Philanthropy, The American Way

Pictured Warren Buffett, Melinda and Bill Gates


My favorite link on Philippine Economics, Go Figure, ran this piece May 15th,
The biggest charity of them all:

I thought the biggest charity would by far be the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It's certainly the most famous. But The Economist found the biggest of them all - the Stickting Ingka Foundation.

The what? Amazingly, it's the nonprofit foundation that operates all the Ikea stores.

And I made the following comment on that post:

I'm a bit sad. I have always promoted and extolled the altruism of Bill Gates through his gargantuan foundation. This revelation may induce me to write him a letter to recommend that he transfers some of his personal stocks to the foundation, so he can get back to having the world's biggest philanthropic foundation. What's another 10B dollars out of a personal fortune of about 60B dollars. HeHeHe.

Viola! Two months later, this latest inspiring news hits media:

Giving generously, the American way
AMERICAN VIEW BY GERARD BAKER

It was this last device that was most noticeable in the letter he sent this week to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In it he pledges an initial "material" contribution of shares in his investment company worth about $1.5 billion (£824 million) and then adds that over the next few years he expects those contributions to reach an "eventually substantial" sum. I suppose that only in the small world occupied by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett could a personal gift not be considered "substantial" until it rises well above $1.5 billion towards the $30 billion the donation is expected to reach.

The generosity of Mr. Buffett puts the Sage of Omaha in a rare class of the greatest American philanthropists in history. In narrow financial terms, and translating large donations and legacies of the past into current purchasing power, it is certainly up there with those of the Carnegies, Rockefellers and Guggenheims. Unlike theirs, Mr. Buffett's generosity is literally self-effacing. The great contributions that wealthy Americans have made to educational, social or cultural betterment, including that of Mr. Gates himself, have usually come at one small but enduring price - eponymity.

For comparison, Unesco, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, distributes about $700 million. In Britain, the Department for International Development channelled about £4.2 billion in aid to less developed countries.

Two American philanthropists alone, in other words, will have contributed more to alleviate poverty and disease than the UN's principal development arm. Between them they will have given a sum amounting to about a third of the entire official UK contribution. (Underscoring mine.)

No other nation on earth has the capacity to produce individuals with the wherewithal and the motivation to extend such generosity.

Although official aid is famously lower in the United States than in most of the industrialised world, Americans are, of course, more inclined to give to charity than is almost any other population. Last year they contributed a little over 2 per cent of their gross domestic product, compared with 0.7 per cent in the UK. Of course the bulk of US giving is directed at domestic needs, much of it in the form of giving to local communities and churches. But that doesn't detract from the sheer scale of American generosity. Why is it so large? Income distribution presumably plays a role. Inequality has risen dramatically in the US in the past 25 years. The top 5 per cent of households made more than 21 per cent of total income in 2003, up from 16 per cent 40 years ago. At the very top, the growth in income has been even more spectacular.

Too much can be made of this. It's often forgotten in debates both inside and outside the US that America has some extremely generous expensive social insurance programmes. Social Security, for example, the public pension system, is actually rather more generous than many in Europe, including Britain's. But there's no denying that in terms of their own perception of their relationship to the State and its role in their lives, Americans are substantially different.

Because the comparison made with the Ikea owner in the original article highlighted by Go Figure was not really serious with regard to their serious philanthropy mission, this bit of news should make even bigger the already undisputed biggest private philanthropic organization in the world.

It might serve us better to remember the next time we are tempted to gratuitously trash the US, that these two distinguished persons are Americans, too.

And to end on a lighter trivia. It was also reported that Mr. Buffett will bequeath to his children the not too generous sum (according to him) of one billion dollars. But as I distinctly recall when Bill Gates just had his first son, he also made a similar announcement. And for how much? His was for a more frugal inheritance, something like 25 million dollars for his son.

If you are still conscious and alert, just remember that to a rich man those mentioned amounts are like the way we ordinary mortals value a 100 or a 1000 dollars.

Currencies Of The European Union

Euros:

As of this writing there are 25 member states in the European Union (EU) and here is a chronology of when each became a member:

1958: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands

1973: Denmark, Ireland, United Kingdom

1981: Greece

1986: Portugal, Spain

1995: Austria, Finland, Sweden

2004: The Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia

Possible member candidates:
Croatia, Macedonia, and Turkey

Other Potential Member states:
The remaining states in the Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia, including Kosovo)

Those who failed to join or left:
Norway, Greenland, Morocco, and Switzerland.

