The $600 Billion Dollar Gift (a new book I am blogging)
The rich may be very different from the rest of us but the articles I have been reading recently shows that when it comes to charitable giving they struggle with it.
Then when you factor in that the 2009 net worth of the Forbes 400 was said to be around $1.2 trillion, if those 400 were to give 50% of that net worth away during their lifetimes or at death, that would be $600 billion. Buffett and Gates then are asking for a HUGE amount to go to “The Greater Good.”
So my question is, “Where would you put $600 billion? What would be it’s best use?” I love what Buffett said in a recent article, ‘If I wanted to I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture
every day for the rest of my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching or nursing.”
Bravo Mr. Buffett! Bravo Bill Gates. But what are good uses of such large amounts of dollars?
When you look at The Gates Foundation the largest giving they doing currently is in the form of health care followed by education and information and then poverty. Every day that you get up and go to work or, if you are retired, get up and are thinking of things to do with your day, Melinda and Bill and the others from the Gates Foundation, are thinking about how to create the greatest good for the greatest number in focused areas of need.
But if it were your dollars, how would you spend them? That’s the question I am asking as I create this book.