Money and Finance
- Warren Buffett Gives 'reverse Birthday Gift' To Children's Foundations
The letter to his kids is also posted HERE. Warren Buffett is celebrating his 82nd birthday today by doubling what remains of his original pledge of stock shares to the three foundations run by his children, Susan, Howard and Peter. That means he will...
- Peter Buffett Rocks Beijing
It is -- and this is putting it mildly -- sometimes difficult to generalize about a nation of 1.3 billion people. But let's go out on a limb and say there aren't many who would quibble with the description of China as money-obsessed. This is a...
- Wsj Interviews Bill Gates: Was The $5 Billion Worth It?
Thanks to Will for passing this along. A decade into his record-breaking education philanthropy, Bill Gates talks teachers, charters—and regrets. 'It's hard to improve public education—that's clear. As Warren Buffett would say, if you're...
- Is Thinking Back In Fashion? – By Lane Wallace
Thinking may be coming back into fashion. Never mind the fact that we have a President known for his intellectually rigorous abilities and habits. But three times in the past couple of weeks, I've encountered business people discussing Aristotle....
- The Gospel Of Wealth By Andrew Carnegie
Description from Wikipedia: -"Wealth", or what is more commonly known as "The Gospel of Wealth", is an essay written by Andrew Carnegie in 1889 that described the responsibility of philanthropy by the new upper class of self-made rich. The central thesis...
Money and Finance
The Charitable-Industrial Complex - By Peter Buffett
I HAD spent much of my life writing music for commercials, film and television and knew little about the world of philanthropy as practiced by the very wealthy until what I call the big bang happened in 2006. That year, my father, Warren Buffett, made good on his commitment to give nearly all of his accumulated wealth back to society. In addition to making several large donations, he added generously to the three foundations that my parents had created years earlier, one for each of their children to run.
Early on in our philanthropic journey, my wife and I became aware of something I started to call Philanthropic Colonialism. I noticed that a donor had the urge to “save the day” in some fashion. People (including me) who had very little knowledge of a particular place would think that they could solve a local problem. Whether it involved farming methods, education practices, job training or business development, over and over I would hear people discuss transplanting what worked in one setting directly into another with little regard for culture, geography or societal norms.
Often the results of our decisions had unintended consequences; distributing condoms to stop the spread of AIDS in a brothel area ended up creating a higher price for unprotected sex.
But now I think something even more damaging is going on.
- Warren Buffett Gives 'reverse Birthday Gift' To Children's Foundations
The letter to his kids is also posted HERE. Warren Buffett is celebrating his 82nd birthday today by doubling what remains of his original pledge of stock shares to the three foundations run by his children, Susan, Howard and Peter. That means he will...
- Peter Buffett Rocks Beijing
It is -- and this is putting it mildly -- sometimes difficult to generalize about a nation of 1.3 billion people. But let's go out on a limb and say there aren't many who would quibble with the description of China as money-obsessed. This is a...
- Wsj Interviews Bill Gates: Was The $5 Billion Worth It?
Thanks to Will for passing this along. A decade into his record-breaking education philanthropy, Bill Gates talks teachers, charters—and regrets. 'It's hard to improve public education—that's clear. As Warren Buffett would say, if you're...
- Is Thinking Back In Fashion? – By Lane Wallace
Thinking may be coming back into fashion. Never mind the fact that we have a President known for his intellectually rigorous abilities and habits. But three times in the past couple of weeks, I've encountered business people discussing Aristotle....
- The Gospel Of Wealth By Andrew Carnegie
Description from Wikipedia: -"Wealth", or what is more commonly known as "The Gospel of Wealth", is an essay written by Andrew Carnegie in 1889 that described the responsibility of philanthropy by the new upper class of self-made rich. The central thesis...