Other Future Prospects:
Armenia, Cape Verde, Georgia, Iceland, Moldova , and Ukraine

And include the European Microstates:
Liechtenstein, Monaco, and Vatican City

And More:
Macaronesia Region composed of Cape Verde(named above), Azores and Madeira, and Spanish Canary Islands; then, Azerbaijan, Faroe Islands, Iceland, and San Marino.

However, there are only 12 member countries using the EU currency, the euro:
Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.(Coins and notes were released only on 1 January 2002.)

But the following non-members also use the euro currency: Andorra, the Holy See, Monaco and San Marino.

Click to read more.

In The Blogosphere: Heading For A Fall?

How easily we understand that other people resent the man who seeks to raise himself above them, seeking to appear better and more learned.

These days media and the blogosphere are causing observable signs of a falling out for a man and his blog, which man has gained prominence and high regard in the blogosphere like no other, in terms of time and circumstance.

And maybe some, including this humble blogger, may have now consequently revisited some earlier disquieting thoughts on how a kind of unwanted metamorphosis has been wrought on this once unassuming and angelic-looking young immigrant from Central America.

Seeing that a good part of your huge and exponentially-increasing firmament though may not unanimously worship you, but at the very least respect and deferentially regard your newly-earned renown and power, installing you, albeit informally, among those who wield power of notice and credibility, such sudden adulation and renown could be a soothing siren song too heady and too strong to disregard or deal with properly.

Others could be dismissive and aver that it is easy for any person, whether weak or strong of character and will, to succumb to the over-powering allures and wiles of fame and fortune, and “to get drunk” with it.

But the initial statement above, extracted from an earlier blog on humility, appears very prescient and apropros.

Now, Markos of Daily Kos may be commencing to feel the discomfiting heat being pushed in front of him. And one can sense some kind of unraveling revelation in the ensuing cavalcade of words thrown out there, for charges and countercharges exchanged, for arguments and ripostes piled on.

One senses an image slowly forming showing that Markos like everybody else has feet of clay, a person with flaws, shortcomings, and maybe one who allows his concupiscence to at times get the better of him.

Spur of the moment words, sentences, ideas, and attitudes that would tend to reveal that he is after all like many of us. Using a vocabulary that at times may be quite pedestrian. Realizing that writing English prose can be more daunting for one using it as a second language, compared to one who may be a native speaker or has it as his primary language. Discerning that our own personal nascent or formed ideas and attitudes may not be as good, as sophisticated, or as logic-proof as the next blog pundit.

This is where the truth and wisdom of humility ought to have played a major role, to preclude in a very real way courting widespread resentment from the people around your firmament, especially coming from those who may have been blessed with more and better talents and capabilities.

Another scathing riposte from the New Republic dated today, June 22nd.

When will it end? Until the fall from grace and respectability?

Random Prose Scratchings: Of Web Portals and Wall Street Indices

Today, I thought, was deserving of more personal introspection, but away from the flighty spiritual and mystical milieus. More on the mundane scratchings of the daily living of one's life. The daily, at times irksome and plodding, chores required to carry on decently and respectably with the passing vistas that make for the droning workaday life of most earthbound humans. Let us start with:

Web Portals

Of course, like most everybody else, you put your pants one leg at a time. But when you boot up that PC and click on your preferred browser, does it automatically bring up a web portal, or a selected personalized homepage?

Time was when web portals were such hot commodities. Netscape easily comes to mind since it pioneered with its proprietary internet browser. Yes, before the now ubiquitous IE. There were then little known web crawlers. But the browsers war was between Netscape and IE. Their duel to the death in a match considered by many as stacked against Netscape ended with IE now undisputedly ruling the roost.

So, is your web portal, MSN now? But there are still choices out there. What about Yahoo! Or might not Google also qualify? It now has so many services, just getting to know it enough boggles the mind. And there are even regional portals.

I know that personal choices are probably as numerous as the stars in the firmament, but in my little world, it has remained static and the same for the last 6-7 years. "Home" to me is a personalized version of iWon, endearingly called My iWon. Tailored to fit my own specific choices and idiosyncratic taste. It even shows the weather condition for the closest place to the old hometown 7,000 miles away.

In a very real way, it defines my person, though in a rather circumspect though still accurate way. My proclivity for science news, my need to track the Wall Street indices in which my puny future hinges on, search services for unfamiliar words, some places to click when needing some humor, and many other "editable" services that one can configure.

Thus, this reflected image of me greets me every time I open my IE browser. And this steady and faithful friend never fails to pique my interest and work me up to a perky disposition.

But, iWon?

