).

Ruth and David Gottesman

Dr. Ruth Gottesman is a retired professor from Albert Einstein College of Medicine where she currently serves on the board of trustees. Her husband, David (1926-2022), founded the investment firm First Manhattan Co. He was also an early investor in Berkshire-Hathaway. Together, they reached a net worth of approximately $3 billion. In February of 2024, Dr. Ruth Gottesman made a gift of $1 billion to ensure free tuition at Albert Einstein College of Medicine forever.

Nick and Leslie Hanauer

According to his X (formerly Twitter) profile, Nick Hanauer is not a billionaire. But he was in 2017 when he and his wife Leslie wrote their Giving Pledge. The Hanauers are committed to structural change. They realize that gross economic disparity is dangerous for everyone. In 2014, two years before the great populist movement (Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders), Nick Hanauer warned the rich about coming retribution in this TED talk "Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming." Nick founded the movement Millionaires for Humanity.

The Giving Pledge

The Giving Pledge was founded in 2010 by Warren Buffet, Melinda French Gates, and Bill Gates. It is a voluntary commitment of the ultra-rich (usually billionaires) to give away the majority of their wealth. The distribution can happen during one's life, as Chuck and Helga Feeney did or in a will after one's death, as Warren Buffet recently announced. The pledge is a moral commitment, not a legal one. And there is no mechanism in place to verify pledgers are doing what they have promised to do.

These are just some of many examples of ultra-rich people giving back. I still think personal ownership of a billion dollars is immoral. But the giving deserves recognition and gratitude.