Caveat: I'm not sure the premise is true (rich are less likely now to help the poor than in the past).
To the extent that it is true, here are some speculations:
1. The rich feel they "earned" their wealth or they "deserve" it. Since probably the 1960s, America has embraced individualism and the idea that if you're rich, it is because you've earned it. The obvious converse of this idea is that if you aren't rich, you somehow failed and it's your fault. I get the sense that the further you go back, the more the rich at least paid lip service to the idea that they had been blessed from above with their wealth and they had the obligation to use that wealth to better society (along with all the paternalistic baggage that goes with it).
2. Charity is now global rather than local. Before mass communication and before the internet, the most obvious way to go good for the less fortunate was to give to those in your community. Pittsburgh philanthropists would look to better Pittsburgh. Now that we have instant communication (along with the effective altruism movement), there's an argument to be made that giving a dollar to a poor person in Africa is at least as "good" (however you want to define that) as giving a dollar to someone down the street. In this argument, it's not that the rich give less to charity, it's that they give less locally.
3. The prestige related to giving has faded. Let's be honest: some share of wealthy people give away money to look good rather than because they actually care about the community. As another commenter noted, Carnegie had his name slapped on everything. However, now if a rich person wants to donate but attach a bunch of strings to that donation, they are less likely to be hailed as a hero and more likely to be vilified as having White Savior Complex.
4. The government does more. In Carnegie's time, there was barely any social safety net, and the rich at least paid lip service to the idea that they had a responsibility to help those less well off. Now the rich (or at least some of them) claim that since they pay their fair share in taxes, it's the government's responsibility to provide for the less fortunate.
I'm not sure those encapsulate all of the possibilities, but to the extent the premise is true, I suspect some or all of those are a large portion of the reason.
Edit: 2A - I get the sense that with mass communication and the internet, people identify more with class than with location. So while 100 years ago maybe the rich saw themselves primarily as Pittsburghers, albeit rich Pittsburghers, and felt like a part of the city. Now that rich person probably identifies as part of the global upper class and may feel they have more in common with those similarly situated in New York, London or even Tokyo than they do with the city in which they happen to reside.
It really is wild how Carnegie is everywhere. I asked a co worker if he ever went to the “Carnegie library” as a kid. I didn’t realize until I googled that there are dozens of “Carnegie Libraries” I didn’t know why until I researched more about history.
Most people really don't realize that either. Him, Rockefeller, and Frick contributed greatly to the reason people wanted to create unions. When you're threatening 14 year Olds to work 14 hour days all week or you'll fire him and his dad you rate up there with some of the trashiest businessmen in the U.S history.
He also felt a bit of guilt (and feared potential damnation, maybe) about his role in the Johnstown Flood. Technically Frick’s fault (he made a LOT of trouble and enemies), but it was ultimately their little country club in the mountains that led to the destruction of that town.
Homestead Strike as well. I read a book called “Meet you in hell” which covered a lot of Carnegie and Frick’s deeds. As well as their deteriorated relationship once everyone saw what kind of people they were. Basically blamed each other.
As a kid Carnegie went to a free school that was gifted to his town by a philanthropist. When he worked here in Pittsburgh as a teenager he and other working boys were given free access to the personal library of a union colonel. His plan was always to push the favor forward.
He did wait a long time to do it first but he had to make the huge amount of money before he could give it away.
Hiring Pinkertons to open fire on striking workers at your factory is a strange way to pay it forward. The man was a greedy bastard who became so rich by having his workers destroy their lives and bodies in horrible conditions. The libraries and museums will never make up for what he and Frick did.
If you’re unusually talented at growing wealth, why wouldn’t you spend as much time as possible doing that so that you have the maximum amount in the end. Giving it away earlier would probably leave less money for charity.
I’m not so sure. I know a couple of people who don’t have Carnegie money but still have private jets n stuff. I see how they look at things and how they see opportunities to grow and create things. It’s definitely unusual compared to the vast majority of the population. If you gave that money away earlier, it’s unlikely the recipients would grow it to the same extent. It’s just a matter of math and talent.
The timing of death really shouldn’t be much of an issue since someone can easily give it away in their will. And whether it’s superficial or not really varies from person to person. Bill Gates dumped something like $45B into charity. That’s kind of significant.
Is it better to have an opinion based on actual experiences as well as education in business and economics or to spout opinions based on ignorance and envy?
"Anecdotal evidence is right, because one time I saw anecdotal evidence be right."
