Getting Rich Helping the Poor

[Hannah Bell]

Getting Rich Helping the Poor

Nicholas Kristof has a soft spot for people who want to get rich while helping the poor. He devoted his column to the question of whether people running charities should be very highly paid.

Part of his story is that such salaries are necessary to get good people. While I'm sure that there are good people who earn high salaries, I've never been fortunate enough to meet such a person.

But that point aside, there is a basic logical problem in Kristof's discussion. Let's assume that the population is prepared to commit a more or less fixed percentage of its income to charity. While in principle, this can be expanded, it is unlikely that even the most charismatic salesperson will have too much impact.

This means that the heroes of Kristof's world, the folks who get half million dollar salaries to run their charities, are not really increasing the take for the poor of the world in total. Rather, they are diverting money away from other charities to their own....If Kristof's heroes take a larger portion of their contributions in salary than their competitors, and use a larger portion for advertising than their competitors, then their main impact on the charitable world will be to divert money that might have otherwise gone to helping the poor to salaries and advertising. That's not a pretty picture in my book...

My guess is that the six-figure charity boys have pretty much the same impact as the seven, eight, and nine figure Wall Street boys. They are very effective at making themselves rich while destroying everything around them.

--Dean Baker

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press_archive?month=12&year=2008&base_name=getting_rich_helping_the_poor

[Sanctified]

1. One thing that rich people bring to charities is their network of other rich people.

I did some work for a charity and was amazed that the guy who was in charge could pickup the phone and call people and they would give $50k for the charity. Now he himself did not make a dime from the charity because he was already loaded but I could see right there why a charity would want a guy with deep pockets running it.

[blindpig]

7. The problem there:

The reason that people are poor is because we have people who are rich.

Capitalism makes both rich and poor, better to dispose of it and have neither, just people.

[Sanctified]

8. Unfortunately even if you got rid of Capitalism you will still have people who are rich and poor.

They will just be measured by different metrics than monetary. Greed is human nature and unfortunately it will rise to the top no matter which economic system is being used.

[leftstreet]

12. Well, let's try it and see if you're right

That's the only way we'll know for sure

[Two Americas]

22. not true

Greed and domination are not "human nature" any more than murder is.

If you are saying that some will always try to dominate and exploit others, that is no doubt true. That is no excuse to not fight it anymore than the fact that theft continues to happen is an excuse to tolerate that.

[Sanctified]

23. I disagree, greed is a natural animal instict to insure self preservation and the

preservation of ones offspring.

[Two Americas]

24. that can be said about may things

I am objecting to using that as an excuse for right wing political ideas.

There is as much, or more, evidence supporting the idea that generosity and compassion and cooperation are "human nature."

The best way to ensure the preservation of yourself and your offspring is to work for and build cooperative communities, not by being greedy and selfish. All of human history screams that lesson at us. In fact, I would say the survival of the human race to this point would have been impossible had your doctrine prevailed.

[Sanctified]

27. Historically people don't build cooperative communities.

People attach themselves to others who have acquired wealth and power and build the community around that person. There has never been a society formed without greed.

[Hannah Bell]

28. your history seems rather limited. particularly the "attach themselves

to others who have acquired wealth & power".

rather the opposite, i think.

there's no wealth & power acquired without others; the "others" precede the wealth & power.

[Sanctified]

29. Actually no, wealth can be aquired by claiming ownership of resources.

Resources do not require others.

[Hannah Bell]

31. You can't hold ownership without others (e.g. armed). Nor can you do much with them,

if you have to rely on your own labor alone.

Otherwise, your "claim" on resources is like my "claim" on the moon.

The others precede the wealth & power. Always.

[Sanctified]

36. True but most early wealth was aquired through declaring ownership of land

so you owned all the resources on that land. If someone wanted some of your resources they had to pay for it or take it, yes you needed others to guard what you declared as yours but early land barons were tribal and most of the tribe consisted of family members and descendants so the shared laborers were those who stood to inherit thus they willingly defended or worked what they took as theirs.