Here's what's little is known from Wikipedia:

iWon is an Internet portal and search engine that offers users the chance to win money by earning entries in a sweepstakes. Entries are earned by performing the normal tasks performed on the Internet such as using search engines, checking stock quotes, reading email, and keeping up to date on the news.

Among major early backers of iWon was Viacom, parent of CBS and MTV. It is now owned by Barry Diller's InterActive Corporation, parent of the Home Shopping Network, Ask.com, Evite, CitySearch, Ticketmaster, and until recently, travel sites such as Expedia and Hotels.com.

As of March 9, 2006, iWon claimed on its site that it had given away more than $65,667,000 in prizes to more than 268,907 winners.

When Excite@Home went bankrupt in 2001, iWon decided to buy over Excite. They designed a new Excite website and on 16 December 2001, the new Excite was launched.

Some spyware/malware detection programs attempt to limit access to iWon.com because of a program called "Aornum" that was installed for a short time by iWon users with other iWon applications. [1]

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IWon"

Which brings me to the next item.

Wall Street/Dow Jones Indices

To the non-business types, I fear that I may as well blabber along about the California slug. And maybe, especially for those outside of the US of A. But not to the millions little guys like me who have hitched our fragile financial futures to the coat-tails of Wall Street, whether in the equities markets, the bonds and other indebtedness markets, commodities/metals markets, etc.

And why so?

To be succinct and to the point, because many of our pension plans, whether company initiated and financed or employee financed, have been invested in the markets of Wall Street in the myriad of plans that have cropped up during these many years.

Thus, the futures of many American workers, whether still actively in the marketplace or retired, hinge on the performances of Wall Street in general. It is estimated that over 70 millions of the labor force are invested into them. Thus, while traditionally Wall Street was limited to the corporate types, the stock broker types, and other white collar professions, it has now also evolved as part of the working man's domain.

Thus, every day or when opportunity allows, I religiously go through the 3 or 4 major indices. And My iWon also allows me to configure my page so it will also show the individual performances of each stock or mutual fund that I am invested in.



And what's the current short-term prognosis? This little Dow Jones Ind graph above should tell a more revealing story. Just this year alone, it recently went to an all time high close to 12,000, only to drop below 11,000. Now, it hovers on 10,700, losing in the process about 1000 points.



The tech index, Nasdaq, did almost similarly. I am particularly tracking one tech mutual fund I own that shows that at the present time I am showing that its present value is less than all the initial funds that I invested in it, including ploughed-back dividends. And I have held this fund since 1999. A continuing grim reminder of the last tech bust!

But lest anyone get the wrong notions, while the markets have gone south somewhat and temporarily, the US economy overall is going great guns - unemployment is still very low, the labor force continues to grow, productivity continues to improve, inflation continues to be in check amidst continuing fears of an upsurge, reported GDP growth is still commendable, as well as other crucial indicators. All this, amidst continuing costly wars, unprovided expenditures on national security measures against terrorism, and yes, with over 12 million illegal aliens taxing many public services throughout the country.

Humility In Action

Living life to the fullest and as humanly perfect as possible requires an honest facing of facts. This is the core of the virtue of humility. Facing facts invariably leads to realizing how little one is compared to the rest of humanity and to any higher being.

True humility makes one realize how little he is not only to himself but to everybody else. The lower one reaches into self-esteem, so much the higher he rises to the higher good of truth. The more one attributes any good to himself, the harder he hinders the blessings of virtue to raise him to true perfection.

This is the truth about humility that each one should strive to put into action in daily lives, whether personally interacting or distantly writing about other people.

Nothing is more pleasing than the blessings of peace that true humility brings to our daily lives. One’s fixed attention to this personal nothingness and complete dependence on others or a higher being strips one of the false pretenses of pride that inevitably bring discord and chaos in one’s life.

Think hard about this.

How easily we understand that other people resent the man who seeks to raise himself above them, seeking to appear better and more learned. But no one resents one who appears little before his own eyes. Who does not seek admiration for its own sake, who does not think much what others think of him and thus not solicitous about honors, or human applause. Because he seeks only the higher approbation of goodness and truth.

The truly humble man refuses to defend his rights in unimportant matters. The truly humble man is not afraid or anxious to have others know his faults or correct them. He instead takes these humiliating experiences to show that he is not after earthy temporal glory, but after an improvement of self for the sake of the higher good and truth.

The truly humble man will not also compare himself with those who seem worse than he is. He would rather reflect on his own nothingness and be thankful for the infinite generosity of life he continues to enjoy.



(Adapted ideas from the Bread Of Life.)