On June 1, 2017, David Carrig writes on USA Today:
Welcome the newest class of billionaires who have pledged to give the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes.
Fourteen more billionaires have signed on to the Giving Pledge – the initiative created by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett in 2010 to “help address society’s most pressing problems” by shifting “the social norms of philanthropy toward giving more, giving sooner and giving smarter.”
The new signatories plan to use their wealth to support causes focused on poverty alleviation, education, healthcare research, climate change and the environment.
“We all have a moral obligation as the more affluent in society to give back as best we know how,” MeTL Group CEO Mohammed Dewji of Tanzania said in a statement.
More than 168 billionaires have now signed the pledge and they represent 21 countries and range in age from 31 to 93.
“Bill and Warren and I are excited to welcome the new, very international group of philanthropists joining the Giving Pledge, and we look forward to learning from their diverse experiences,” Melinda Gates said in a press release.
Here is the list of the newest members:
Leonard H. Ainsworth (Australia)
Chairman Emeritus and Executive Director of Ainsworth Game Technology,Mohammed Dewji (Tanzania)
President and CEO of MeTL GroupDagmar Dolby (United States)
Philanthropist, pro-choice activist, widow of Ray Dolby, founder of Dolby LaboratoriesDONG Fangjun (People’s Republic of China)
Dongfang Huiquan Financial Holdings (Chairman)Kjell Inge Røkke and Anne Grete Eidsvig (Norway)
Chairman of Norwegian industrial investment company AkerSir Stelios Haji-Ioannou (Monaco, Cyprus)
Founder of EasyJetNick and Leslie Hanauer (United States)
Venture capitalist and founder of Civic VenturesIza and Samo Login (Slovenia)
Founders of media and entertainment company Outfit7Dean and Marianne Metropoulos (United States)
Private equity firm Metropoulos & Co.Terry and Susan Ragon (United States)
Founder and CEO of InterSystems Corp.Nat Simons and Laura Baxter-Simons (United States)
Investment management firm Meritage Group; co-founders of Sea Change FoundationRobert Frederick Smith (United States)
Founder and CEO of Vista Equity partnersHarry H. Stine (United States)
Founder of Stine SeedYOU Zhonghui ( People’s Republic of China)
Chairwoman of Shenzhen Seaskyland Investment Holdings Group
At the top of the order of the philanthropy is a plan to use their wealth to support causes focused on “poverty alleviation” and “education.”
I think the most good can result if the focus of their wealth is on reforming the monetary and financial system to eliminate the requirement of “past savings” to qualify for capital credit to finance viable capital asset formation projects and provide for EVERY citizen to acquire ownership stakes in future viable capital asset formation simultaneously with the growth of the economy, without taking from those who already own.
The study of billionaires would certainly result in either inheritance of large sums of capital asset ownership stakes or savings accumulated to invest in wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets, on the basis that the investments paid for themselves. In either case, the key operative is “past savings,” which the vast majority of people do not have as they are dependent on jobs in which they earn insufficient income to meet their personal and family consumption needs. And because they are trapped in poverty or near poverty, or even in middle-class status, they cannot earn the income to satisfy their wants above their consumption necessities.
If only these billionaires would support education to enlightened all Americans and politicians to reform the monetary and financial system and enact legislation to provide an annual allocation into the capital credit account of EVERY child, woman, and man strictly for investment in new viable capital asset formation projects tied to the growth of the economy, which generate their own revenue stream to initially pay off the loan and following produce a full-earnings dividend for consumption (creating further demand for the economy’s growth).
Of course, there needs to be a financial mechanism put in place that will guarantee loan risks; otherwise banks and lending institutions will not make the loans, and the system will continue to limit access to capital acquisition to those who already own capital — the rich. This is because “poor” people have no security or collateral, or sufficient income resulting in savings to pledge against the loan as security, and/or are disqualified on the grounds of either unproven unreliability or proven unreliability.
What historically empowered America’s original capitalists was conventional savings-based finance and the pledging or mortgaging of assets, with access to further ownership of new productive capital available only to those who were already well capitalized. As has been the case, credit to purchase capital is made available by financial institutions ONLY to people who already own capital and other forms of equity, such as the equity in their home that can be pledged as loan security — those who meet the universal requirement for collateral. Lenders will only extend credit to people who already have assets. Thus, the rich are made ever richer through their continuous accumulation of capital asset ownership, while the poor (people without a viable capital estate) remain poor and dependent on their labor to produce income. Thus, the system is restrictive and capital ownership is clinically denied to those who need it.
Thus, the question is who pledges the security and takes the risk of failure to return the expected yield from which to repay the loan. The answer is capital credit loan security (collateral) requirement can be replaced with private capital credit insurance or a government reinsurance agency (ala the Federal Housing Administration concept).
Criteria must be created to qualify the corporations, both new start-ups and established ones, subject to this policy and those corporations that qualify overseen so as to insure that their executives exercise prudent fiduciary responsibility to generate loan payback. Once the guaranteed loans are paid back to the lending entity, the new capital formation will continue to produce income for existing and future owners.
The non-profit Center for Economic and Social Justice (www.cesj.org) is dedicated to such education to alleviate poverty and educate on the financial mechanisms and legislation necessary to put American on a path to inclusive prosperity, inclusive opportunity, and inclusive economic justice.
At the CESJ Web site are volumes of articles and proposed legislation focused on broadening individual capital asset wealth and income simultaneously with the growth of the economy, without redistribution by empowering EVERY citizen to be productive through their capital asset and their labor contributions to the economy.
The end result is that citizens would become empowered as owners to meet their own consumption needs and government would become more dependent on economically independent citizens, thus reversing current global trends where all citizens will eventually become dependent for their economic well-being on the State and whatever elite controls the coercive powers of government.
Support the Agenda of The JUST Third Way Movement at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797, http://www.cesj.org/resources/articles-index/the-just-third-way-basic-principles-of-economic-and-social-justice-by-norman-g-kurland/, http://www.cesj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/jtw-graphicoverview-2013.pdf and http://www.cesj.org/resources/articles-index/the-just-third-way-a-new-vision-for-providing-hope-justice-and-economic-empowerment/.
Support Monetary Justice at http://capitalhomestead.org/page/monetary-justice.
Support the Capital Homestead Act (aka Economic Democracy Act) at http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/, http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-a-plan-for-getting-ownership-income-and-power-to-every-citizen/, http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-summary/ and http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/ch-vehicles/.