[Two Americas]

37. until fairly recently

Until fairly recently, before the Enclosure Acts in England, people were farming the commons and living in cooperative villages and that had been going on since the beginning of time so far as we know. The introduction of laws that divided the commons into private property holdings favored the few, the wealthy and the aristocracy, displaced the rural people and emptied the villages and created the labor pool of desperate people and the unfettered access to resources by the few that made the industrial revolution and modern capitalism possible.

We should not think that this was the way it always was, let alone that it is inevitable or "human nature."

[Two Americas]

33. of course they do

The yearning for cooperative community, and the motivation to keep trying to do that may be the most important quality of human beings. It is the entire story of the human race - the relentless quest for justice and a better world.

Modern libertarianism, which you are promoting, is always predicated on an existing foundation that was built cooperatively and for the benefit of all. Without the hard work of the left, there would be no society within which a few could fancy themselves to be libertarians. Once that breaks down - and libertarianism is about breaking society down - all of the libertarians will turn into socialists and be banding together with others for mutual defense and support and rebuilding the infrastructure that they destroyed. That is accepted as though it had just magically appeared, and then within that context, with all of the benefits that are just taken for granted, it seems to be a clever idea to only look out for oneself. This requires one to ignore and dismiss all of the benefits one enjoys, and without which one could not be a libertarian, that came from those promoting cooperative and communal social ideas and working to make them a reality.

Paraphrasing that old saw that "there are no atheists in foxholes" we could say that "there are no libertarians on bread lines," and libertarianism always leads to bread lines.

Again, this statement of yours - "there has never been a society formed without greed" - is meaningless in this context. There has also never been a society without murder, theft, and rape. Does that mean we should merely accept those and worse yet build a society to support those because they are "human nature?" Yet we do have a society that is now constructed to support the few, the greedy, at the expense of the rest of us. A recent Pew Trust research project convincingly shows that it is about 12% of the people who are driven by greed, and it makes no more sense to organize a society around their needs and desires than it would be to organize a society around the needs and desires of thieves or murderers.

[Sanctified]

35. Please show me one society that came together via yearning for cooperative community.

The leadership of the Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Europeans, Asians and North American Tribes were all based on power and greed. All of them had a ruling class and all of them worked to gain more resources and take what they felt was theirs.

[Two Americas]

38. the ruling class point of view

You are seeing history strictly from the ruling class point of view. You are asking "show me an example of a successful ruling class that was not a ruling class" or "show me a group of people pursuing wealth and power who were not pursuing wealth and power."

The history of the ruling class, as defined by the rise and fall of empires, is but one small part of human history. You describe the ruling class as though that were all worth discussing when discussing humanity.

Yes, those who pursued power and greed pursued power and greed, and write the story you are reciting.

For every example of a successful tyranny or empire, there are dozens of stories of resistance and rebellion, all of those motivated by the desire to make society more fair and just. Within all of those empires were people building cooperative endeavors and public infrastructure, and the strength of any of those societies came from that, not the lust for power and wealth by the few.

Now, if we are going to see ourselves as ruling class, if we are going to identify with the ruling class, and so many Americans do, and see the ruling class as "us," then, yes, what you say is true. "We" lust for power and wealth, and that is all that matters. But that is not the reality for the majority of the people, and never has been.

Today, right here, society is held together by those who are not dedicated to the pursuit of wealth and power - teachers, farmers, nurses, artists, activists, mothers. That is always the case. All of those professions - especially the work that women do - is ignored and devalued - you cannot out those vital jobs on the "free market" and greed is not a factor - but only by those who admire and emulate the ruling class, the wealthy and powerful few preying on the rest if us. All efforts at resistance - and there is always resistance - represents the universal human drive toward cooperation, compassion, and justice.

But the mothers of the world, doing perhaps the most important job of any, get no credit and write no histories, receive no laurels and get no fame. But where is the drive for wealth and power in child-rearing? In teaching? In nursing?

[anigbrowl]

30. Sez you

I think greed and domination are indeed human nature. Overall, I'd say we're a pretty aggressive species.

