Dr John Mohan Razu
In a world of corona virus philanthropy is now the catch word than ever before as many billionaires are intensely involved in philanthropic activities in diverse ways. Invoking noble virtues such as charity, kindness, compassion and love they keep pushing the world to cruise through making everyone to believe that without them the world would crumble. Philanthropy trickles in varied ways – charity foundations and agencies at the national and international levels work in numbers of sectors helping the poor, vulnerable and disadvantaged sections. Because of their ‘generosity and goodness’ and ‘free giving attitude’ in the forms of donations in billions to NGOs, government agencies, foundations and individuals across the world.
We assume that their generous giving and charitable concerns that the world we live is somewhat a better place and livable one. In reality it is not so, says political theorist Emma Saunders-Hastings in her book Private Virtues, Public View: Philanthropy and Democratic Equality argues that though such philanthropic generosity is laudable, philanthropy leverages hierarchies of power and status incompatible with democracy. She reiterates in her argument by urging us to look at the social and political relations that it fosters. We tend to think that the rich people give away their money who should be revered by those who receive and convert it for their livelihood. But we need to know that there are hidden gratifications in philanthropy.
A classic example is Warran Buffett who did not include his children as stakeholders in his wealth, but he gave them enough that includes a billion dollars each for charitable foundations to buy them influence in the world. Over and above, the wealth of US billionaires has increased by a massive $2.1 trillion, or 70 percent since the onset of coronavirus, while tens of millions of working people have faced unemployment and illness and thousands and lakhs died. Nevertheless, the list of American billionaires grew by 131 individuals from 614 to 745 during the same period.
However, an analysis of Forbes data shows that US billionaires as per the Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) on Inequality projects that the richest people in the country grew from 3 trillion dollars at the start of COVID in March 2020 to over $5 trillion in October in the same year. This wealth is two-thirds more than the $3 trillion in wealth held by the bottom 50 percent of the American households estimated by the Federal Reserve Board.Same sources state that the “great good fortune of these billionaires over the past 19 months is a stark contrast with the 89 million Americans who have lost jobs; over 449 million have been affected by the virus and many millions died from it.
Take Elon Muk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX the world’s richest man who grew by an incredible 751 percent during pandemic. ATF and IPS in their press release affirm that “most of these billionaires’ gains will go untaxed under current rules and will disappear entirely for tax purposes when they are passed onto the next generation.” All these reveal that the super-rich pay paltry tax which is lower than middle income taxpayer like teachers, nurses and firefighters. In addition, their bulk income comes from the increased value of their investments such as stock, real estate business, rather than pay cheque like most people. More importantly they hardly pay taxes on their wealth unless they sell the assets.
The ultra-rich know how to by-pass the tax rules and taxation, but they borrow money against their assets from the banks at low-interest rates and thus live lavishly tax-free. The staggering sums of billionaires’ wealth within the United States and world over is reflected in the forms of poverty, hunger, unemployment, inflation and numerous sufferings of the poor and working-class population numbering billions of people around the world. And yet, world’s richest people donate in billions and pledge huge part of their wealth for charities and foundations.
As against the backdrop, this book asks a question: what distributions of power and wealth underlie their giving? One factor is abundantly clear that philanthropy subverts equality in two ways: It adds them power over in determining and deciding on common concerns and to do what to do about them, meaning they are creators of the problems and eventually become the solvers of the problems that they have created.With their interventions the super-rich influence the governments’ policies and programs.
Take for instance, Mark Zuckerberg involvement in influencing education policies, Bill Gates interventions have been from poverty to health to education. In all these he had his own stakes that would benefit him and his organization.Public decision-making and policy-taking processes are being influenced in tune to the preferences of the wealthy. As a result, peoples’ decisions and judgements are being undermined over against the decisions of the super-rich. More importantly, the conception of “equality” is compromised as the wealthy and powerful have their closer proximity with the ruling elites
As we are of the fact there are global corporations that have assets and wealth than some of the countries and eventually become supra-states. Therefore, in the United States and other countries more laws are to be evolved and thus be implemented to break the monopoly power of these oligopolies implementing strict anti-Trust laws. Philanthropy is part of capitalism as it solely depends on those who control who in turn considers people as objects of charity. Hence, philanthropy thwarts equality and widens inequality. Those who control capital know how control economy and politics as well.
Further, philanthropy believes in the profit-maximization and accumulation of wealth as those super-rich give away just a part of profits for philanthropy. It is constructed on unethical system that believes in exploitative means and believes in maximization of profits as ends. Therefore, it neither endorses nor believes in distributive justice. Philanthropy is just one kind of charity which never questions injustices. It flourishes in all kinds of political terrains and ideological moorings. It fails to believe in people as subjects of their destiny, but lays utmost trust on people who are as objects of philanthropy.
