Those Evil Greedy Rich People
Bashing rich people seems to be quite popular nowadays. Rich entertainers bash rich industry magnates. Rich politicians bash each-other. Students bash all rich people except the entertainers. All this bashing has become quite tiresome.
Paul Grahm &
Ayn Rand have written enough on rich people being good and anti-rich people being bad. The gist of which is that those who can create wealth should be allowed to keep it because the process of creating wealth benefits the community.
I will gladly give gifts, but people claiming that they have a right based on fairness to what I have earned have earned themselves nothing but a lecture.
Rich people, like most other people, make charitable contributions. I am willing to bet that people with lots of money give proportionally as much as people with a moderate amount of money. Proportionally rich people have more money to toss around. They can afford fancy houses and cars. They can also support larger charitable enterprises.
Andrew Carnegie created the modern steel industry. He was criticized for being stingy with worker wages. I did not know about the role he played in the steel industry until recently. I knew him as the guy who funded libraries. He has been criticized for funding libraries and music halls instead of raising his workers’ wages. I have to wonder, which would have had the greater positive impact, raising wages or building libraries? I suspect that it was
building libraries.
Bill Gates started Microsoft, a multi-billion dollar software company which is often criticized for its anticompetitive behavior. Microsoft has succeeded in creating a common consumer computing platform, thus speeding the adoption of computers at the individual level. He has created a
foundation which provides health, education, and library funding. Their
focus on
small schools is promising.
Sarah McLachlan is a Pop/Rock singer from Canada. I can't really find much about her. Fan site signal/noise is rather low and media companies don't know how to craft web sites. What I know is this, and it is not much: One of her
music videos was created on the cheap and the difference was
donated to various charities for third-world improvement.
Perhaps I will have money to spare some day. If so, I'd like to start
Montessori schools and a group to produce
Creative Commons licensed
SCORM modules.