Let Not Thy Left Hand Know What Thy Right Hand Doeth

(Unless your right hand is REALLY big)

Warren Buffet is giving 95% of his fortune (eventually 100%) to charities, most of it to the Gates foundation. Thats roughly 37 billion dollars and more than doubles what the Gates have in the foundation (more if his stock price goes up in the next few years). I've always respected filthy rich people who give all their money away. Even though God tells us that we should give in private, when you're that rich it would be nearly impossible to hide what you're doing with the money- so I have no beef with super rich people announcing to the whole world their charity. If only we had more rich people like the Gates and the Buffets, and fewer like the Waltons (walmart) who give a miniscule portion of their wealth to charities (at least publically- maybe I'm wrong and they give large private donations...).

Now there are good charities and... less good charities. Good causes and, well, bad causes. Lets imagine that you were able to establish the (insert your name here) Foundation which had 20 billion dollars invested such that allowed you to spend 1 billion dollars per year on anything you wanted. What would you do with it? Would you focus on a particular area like world hunger or vaccinations, or medical research, or inner city programs, or building libraries? Would you have a philosophy of only making donations to projects that attack the roots of problems rather than their symptoms? (Like giving small business grants in poor communities rather than opening a soup kitchen) Would you just be indiscriminant (to a point) and give to whatever organization asks first? Would you spend nationally or internationally? Would you tackle less urgent matters than world hunger and poverty and go for things like arts and community activities?


Heres what the Webb Foundation might do:

Along with other donors, build a string of community colleges across South America (and other poor areas). I bet with a billion dollars a year, you could set up one every few months. One thing I noticed in South America was the lack of higher education. They had the University of Buenos Aires, and a few other private colleges, but the people that I served with just didn't have their sights set on higher education. If the colleges were brought to the people, and if they were cheap, then maybe higher education would become more of a way of life. Along with the colleges, a secular form of the perpetual education fund could also be set up to help impoverished people pay for college.

Our education system has problems. There are as many proposed solutions as there are members of congress. I consider myself conservative, and your average conservative balks at "throwing more money" at the problem, but honestly, if you were trying to support your family on one income, would YOU become a high school teacher? If teacher wages were higher, there would be more competition for the jobs, and the teacher quality would go up. So I would start setting up private schools in states that do school vouchers. Each school would be endowed with enough money from the Webb Foundation which, when combined with the government money would allow for high teacher pay, along with small class size and all the cool programs that many private schools have. These schools could then have more academic freedom from the government and could then be tailored more to the community. Parental involvment would be higher. These wouldn't be schools for rich kids, though they would be of the same caliber and could be selective of students based on things like their attendence. Again, with a billion a year, new high schools could be built every month or so... Obviously lots of details to work out, but I think that our current public high school model is failing and doesn't appear to be improving, and ultimately needs to be replaced.

PBS did a special on "microgrants", which are small business loans or grants to people in third world countries who want to start a local business. The effects they can have on poor people and communities is tremendous.