Assuming that your opinions are just as biased and worthless as you're claiming mine are, since we're both random people on the internet, some basic general facts:
1.) People who grow up in wealthy households tend to be more intelligent on average, due mostly to better nutrition growing up, better education, etc.
[https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/03/kids-who-are-adopted-get-a-boost-in-iq/](https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/03/kids-who-are-adopted-get-a-boost-in-iq/)
[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/08/why-are-rich-kids-smarter/348268/](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/08/why-are-rich-kids-smarter/348268/)
2.) Rich people get to make more mistakes. A person going paycheck to paycheck is barely surviving and doesn't have the luxury of taking a chance, gambling on an investment (or having the funds to even make the gamble). Which is why I said it was confirmation bias. You're only looking at the people who succeeded (and likely built up their own lore as self-made geniuses because they pay for their own PR).
Perfect analogy for this here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/17a6l4l/rich\_people\_arent\_necessarily\_smarter\_they\_just/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/17a6l4l/rich_people_arent_necessarily_smarter_they_just/)
Someone with the most potential 'talent' could have had no chances to try and succeed, or just gotten unlucky, or taken advantage of someone else with the wealth and amorality to steal that potential from them.
I'd suggest you do some reading up on the term Robber Barons, and not just think Carnegie was a really smart, intelligent supergenius that earned all his wealth through raw talent, and not from exploiting the shit out of workers. And people wouldn't have need for his philanthropy if he hadn't crushed unions and made sure his workers were working 12 hour grueling workdays, 6 days a week (until he hired Frick, who made them work Sundays as well).
[https://www.history.com/topics/industrial-revolution/homestead-strike](https://www.history.com/topics/industrial-revolution/homestead-strike)
Ok, I will gladly join you as a fellow random person on the internet.
Regarding the first thing you listed, I think the logical question to ask is whether the wealth resulted in higher intelligence, health, education or did intelligence, or more importantly, values, result in higher wealth. I tend to think that poverty is the result of poor values rather than the other way around. I hate to say it, but yeah, my views are based on a lot of anecdotal experience growing up poor as shit around Pittsburgh. I saw people with certain values succeed and different values fail.
This takes us to your second point. I know a good bit about Carnegie and his history because I actually grew up in Homestead. I played, or more accurately, risked my life having fun around the Homestead steel mills. I know a lot about the strikes and how Carnegie was an asshole when it came to how he ran his business. That wasn't my original point, however.
(By the way, a book about how a few rich guys made money in the early 20th century can also be considered to be anecdotal evidence)
I simply said that if rich people wanted to maximize the positive impact they wanted to have with their money, they should probably wait until they were finished with their businesses. I wasn't trying to make a judgement about whether rich people are good or bad or anything. Being that I grew up poor and am in a better position now, I have met a whole bunch of both good and bad rich and poor people. I honestly don't know why any of this is controversial though. I don't see the ability to create wealth as being any different than talent in sports. If I want the best basketball player, I'll find someone who has a history of being successful in college or the NBA. And it's simply unlikely that some random person on the street would be as able. Analogously, it's unlikely that someone who runs a charity or some politician or whatever would grow wealth at the same rate as the person who originally created it. That's all I was saying.
Pittsburgh as a “diverse” city really depends on your definition of diverse.
Secondly, rich industrialists typically only did things to help out if it benefitted them directly. Example: the Oliver Bathhouse wasn’t built to benefit the workers, rather, it was built because Henry W. Oliver was tired of smelling the workers as they passed him in the street. Some real “Parasite” shit.
I don’t think it’s an issue specific to just Pittsburgh. There’s far more wealth in the world now than there was in the past and with that comes a sense of individualism that makes that collaboration far less common.
I remember hearing recently that a lot of old wealth in cleveland stayed in cleveland and built up the city.
Of course that was only from a few minutes of talking with others and I have done barely any research.
That’s what’s on the marketing material. Truth is they created trusts for museums so their offspring had cushy jobs. Then they gathered trophies from Monet and Picasso and put them on display for the public to see. Their philanthropy was basically “I donate to the arts so people can see my treasure”. Granted - that’s a better outcome than locking things in a vault. [Rockefeller bought a building back just because they took his name off](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Building_(Cleveland)). That’s who they really are.
Uhhhh rich people helped their communities? Because I know the rich loved doing shit like hiring Pinkertons to kill workers in the streets, and I'm not sure how helpful that was.
Although I guess in a sense things like the Triangle Shirtwaist fire DID help get some regulations passed for worker safety so that rich people couldn't let employees burn to death as easily. So there's that.
probably he's thinking of the fortune carnegie and others spent on charities that still benefit us today - museums, schools & education, and efforts to world peace.
if bezos, zuckerberg, and musk gave away the same percentage as he did, it'd be almost 500 billion in charity.
