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Billionaires: the good, the bad and the mean

By Lyn Bender - posted Tuesday, 4 June 2013


Millionaires are passé and we now have billionaires as our benchmark of success. A small percentage of the population reach these illustrious heights and even fewer reach the pinnacle.

More rarely do the super rich achieve the guru like status of Bill Gates, currently the world’s richest man. He came to Australia recently, on his private jet, for a whirlwind 12 hour visit, to deliver a lesson in sharing. He chastised Australia for reneging on its promised foreign aid. Bill Gates is currently working on the eradication of polio and (after that) malaria from the world disease list. That has to be an unequivocally good thing. Gates who is also aware of the extreme threat of climate change, does not advocate the denial promoted by many of the rich. Gates  declares  that we have to get to zero emissions and has many ideas  on how we might achieve this. He enunciates  his views without malice, but in full possession of the facts.

His style and delivery have lead some to surmise that he is on the high level autism spectrum , formerly described as Aspergers . Gates shares this hypothesised ‘honour’ with Albert  Einstein Bach and Beethoven

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He  is highly intelligent, gifted and  scientifically informed, although he comes across as oddly detached. His devotion to his Foundation’s work is focused and unrelenting.    

On the other hand  Gina Rinehart our very own $22.02 B  billionaire, is famous for her ability to  amass  money rather than to share or dispense it with any largesse, or  on charitable endeavours. In fact Australia’s richest person, has incurred wrath

for advocating for lower wages for workers. Gina has implied that Australia’s poor are bringing it all on themselves through laziness smoking and drinking. Gina has also bank rolled infamous climate denier Lord Monkton,  to promote her own money making fossil fuel agenda. Given that global warming is now on track, to a future of rising beyond the    unthinkable catastrophic  4degrees  Gina’s stance is heinous on so many counts. The propagating of false ‘facts’ about the climate, has delayed action and is causing and will continue to cause immense  suffering and the loss of millions, if not billions of lives . This puts her actions in the unethical  category. Gina is not alone in this. The American oil billionaires  Koch brothers who have vowed, to delay delay and delay progress to renewable energy are reported to have channelled $67 million to climate denial front organisations since 1997.

But what of the good guys, Warren Buffet, who together with Bill Gates initiated The Giving Pledge for the super rich. Buffett   trumped the new club and gave away  $3.084  Billion to philanthropy. Over 114 wealthy people have sighed up to give away big money for good causes.

Along with wife Melinda, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet  have been praised as the most effective altruistic people in history by Philosopher Peter Singer.

Gates declines to accept this vanity. “I don’t consider myself as philanthropic, as someone who has less money and who gives in such a way that they deny themselves some pleasure,” he said.

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“I don’t deny myself – you know, [as though I must] have less food so I have more to give or I won’t go to the movies or I won’t have a vacation – I’m able to take care of the    things I want and be philanthropic.

 He still after all, has his 66,000 square house and travels on his private jet.

“So although the numbers are very big, [in donations] in some ways it’s showing less of a real moral trade-off than those who are poor and give. Those people are amazing.”

The self made Warren Buffet may see himself now as one of the many who get overpaid for their talents and efforts saying "I don't believe in dynastic wealth"… those who grow up in wealthy circumstances are … "members of the lucky sperm club" Buffett has written several times of his belief that, in a market economy, the rich earn outsized rewards for their talents. 

There are shadows cast over how these high flyers  made there millions. Buffett’s investments involving coal, tobacco, real estate and Gates, investments in the company with poor human rights; Monsanto

During the RJR Nabisco, Inc. hostile takeover fight in 1987, Buffett was quoted as telling John Gutfreund, I'll tell you why I like the cigarette business. It costs a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive. And there's fantastic brand loyalty - Buffett, quoted in Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco. Buffet is also said to have disowned his adopted granddaughter. She appeared in a documentary on the rich poor gap, revealing her experiences as his granddaughter, saying he did not legally or emotionally adopt her nor did the extended family.

 So should we expect and accept the flaws of this new version of the modern hero: the benign imperfect billionaire? Does it even matter. We are all asked to donate to charities after disasters such as bushfires or floods. Many of us, of even modest means, give with passion and generosity. Mostly this is driven by compassion and a sense of what it might feel like if it happened to us. Don’t many of us in the OECD  live mixed lives of advantage and a token level of care for the poor?

However in a world where capital is all, those who rise to the top of the heap may become de-facto monarchs who are able to bestow and confer or refuse and purloin at will, like Global Lords of the Manor.

Without wishing to detract from the significance of the contributions of The Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation, we should remember that  the rich and privileged do not always use wealth to promote the common good.

Occupy Wall Street with its slogan, we are the 99 per cent, [as opposed to the 1 per cent who control the wealth], was a protest that emerged strongly after the Global Financial Crisis  and the subsequent bailout of the big banks. It was mocked and derided by some as having no articulated goals, direction or cohesion. But it raised an important issue: the inordinate power of the few to buy and control governments resources and the destiny of the multitudes. It became a worldwide protest.

Globally, the gap between the privileged few and the majority of the poor is widening.

The World Economic Forum identifies growing inequity as one of the greatest risks to global stability in its Global Risks Report of 2013. Extreme wealth is societally corrosive argues OXFAM  in its pre briefing report at Davos. The reports stated that super wealth  is economically inefficient and politically divisive. There is growing consensus that it is not just poverty that needs to be addressed but inequality. These are not the same. The more that wealth resides with the few, the more inequity grows, and therefore poverty becomes entrenched.

The abiding irony remains. Many love our billionaires because they are seen as standing for what we all might achieve, especially the self made kind. The reverse is actually true.

The so called filthy rich take the lions’ share collectively leaving the majority to scrounge amongst the leavings or to depend on the whim of the largesse of the privileged.

The Republicans in America and Conservatives  in Australia fear and loath the remedy. This would require the higher taxing of the wealthy seen as the curtailing of the power of individuals. Enshrined is a philosophy of their own simplistic brand of karma. If you work you deserve all the spoils of your efforts even if these are excessive. If you are poor low waged, disadvantaged or unemployed you have brought this upon yourself. According to shadow treasurer Joe Hockey you are unentitled.  

 We saw a former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd seek to impose an effective tax on big mining  that was vehemently opposed . It is not too far a stretch to say that big coal had a hand in his fall. The mining Industry spent 22 million in a 6 week campaign to oppose the planned resource super profits mining tax.

 It is the big investors in the status quo that are driving us to disaster while reassuring us of our future prosperity. The few still control the resources that belong to the many and to which they are not entitled.

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About the Author

Lyn Bender is a psychologist in private practice. She is a former manager of Lifeline Melbourne and is working on her first novel.

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