� Fun border anomalies | Main | Most comparative and informed Doom 3 review �
July 31, 2004
Why a new golden age of philanthropy may be dawning
Now, another golden age may be about to dawn, and for similar reasons: inequality is a friend of philanthropy, and large fortunes encourage individual generosity. Bill Gates of Microsoft and Pierre Omidyar of eBay are today's Carnegies: successful entrepreneurs who are rebranding themselves as imaginative philanthropists.
And yet to predict another golden age requires a leap of faith. The latest figures published by Giving USA, an annual survey compiled by the Centre on Philanthropy at Indiana University, do indeed suggest that America's giving has risen: it has been 2% or more of GDP since 1998, following more than two decades below that mark, and last year total contributions were 2.2% of GDP, only a whisker below the all-time high of 2.3% in 2000 (see chart 1). But sceptics ascribe this recent rise to the dotcom boom, which caused an unexpected surge of wealth that has not yet shrunk back into line with the slowdown in the economy.
Posted by thdyck on July 31, 2004
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)