Yahoo! — Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, were the most generous American philanthropists in 2013, with a donation of 18 million shares of Facebook stock, valued at more than $970 million, to a Silicon Valley nonprofit in December. The top 50 contributors made donations last year totaling $7.7 billion, plus pledges of $2.9 billion.
Am I The Only One Seeing This?
Most people would read that he contributed a billion dollars and think that he’s giving away a ton of money when in fact this is a drop in the ocean to a guy like Zuckerberg. He doesn’t even deserve to have the picture I created above because he’s actually the most generous. The billionaires around him are the real culprits! Remember the number $7.7 billion dollars in contributions from the top 50 contributors. That’s not even the 50 wealthiest which means some of these chumps don’t donate at all. Here is a chart of the net worth of the top 10 Americans which will hopefully put this number in perspective.
Mark Zuckerberg came in at #20 with an estimated net worth of $19 billion. Wrap your mind around this, if we combine the net worth of the top 50 people in America, they have a combined $997 billion dollars of wealth. Round off to 1 trillion dollars and now what do you think about the top 50 contributors donating $7.7 billion dollars? IT’S LESS THAN 1% OF THE TOP 50’S TOTAL WEALTH!!! Absurd would be an understatement. I know you don’t get rich by giving money away but you’d think that at some point that enough is enough.
I Must Be Missing Something
I’m sure that this can’t be reality and I’m well aware that net worth doesn’t equate to free cash flow to donate to charity but this scale is so far gone that society won’t stand for this much longer. The poor are going to start to rebel Hunger Games style once people realize what is going on. It’s truly unfair how the world is run by the top 1% and the lower classes have little choice but to bend over and take it. It’s why the Gov’t exists, to crush any opposition. I’m all for capitalism and when you put in hard work and create something that changes the world for the better, you deserve to be compensated but these numbers don’t reflect philanthropy properly. Can someone maybe give me an idea of what I’m missing?
Not sure why, but I wouldn’t have expected this stance from you.
You probably wouldn’t expect it because I give nothing to charity. However, if I actually had enough money to give away, I would. All thing considered, I don’t.
I agree, it is a bit absurd. Granted they’ve worked hard for what they have (in general), but you would think they’d enjoy giving back and even have a sense of pride if they were dubbed the top-giver-backer. I donated about 1% of my net worth in 2013 and these guys have more to spare than me.
I think of it like this……
Its all relative. We don’t even exist in their world. Some of the rich guys may feel poor compared to the world they live in and the people they associate with.
If you have $1 and everyone else has $.25 you are richer than if you had $1 million and everyone else also had $1 million.