Reflection On Charitable Giving and the Question of Universal Justice

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This evening, two stories caught my attention. Forty U.S. billionaires including Bill Gates, George Lucas, Mike Bloomberg, and Warren Buffett have made a pledge to donate at least half of their wealth to non-profits and charitable organizations. Could this amount of money flowing into the coffers of NGOs and non-profits change the course of politics, economics and the arts? Civilizations have flourished or ground to a halt on less. Elections, earthquakes, and even a bunch of upper middle class colonists bitching about taxes have influenced the course of empires. If this fortune is directed toward organizations that promote self-sufficiency and sustainability in the spirit of E.F. Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, it could make a difference in the lives of the people who have sweated to put the billionaires of the world in a position to be so generous.



I am not a believer in the magic of capitalism. I have always maintained that it is impossible to accumulate a considerable amount of wealth without injustice, and immoral to hold on to it. If fact, I believe with total conviction that it is murder to horde wealth while other people starve to death anywhere. This brings me to the next story about Spanish investigating judge, Baltazar Garzon who was suspended today for his efforts to prosecute Franco era crimes that received amnesty under the "Pact of Forgetting" in 1993. Speaking at the site of the Jewish Community Center in Argentina at which 85 people were killed and hundreds more wounded in 1994, Garzon said:

"The one who had the resources in his hands and didn't use them, the one who could have demanded and didn't, should not be able to escape — regardless of time — his legal and civil responsibilities. Never again." (Source: nrp.org)

By calling the oligarchy to task for the crime of malaise, Garzon articulates the concept of Universal Justice and in some ways, deflates the notion that the billionaires who donated half their fortunes are doing anything other than meeting their responsibility. No one can argue that, left with half of a 53 billion dollar fortune, Bill and Melinda Gates are cutting their personal finances too close to the bone, or that such a large gift is merely symbolic. However, the true value of the charity pledge will be if it represents a tipping point in the saving, spending, and ultimately giving habits of average people.

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