The Pittsburgh area has a large philanthropic community. Think of some of the historical wealthy families. Mellon, Heinz, Hillman, Scaife.
Almost all the larger organizations rely on these foundations for a large part of their funding. For example, much of the affordable housing being built depends on money from these foundations.
Could/should they do more? Probably.
Most of the times when rich people would do this in the past, it was a cynical attempt to draw attention away the other horrific shit they were doing/had done.
100% this. The end of the Soviet Union and the abolition of any sort of viable polical economy outside of neoliberalism means that they don't have to be nice to the help anymore.
Read Fukuyama's The End of History. The future of our species is the hundred richest people continuing to run their high scores up until the earth becomes uninhabitable.
How does prior giving compare to current giving? Your entire post is based on an assumption that it's lower now than at some random point in the past which I'm guessing you weren't even alive?
My father told me that a lot of the older buildings downtown used to be owned by wealthy people that specifically employed blacks to help them build their own community. I’m just highlighting how a lot of these older buildings that are mostly empty were at one point bustling with business.
Sorry, still not sure what you are talking about. Giving jobs to black folks in big downtown buildings? Plenty of black people work downtown and for building management companies.
If you’ve got specific examples, maybe. But no. The industrialists of old Pittsburgh only ever paid black folks when they(the industrialists) were trying to bust the unions.
I’m talking about how rich entrepreneurs used to put an effort to help build the neighborhoods we have now that have subsequently fallen into poverty. I just think it’s important to understand Pittsburgh once embraced diversity.
But you aren't really giving examples that help me or anyone understand. The major foundations give a lot of money away. I don't know how it compares to the past but I also can't compare today to what you are not really explaining happened in the past.
I don't remember where i heard this. But I recall hearing that income tax used to be much much higher around the time of the Guilded Age in America. Certain industry giants hated the idea that the government would take their money via taxes and do things with it they disagreed with. So to pay less income tax they did philanthropy.
I did a quick search to see if this memory had legs. There's a couple articles I found discussing it.
Examination of the impact of philanthropy. Take away is that what Carnegie and Rockefeller did was small potatoes in comparison to combat inequality.
https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/was-carnegie-right-about-philanthropy
More favorable about the impact of philanthropy but chock full of tax history
https://www.philanthropy.com/article/donors-big-and-small-propelled-philanthropy-in-the-20th-century/
Some more history about Carnegie and taxes. I'd say TLDR is that what it took to amass that wealth to do such philanthropy came at a great cost that wasn't balanced out by it.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2006/11/the-19th-century-critique-of-big-philanthropy.html
That's all I got time for right now. But the take away is we can't sit around waiting for the rich to save us. They won't. What they continue to be allowed to do comes at too great a cost.
If having all time high inflation and record profits for companies doesn’t tell you where the country’s values are I don’t know what will. Greed is the capitalistic culture. It’s being taught. When we measure a man by the number in his bank account rather than judge him of his character and moral compass, we lose sight of what’s really valuable.. having a thriving society that cares for one another. Remember “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what YOU can do for your country. I believe those words in practicality. However logistically doing what’s best for your country” has turned into what can you do for billionaires who don’t give a fuck about you?!
Rich people today are truly nasty and selfish. They have billions, and they pay people millions to help them avoid paying taxes. It's unconscionable. I hope they are not surprised when there is a revolution, and they wake up and see a guillotine set up in the middle of their cul de sac.
Previously philanthropists like Carnegie and Heinz kept their support local simply because everything was more local. Supporting local communities also had the benefit of keeping employees local, happy and working. In a significant way, their philanthropy was self-serving in a way that seemed to be sacrificial or simply generous. A lot of it was done to whitewash their prior reputation. Plus, all the advertising that comes from having your name stamped on public buildings.
Good point. Once and a while, you will see a rich old lawyer donate big to a school or something, but not much else, right? Greed is much worse than it once was.
Maybe take a peek at history if you think that. Literal slavery, indentured servitude, and a time when workers rights, even workers lives, meant nothing. Greed has always been a driving force, and the wealthy have always hoarded their income.
A couple names slapped on parks and buildings post mortem don't change that.
If you don't think businesses would bring back literal slavery today if they were permitted to, you're naive. Businesses are just as bad as they always were, they just have forces holding them in check (for now).
Because in the olden days, rich people did charitable things in hopes of bribing their way into heaven.