[Luminous Animal]

2. Poverty pimps. (n/t)

[Waiting For Everyman]

3. By this logic then, PE Obama isn't "good people". His salary

isn't much to get excited about, yet strangely enough, he still wants the job.

Thanks for posting this Hannah Bell, not only are these salaries and this logic for it an absurd rationale for exploiting those most in dire need - which is dispicable in its own right; but it also goes to one of my anger-triggers, which is the corporatization of charity. The pinnacle of that is the United Way, and the Red Cross isn't far behind. UNICEF may even be worse than either one.

Another thing that bugs the hell out of me is the tendency of the ultra-rich to do their tax-deductible "philanthropy" along the lines of cultural donations so that none of the money they (for the most part) make off the poor actually has to go to giving a damn about any of them. They really do want the poor to die off from neglect, and to impoverish as many more people as possible. They create poverty as a means to an end, as gas was used in WW2. Difference: generating poverty is legal, and provides plausible deniability cover. It's Darwinism at it's worst, which is a code word for psychopathic robbery on a mass scale, or in simpler terms "all the world's wealth that I can steal for me, and death for you".

Well that's just about the opposite of what this country is all about, i.e. opportunity to improve the quality of life not only for ourselves but for ALL. It should be remembered that some of the world's greatest minds have come from poor families. Without the ability to not only survive but rise above their circumstances (what America is all about), their contributions would be lost. For instance who knows how many cures for cancer we would've seen already if more of the poor in the past century could've prospered?

Case in point, as referenced above... PE Obama. How many minds like that can we do without? All people are valuable.

The rich like to propagate the lie that only THEY are talented or intelligent, when in fact history shows that they tend to narrow their gene pool into idiocy. Example: the crowned heads of Europe and our own pseudo-noble stream of morons. (Which is why they need think tanks.)

[Hannah Bell]

4. Thank you for responding, & for this:

"generating poverty is legal, and provides plausible deniability"

I was middle-aged when I understood that poverty isn't some accidental condition, nor the result of people who just didn't know how to work, or were addicted to something, or crazy, but was just the necessary corollary of wealth, a deliberate creation, & maintained by a system of mass brainwashing that makes people miserable & disatisfied their whole lives through, that causes them to hate each other.

I haven't stop being pissed off since. If anything good comes from the crash, I hope it's that more & more folks begin to question the set-up.

[bobbolink]

10. NEVER stop being pissed off! Please!! You are educating so many!

[fasttense]

5. In America nothing is too obscene to make a profit off of.

It has always bothered me that doctors, pharmaceutical corporation executives, HMO directors, insurance corporation executives and hospital directors make a profit (and some individuals make such huge piles of profits that they will never be able to spend it in their lifetime) off the pain and suffering of others.

But in America, no matter how you lie cheat and steal for your money, being rich makes you saintly.

[madamesilverspurs]

9. Being rich also makes you "safer" too.

At least that was my understanding a couple of years ago when I acquired a vehicle for the first time in a few years. When I went to insure it, I was informed that I was "high risk" because I hadn't had car insurance for several years; apparently, in order to keep away from that "high risk" designation I should have purchased minimum coverage for a non-existent vehicle. In other words, I was being punished for having deprived the insurance industry of its access to my purse.

Excellent driving record, no violations, no claims. And for six months I had to pay higher insurance than the guy next door who regularly trashes his car and others on the way home from the bar every Saturday night.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..........

[lonestarnot]

6. K & R

[leftstreet]

11. K&R

Thanks for posting this

[bobbolink]

13. Shameless pandering... please also K&R this related essay!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4800489

Methinks Ms. Hannah's on a roll! :applause:

[Christian30]

14. This is a strawman argument...

Charity executives (and I'm sort of one) may seem highly paid (I'm NOT one of those) relative to the way we think about charity, but barring the few instances of true corruption, this is simply false. In one of my previous positions, I worked in a fundraising department that raised $125 million annually. Our head of development made $350,000 per year. Now that sounds like a lot of money, but it is a tiny fraction of what the head of sales would make bringing in that kind of money in a for-profit environment. I have worked my entire career in nonprofit and I'm very close to socialist in my views, but this "nonprofit execs make too much money" canard is a way to deflect from the real inequality in this country. So those of us who choose to work in the nonprofit world don't deserve to be tarred with the same brush as the Wall Street crooks.

