Michael and I looked over the 500 plus comments and suggestions that were generously offered regarding his upcoming dilemma:
How should I give away $70 million?
We were joined by his sister, Cathy, who also has a “small sum of money” (her words) that she needs to donate in the coming decade. Apparently, she will have to give away “only” about $45 million.
The three of us were overwhelmed at the number of thoughtful responses. Michael and Cathy’s specific reactions are presented below. We all agreed that the discussion should be continued.
Most of their friends won’t receive their trust-related disbursement for a few years, so I offered to bring together other privileged twenty- and thirty-somethings who might be looking to give away large sums of money to charity. If any aristocrats in the blogosphere would like to join me for a discussion, I invite you to e-mail me and come to N.Y.C. Don’t worry, I’ll pick up the tab for coffee and lunch.
Sudhir titled this photo “Philanthropy.”I also shared with them the suggestions of “The Thugz,” the group of ex-street hustlers/gang members with whom I watched season five of The Wire. Shine and the others laughed when I asked them, “How can Michael use his charitable dollars most effectively.” They all wished they had this problem. Their replies echoed some of their earlier thoughts on the state of modern society:
SHINE: Like we always tell you, Sudhir — a man wakes up in the morning in most poor places, and his first problem is, “What am I going to eat?” He has to feed his family. Lots of people don’t realize that if you can’t eat, your whole day gets messed up.
I can’t tell you how many n– -s do stupid shit because they couldn’t get no food. Lot of people rob and steal to put some food in their belly. Make sure people got food. A man stops feeling angry against the world when his belly is full. That’s what I’d tell the brother to do with his money. And, make sure the older folks got food, not just the kids.
ORLANDO: Get them guns off the street. And, I don’t mean just around here (New York City). I mean go where them white folks live — New Jersey, and places like that.
If brothers want to fight, they should do like they did in the old days: with their hands. You get guns off the street, you’ll get rid of a lot of problems. I agree with Shine, people have to eat. But, there’s always going to be angry folks. The problem is when they start shooting each other.
TONY-T: The suburbs. My cousin grew up there. Went to college. Ain’t learned a thing. Tell Michael he should pay these kids to go do something so they can really learn what life is like.
Instead of going to college, pay them to go fix a house, or hang out with hustlers who struggle out here. I’ve been to the suburbs. You got some seriously ignorant people out there who need help.
KOOl-J: You want the truth? I’d make it a law that if people get money when their parents die, they have to spend ten years doing some kind of free work. You know, like what I had to do after jail: clean up the streets, paint buildings.
I sell a lot of dope to the rich kids, so I know what they’re like. They got a lot of time, and they don’t do nothing! That’s a crime. Make it so they can’t sit around all day, snorting coke. If they want their money, they have to get up off their a–. Like Michael is doing.
Michael and Cathy both admitted that their peers had relatively little pressure to make a “positive societal contribution.”
You grow up like I did, and it’s all so easy,” said Michael. “And, your parents really don’t think a lot about what you need. I mean, every time I had a problem, my mom wrote a check. My dad was never around.
“Right, and when Dad wasn’t around, his secretary wrote us the checks!” laughed Cathy.
So, I spent six years getting high, doing coke and feeling horrible about myself. Kool-J is absolutely right. There’s no one who teaches us what our responsibility is. And, now, I have to give this money away. But, how?! I really struggle to figure out where to begin.
I mentioned several options, including giving money to an established foundation and making a career out of philanthropy, as opposed to simply writing checks. Or, why don’t they draw on experts who help the rich give their money away?
Honestly, when you work with consultants, the first thing they do is make sure you don’t see what is really going on. If I have to see another brochure about a kid who beat the odds, or attend another party where my friends get applauded … It’s sickening, I don’t want consultants to protect me from the outside world. My parents already accomplished that.
Cathy continued by turning the lens inward. She pointed to GiveWell, an organization that she felt understood one of the central problems for her generation.
I’d like to help other people I grew up with first. I know that sounds crazy. If I tell you I’ve got hardships, you’ll laugh, right? I mean who really believes we have a hard life? The problem is that we have resources, but no direction. My friends like this group called GiveWell because they sort of get how we think, they understand where we are coming from. I would like to get to my friends just after they graduate, right when they start having problems — drugs, depression, getting bored. That’s the time I think I could help them. But, I still don’t know how, exactly, to do that.
“I know what I don’t want to do,” shouted Michael, spilling his coffee on his lap. And, at this point, the conversation turned to the comments of Freakonomics.com readers:
I will never act like I know better how people should spend their money. The one thing I can’t stand is when my friends give away money and then write a report card. At some point, I think you just have to trust that the money is doing good.
My friends give away millions, and all they do is b–ch and moan that they didn’t get the results they wanted. What did they expect? To end poverty overnight? They all want this oversight, but frankly it’s all armchair complaining.
Michael liked the suggestions regarding assistance to hospitals and medical clinics. He felt passionate about making sure people had access to good medical care: “I agree (with johnjac, #60). People shouldn’t die because they couldn’t get to a hospital.”
He wanted to combine health-related philanthropy with an approach to solving hunger in America.
I think that Debra (comment #380) is thinking like I am. I’d like to create a place where you come in, get a meal, get checked out, and get medical care. One stop. I’d also like to make sure we end hunger in this country. I think Shine is right: you can’t function if you’re hungry.
