Open Letter To Billionaires Looking For “Charity”
– by David Matthews 2
Dear Billionaires With Money To Spend,
Somewhere in between the overhyped nonsense about World Cup Soccer, some tattoo freak “actress” who thinks she’s beautiful and promoting her new film, and of course the ongoing misery in the Gulf of Mexico, I heard that two of the richest men on the planet are looking for other billionaires to donate billions for charity.
Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, boasts about giving away 99% of his $46 billion to charity. He and Microsoft founder Bill Gates plan on convincing other billionaires to give up to $600 billion to charity groups.
And that’s great! Don’t get me wrong, that is a laudable effort to get people who will never ever have to worry about money ever again to give up some of it for charity. That is terrific! Someone give them a Nobel Award! Make it a double!
But while you’re pressing the flesh of your platinum club members looking to match your generosity, I want to suggest a charity that is in desperate need of your assistance.
The American people.
Sure the people in the Gulf of Mexico will be in sad need of assistance, and I really don’t see the perpetrators of their misery - British Petroleum and their cohorts - really being willing or able to step in and, in their own words, “make things right”. A $20 billion escrow account in $5 billion payments is a drop in the bucket compared to the potential devastation to the southeastern part of the nation.
The people in the Gulf certainly need help, but they are not the only ones who do.
There are millions of otherwise hard-working Americans who have lost their jobs. They have lost their life savings, their homes, their dreams, their futures… they are doing everything they can to keep up with a system that has essentially abandoned them.
They have not just been abandoned by the commercial market, but they have also been disowned by their representatives in government. They have been branded as “lazy” people looking for “big government” to fund their fictional sloth.
These are not people looking for handouts. They are looking for a hand-up from the economic holes that they have been thrown into and left there to rot and be buried over by foreclosures and bankruptcy.
And as long as they are abandoned by the commercial market and disowned by their representatives in government, they will not be able to help the American economy out of the biggest single downturn in eighty years. They will not be able to provide needed revenue to stores both locally and around the world through the magic of online commerce. They will not be able to purchase and enjoy the new technology that companies like Microsoft boast about providing. They will not be able to purchase those new cars with the safer features and the better gas mileage and the alternative fuels. They will not be able to invest in a retirement program or plan for their futures. They currently have no future.
You could help them reconnect with that future.
Ladies and gentlemen, let’s get brutally honest here… the American people need your help! The struggling Americans that are being buried alive in a financial nightmare with no end in sight need your help! They need jobs. Jobs that would be created by investing in new American enterprises.
Various social and career experts on the Huffington Post continually talk about the need for people to follow their dreams. But following one’s dreams requires more than just that dream. They require investment. They require investors willing to take a risk and who believe in the potential of that dream enough to see it through.
How many of today’s billionaires were allowed to follow their dreams to fruition? You know how you got to where you are today. What greater way to share in your wealth than to help show others how you were able to get there?
The time for that help is now. There is a workforce hungry for work. There is a marketplace eager for customers. And there are countless millions of commercial buildings that are currently vacant in need of commercial tenants. You could assist in staving off a second real estate crash and a double-dip downturn by investing in the commercial ventures that would put businesses in those buildings, provide jobs for the people who need it, and help make more dreams realities.
True charity is not just giving money. It is helping people who truly need help. Help them up, and help them re-connect with a society that has for all intents and purposes abandoned them. You would be doing a far more social good than simply giving away money. You would be giving the American people back their future.
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