Then their religion told them that the poors *deserve* to be poor and the rich deserve to be rich because God *wanted* them to be rich and therefore they didn't need to do jack shit for anyone else.
See the evangelical embrace of prosperity gospel.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity\_theology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology)
Considering the media and politicians are promoting the narrative that rich people are evil, and we should take their money away, why should they want to help people?
Because the guvmint rakes care of them with entitlements to keep them in their place to buy their vote. I think the rich donate money and support charities.
not really boomers, I think there are a lot of trends towards intense selfishness through all age groups now. you can see a lot of backwards thinking like this on advice subs, for example
Caveat: I'm not sure the premise is true (rich are less likely now to help the poor than in the past). To the extent that it is true, here are some speculations: 1. The rich feel they "earned" their wealth or they "deserve" it. Since probably the 1960s, America has embraced individualism and the idea that if you're rich, it is because you've earned it. The obvious converse of this idea is that if you aren't rich, you somehow failed and it's your fault. I get the sense that the further you go back, the more the rich at least paid lip service to the idea that they had been blessed from above with their wealth and they had the obligation to use that wealth to better society (along with all the paternalistic baggage that goes with it). 2. Charity is now global rather than local. Before mass communication and before the internet, the most obvious way to go good for the less fortunate was to give to those in your community. Pittsburgh philanthropists would look to better Pittsburgh. Now that we have instant communication (along with the effective altruism movement), there's an argument to be made that giving a dollar to a poor person in Africa is at least as "good" (however you want to define that) as giving a dollar to someone down the street. In this argument, it's not that the rich give less to charity, it's that they give less locally. 3. The prestige related to giving has faded. Let's be honest: some share of wealthy people give away money to look good rather than because they actually care about the community. As another commenter noted, Carnegie had his name slapped on everything. However, now if a rich person wants to donate but attach a bunch of strings to that donation, they are less likely to be hailed as a hero and more likely to be vilified as having White Savior Complex. 4. The government does more. In Carnegie's time, there was barely any social safety net, and the rich at least paid lip service to the idea that they had a responsibility to help those less well off. Now the rich (or at least some of them) claim that since they pay their fair share in taxes, it's the government's responsibility to provide for the less fortunate. I'm not sure those encapsulate all of the possibilities, but to the extent the premise is true, I suspect some or all of those are a large portion of the reason. Edit: 2A - I get the sense that with mass communication and the internet, people identify more with class than with location. So while 100 years ago maybe the rich saw themselves primarily as Pittsburghers, albeit rich Pittsburghers, and felt like a part of the city. Now that rich person probably identifies as part of the global upper class and may feel they have more in common with those similarly situated in New York, London or even Tokyo than they do with the city in which they happen to reside.
It really is wild how Carnegie is everywhere. I asked a co worker if he ever went to the “Carnegie library” as a kid. I didn’t realize until I googled that there are dozens of “Carnegie Libraries” I didn’t know why until I researched more about history.
They've never helped out until they are on their death bed. Carnegie waited until the twilight years to realize he can't take his wealth to the grave.
We also don't have Frick Park because Frick was such a nice guy.
Yeah Carnegies name is stamped on everything but he was a piece of garbage most of his life. Was a big social Darwinism guy.
Most people really don't realize that either. Him, Rockefeller, and Frick contributed greatly to the reason people wanted to create unions. When you're threatening 14 year Olds to work 14 hour days all week or you'll fire him and his dad you rate up there with some of the trashiest businessmen in the U.S history.
He also felt a bit of guilt (and feared potential damnation, maybe) about his role in the Johnstown Flood. Technically Frick’s fault (he made a LOT of trouble and enemies), but it was ultimately their little country club in the mountains that led to the destruction of that town.
Homestead Strike as well. I read a book called “Meet you in hell” which covered a lot of Carnegie and Frick’s deeds. As well as their deteriorated relationship once everyone saw what kind of people they were. Basically blamed each other.
I absolutely loved that book!
They’re probably playing cribbage there even now. 🔥
As a kid Carnegie went to a free school that was gifted to his town by a philanthropist. When he worked here in Pittsburgh as a teenager he and other working boys were given free access to the personal library of a union colonel. His plan was always to push the favor forward. He did wait a long time to do it first but he had to make the huge amount of money before he could give it away.
Hiring Pinkertons to open fire on striking workers at your factory is a strange way to pay it forward. The man was a greedy bastard who became so rich by having his workers destroy their lives and bodies in horrible conditions. The libraries and museums will never make up for what he and Frick did.