But, he quickly made the point that U.S. needs deserve priority over international charity — a point contested with great passion by many Freakonomics.com readers.
I can’t believe all these people think we should first give outside America! That’s exactly the problem.
I go to the Hamptons, and they have these stupid fund raisers for things going on that are thousands of miles away. And, then you go back to 5th Ave (on Manhattan’s Upper East Side), and you tell your doorman to make sure no homeless people ask you for money on the block. It’s sick.
Michael suggested that the government force rich, new philanthropists to give only in their own town or city. “Give locally. That way you’ll be forced to see the pain close up. And, you’ll see you can’t fix it overnight.”
“So, you’ll be giving to whom exactly? The poor child at 84th and Park?” I said with just a hint of sarcasm.
“No, but maybe I could give to their maid or nanny,” he quickly retorted. “She is getting $5 per hour, and is probably getting treated like crap!”
Cathy chimed in.
A lot of people (on the blog) talked up the idea that we should be social “entrepreneurs.” I disagree. I don’t like it when people like me give money away to get a return on their investment. That’s disgusting. I didn’t do anything to get rich, so why should I deserve to get anything back? And, I think that the micro-lending people also do the same thing. Give a dollar, get back 30 cents. Wow, that’s not charity, that’s selfish.
Michael felt similarly, but moved the conversation in a different direction — along the lines suggested by comment #299.
I like the idea of having people do things like building roads, or teaching the poor. But, I don’t like the Teach for America program. Two years, and then you go and work for Merrill, feeling good that at least you tried to save the world.
For God sakes, do it for longer. And, I think that people should do it differently. Maybe they have to teach for a year, go to work at Merrill, and then come back after five years. Then go back to being an I-banker, and then teach again. This way, you have to reconnect, and feel the pain of the world around you.
Michael kept saying “feel the pain” throughout the conversation, so I asked him what his next steps would be to get out of his insular world.
He said that he’d like to take a car and drive around the country and talk to people for a year. “I know I would prioritize hunger and hospitals and things like that. But, maybe I should get to know what’s out there. For a year, I’d like to feel my way around.”
Happy trails. Stay tuned.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
I guess I should be impressed by this guy finally deciding to open his eyes.
Golf clap.
Good luck on finding the “maid or nanny” for that poor kid on 84th. LOL.
I don’t want to sit here and act like I know how Michael should be donating his money. However, I have to strongly object to his obvious disdain, and it’s clearly disdain not just aversion, for international philanthropy. How is ignoring the beggars on your street any more sick than asking your government to build a 1000 mile fence to keep out the poor immigrants?
Yes there are poor in America. And there are a great many people in need, but the conditions of the poor in America do not even compare to those in 3rd world countries. Michael thinks it’s sick that people should send their money across the world to help the truly unfortunate. I think it’s sick that he values one man’s welfare more than another’s simply because he has a social security card.
OK, my prior comment was not particularly constructive. So in an effort to constructively address his ‘problem’, I would suggest that he research how his family amassed such wealth, and then start from there.
Did his family support political candidates that opposed progressive policies that would help the very people he has now decided he wants to help? Did the family money come by busting unions or otherwise exploiting labor? Did they outsource production overseas to take advantage of the low standard of living that passes for acceptable in much of the rest of the world?
If he’s serious about effecting change, it starts right at home.
I applaud what Mike wants to do, but he sounds like a spoiled jerk.
“He’d like to take a car and drive around the country and talk to people for a year.” Well that ought to change things for the better. How about giving money to people who “talk to people” every day.
Make sure you get a beat up car and not a Mercedes or something like that. If you really want to “feel the pain” abandon your wealth completely. You are not going to feel the pain by driving around in your nice car watching what happens outside the windows of your nice hotel. Even better, think of this: the median salary for teachers is probably between $35-45k in most states. In the first 5 years, 50% of teachers leave the profession, so many don’t make it to the median income at all. In order to feel the pain, take what I got paid my first year $27,859, and try to live on that with a wife and a daughter with a disability. You don’t even have to take out taxes. My take home was about $1700/month after taxes and insurance were taken out. Try living on that anywhere in the US and you might start to feel the pain. I’m not discrediting those whose pain is worse than mine. I’m just giving a reference point. Some people are working so hard to stay alive and provide for their families that they don’t even have time to feel that pain you so desperately want to feel.
I applaud you for at least thinking about what you can do to help–that seems much better than a lot of your friends.
Maybe instead of worrying about charity, they should start telling their friends to pay the maid more than $5 an hour?
I do not agree with Cathy’s criticism of philanthropic monies gaining a return. I would say that any charitable giving that does not produce a return for someone is rather useless as it will not produce any lasting changes.
While I can sympathize with the desire to directly address health or food issues, those are too big to take on directly with only a few million dollars, you’ll at best be able to provide band-aid solutions for a time. Your money would be better spent trying to get corporations and government involved in addressing those issues — whether it is through universal health care, food stamp programs, deficit reduction, whatever. You have an opportunity to genuinely influence politics and business in a way that very, very few people can.
There are plenty of hedge fund managers further down the island who are happy to write $500,000 checks to a candidate who’ll reduce their personal taxes, and the working people who have to make up that shortfall are in no position to oppose them.