On Jun 27, 2006, at 12:10 PM, Luke Weiger wrote:
> Actually it's a pretty bad article--make that really bad. Walsh
> points out
> the obvious fact that Buffett owes his extraordinary wealth to
> capitalism.
> He does nothing to show that Buffett made capitalism any more
> vicious than
> it would otherwise have been.
He's part of Wall Street, and Wall Street has certainly worked to increase that viciousness.
> It's true that we'd have less need for
> charity in a better world, but thank goodness for those who
> actually do
> something to make an imperfect world better.
Interesting stats in the FT's editorial on Buffett (citing Woj's outfit, I believe):
> Mr Buffett and Mr Gates are emblems of the American culture of
> philanthropy: the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector
> Project estimates US giving averaged 1.85 per cent of gross
> domestic product in recent years. In the UK, the figure is 0.84 per
> cent, and citizens elsewhere are even stingier: in France giving is
> 0.32 per cent of GDP, in Japan 0.22 per cent and in Germany 0.13
> per cent.
What they don't say is that the US is more unequal, lots more unequal in some cases, than the other countries. We've got more stupendously rich people who can give money to our vast trove of stupendously poor people. Though a lot of that philanthropy is stuff rich people love, like museums and wings of hospitals or their names on libraries - meanwhile, artists struggle to get by, 45 million lack health insurance, and librarians don't have the budgets to buy books.
Doug