[Two Americas]

15. I don't think that comparison is a good one

For 30 years or more, I have been hearing the argument that non-profits and unions need to pay salaries to their leaders that approach what "people can make in the private sector" in order to attract "the best talent."

The result of that has been the creation of a gentrified and aristocratic class of people in the "do good" secret who are out of touch with the people and the rank and file and who hob nob with and sell out to management and to the wealthy and powerful.

Paternalistic, condescending and increasingly conservative leadership all through modern liberalism and the Labor movement is one of the main challenges we face.

We need leadership that is committed to the cause, not the "best talent." It is the "nobodies" and the rank and file who do the work, not the fancy leaders. The job of leadership is to coordinate and defend the nobodies, not to run organizations as though they were corporations.

Anyone who thinks they can go out and make more money in the private sector, and for whom that is a consideration, ought to go do that, in my opinion. All of us could make more money if we were willing to sell out. So what?

[Waiting For Everyman]

17. Exactly, and well-said.

:thumbsup:

[maryf]

20. Great rejoinder...

Wanted: workers with big hearts, not big pocketbooks...:yourock:

[Book Lover]

18. If the salary were $150k/year, would you folks have trouble filling the position?

And would the quality of candidates be lesser?

spelling on edit

[Two Americas]

19. is money related to quality?

I am not so sure that paying more money brings more quality. In fact, in my observation there is an inverse relationship between the two.

The greatest leaders in the fight against poverty and for justice did not have qualities that could be purchased with a salary, and in fact I think that the qualities needed for leadership preclude any consideration of building a career or worrying about fame and fortune, or even status and comfort of any sort. Unfortunately, the Left is now dominated by people who are super-stars and successful, and as a result are profoundly and inevitably cautious and conservative.

[Book Lover]

34. I myself would say no, not in this example

Plenty of people waiting to go up in the ranks, rather than come down from their trust fund, who consider $150K a year an almost-fantasy level of salary and would do a good job for it.

On the other hand, if you're a cheapskate trolling craigslist to hire someone to paint a room for $10 an hour, then yes, cost would be related to quality of work received. That's completely different than the first example, though.

[Tindalos]

16. Another argument against paying high salaries: Bonuses.

People who earn big bucks expect to receive large bonuses every year, regardless of performance. So, the argument that they need to pay high salaries to attract the best people is often followed by a press release saying they have to cut services due to a lack of funds, but thankfully they have enough to give the executives their annual raises/bonuses.

[maryf]

21. K & R, great post!!

You are on a roll!! thanks!!

[4 t 4]

25. I think there are many that are skeptical

of charities for this exact reason. I remember my Grandmother telling me how all the Priests drove around in Cadillacs and had velvet cloaks while the people going to church every Sunday and putting money in the baskets could barley afford to but meat. An age old story that needs to be told more. Charities and Religion rather dangerous but most people don't see it like that it is time to wake up. Maybe we will really start to wake up for the first time since the Reagan days. I hope nothing less for all of us.

[bobbolink]

40. ON the other hand.... the churches are the only ones that are speaking up about poverty!

It was the Catholic Bishops that started the January is Poverty In American Awareness month.

Have you seen what is on their website about this month? A lot of great information, and the banner and some graphics about the poverty line that are terrific.

Yes, it's really too bad that it's left to the churches!

We can change that, if we decide to.

[Trillo]

26. I always look forward to your posts,

and I'm glad the title of this one was not representative of its content.

[Cleita]

32. Sure and you do have to have all those parties and balls after all.

The best way to get the rich to help the poor is to make them pay taxes on their excess largess and use the money for programs that really do help the poor.

[JeffR]

39. K & R

Great reading.

And some great reading in the responses on this thread, too.