The AP are reporting today that Facebook Mark Zuckerburg gave nearly $1 billion in stock to a California charity last year. Of course he is no stranger to philanthropy, having given, for example, $100 million to Newark public schools in 2010.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy, from which the AP got their information, report further that the 50 largest donors in the US gave a total of $7.7 billion last year, up 4% from 2012. This includes $500 million given by Nike founder Phil Knight for cancer research at the Oregon Health & Science University Foundation.
All of this reminded me of the comments that Hillary Clinton made at the 2012 Clinton Global Initiative (video)…
And one of the issues that I have been preaching about around the world is collecting taxes in an equitable manner, especially from the elites in every country. (Laughter.) You know I’m out of American politics, but – (applause) – it is a fact that around the world, the elites of every country are making money. There are rich people everywhere. And yet they do not contribute to the growth of their own countries. They don’t invest in public schools, in public hospitals, in other kinds of development internally.
Even leaving aside the stunning, but revealing, falsehood that those who gain wealth through entrepreneurship don’t contribute to a country’s growth (when in fact it is precisely their contributions that produce economic growth), the enormous amount of philanthropic giving by wealthy people is a great reminder of how misleading Clinton’s comments were and how committed she is to the coercive redistribution of wealth by the state.