St. Lawrence

The Treasure of the Church

I have good news for everyone concerned about wealth inequality: billionaires are very generous.

Just this month, a tech founder pledged $100 million to fight climate change. A hedge fund manager donated $50 million to build a new wing at a prestigious university. A retail mogul gave $25 million to fund scholarships for underprivileged students.

Inspiring, isn’t it?

Now let me tell you what they’re not telling you.

The Setup

Here’s how billionaire philanthropy works:

The Language of Poverty

I have been collecting words. Not because I enjoy philology (though I do), but because the words a society uses for its poor reveal more about the society than about the poor.

Consider the vocabulary:

“Underprivileged.” Literally: lacking privilege. The word locates the problem in the person’s absence of something, as if privilege were a natural condition and its lack were an anomaly. It does not name the system that distributes privilege unequally. It names the person who did not receive enough of it.

Food Waste Is a Policy Choice

Here is a pair of facts that should be placed next to each other more often than they are.

Fact one: approximately one-third of all food produced globally is lost or wasted. In wealthy countries, the majority of this waste occurs at the retail and consumer level – food that was perfectly edible, thrown away because it was not purchased in time, or because it did not meet cosmetic standards, or because the household that bought it did not eat it before it expired.

A Brief Taxonomy of Billionaire Philanthropy

I have had a great deal of time to study the various ways in which extremely wealthy people give money away, and I have identified several distinct species. I present them here as a public service.

Type 1: The Naming Opportunity

The billionaire donates a large sum to a university, hospital, or cultural institution. The institution is renamed after the billionaire. The billionaire’s name now appears on a building that serves the public, creating the impression that the public facility is a gift from the billionaire rather than an institution the public funded through taxes for decades before the billionaire’s check arrived.

The Deserving Poor (and Other Fictions)

I have been asked – repeatedly, across centuries, in various formulations – to explain the difference between the “deserving poor” and the “undeserving poor.”

I have a counter-question: what is the difference between the “deserving rich” and the “undeserving rich”?

This question is never asked, which tells you everything you need to know about who designed the categories.

The Sorting Machine

The concept of the “deserving poor” is one of history’s most effective tools of social control. It works by dividing the poor into two groups: those who are poor through no fault of their own (the ill, the elderly, the widowed) and those who are poor because of some personal failing (laziness, immorality, bad choices).

The Housing Crisis, Explained by a Man Who Was Grilled Alive

I am going to explain the housing crisis. This will take less time than you think, because the housing crisis is not complicated. It is merely treated as complicated by people who benefit from the complication.

Here is the housing crisis in one sentence: we decided that the place where people live should also be the primary vehicle for wealth accumulation, and we are surprised that these two functions are incompatible.

The Gala Industrial Complex

The invitation arrived on heavy cardstock, embossed in gold. The theme of this year’s charity gala is “Fighting Hunger Together.” Black tie. Valet parking. Open bar. The ticket price is five hundred dollars per person, which is, by a meaningful coincidence, approximately what a family of four in the neighborhoods this charity claims to serve spends on food in two months.

I love a good party. But I have questions.