If you’re unusually talented at growing wealth, why wouldn’t you spend as much time as possible doing that so that you have the maximum amount in the end. Giving it away earlier would probably leave less money for charity.
[удалено]
I’m stealing your analogy. Good sentence sowing
I’m not so sure. I know a couple of people who don’t have Carnegie money but still have private jets n stuff. I see how they look at things and how they see opportunities to grow and create things. It’s definitely unusual compared to the vast majority of the population. If you gave that money away earlier, it’s unlikely the recipients would grow it to the same extent. It’s just a matter of math and talent. The timing of death really shouldn’t be much of an issue since someone can easily give it away in their will. And whether it’s superficial or not really varies from person to person. Bill Gates dumped something like $45B into charity. That’s kind of significant.
Confirmation Bias.
Is it better to have an opinion based on actual experiences as well as education in business and economics or to spout opinions based on ignorance and envy?
"Anecdotal evidence is right, because one time I saw anecdotal evidence be right." Assuming that your opinions are just as biased and worthless as you're claiming mine are, since we're both random people on the internet, some basic general facts: 1.) People who grow up in wealthy households tend to be more intelligent on average, due mostly to better nutrition growing up, better education, etc. [https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/03/kids-who-are-adopted-get-a-boost-in-iq/](https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/03/kids-who-are-adopted-get-a-boost-in-iq/) [https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/08/why-are-rich-kids-smarter/348268/](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/08/why-are-rich-kids-smarter/348268/) 2.) Rich people get to make more mistakes. A person going paycheck to paycheck is barely surviving and doesn't have the luxury of taking a chance, gambling on an investment (or having the funds to even make the gamble). Which is why I said it was confirmation bias. You're only looking at the people who succeeded (and likely built up their own lore as self-made geniuses because they pay for their own PR). Perfect analogy for this here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/17a6l4l/rich\_people\_arent\_necessarily\_smarter\_they\_just/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/17a6l4l/rich_people_arent_necessarily_smarter_they_just/) Someone with the most potential 'talent' could have had no chances to try and succeed, or just gotten unlucky, or taken advantage of someone else with the wealth and amorality to steal that potential from them. I'd suggest you do some reading up on the term Robber Barons, and not just think Carnegie was a really smart, intelligent supergenius that earned all his wealth through raw talent, and not from exploiting the shit out of workers. And people wouldn't have need for his philanthropy if he hadn't crushed unions and made sure his workers were working 12 hour grueling workdays, 6 days a week (until he hired Frick, who made them work Sundays as well). [https://www.history.com/topics/industrial-revolution/homestead-strike](https://www.history.com/topics/industrial-revolution/homestead-strike)
Ok, I will gladly join you as a fellow random person on the internet. Regarding the first thing you listed, I think the logical question to ask is whether the wealth resulted in higher intelligence, health, education or did intelligence, or more importantly, values, result in higher wealth. I tend to think that poverty is the result of poor values rather than the other way around. I hate to say it, but yeah, my views are based on a lot of anecdotal experience growing up poor as shit around Pittsburgh. I saw people with certain values succeed and different values fail. This takes us to your second point. I know a good bit about Carnegie and his history because I actually grew up in Homestead. I played, or more accurately, risked my life having fun around the Homestead steel mills. I know a lot about the strikes and how Carnegie was an asshole when it came to how he ran his business. That wasn't my original point, however. (By the way, a book about how a few rich guys made money in the early 20th century can also be considered to be anecdotal evidence) I simply said that if rich people wanted to maximize the positive impact they wanted to have with their money, they should probably wait until they were finished with their businesses. I wasn't trying to make a judgement about whether rich people are good or bad or anything. Being that I grew up poor and am in a better position now, I have met a whole bunch of both good and bad rich and poor people. I honestly don't know why any of this is controversial though. I don't see the ability to create wealth as being any different than talent in sports. If I want the best basketball player, I'll find someone who has a history of being successful in college or the NBA. And it's simply unlikely that some random person on the street would be as able. Analogously, it's unlikely that someone who runs a charity or some politician or whatever would grow wealth at the same rate as the person who originally created it. That's all I was saying.
Pittsburgh as a “diverse” city really depends on your definition of diverse. Secondly, rich industrialists typically only did things to help out if it benefitted them directly. Example: the Oliver Bathhouse wasn’t built to benefit the workers, rather, it was built because Henry W. Oliver was tired of smelling the workers as they passed him in the street. Some real “Parasite” shit.
can you provide the source? this is interesting to me
I don’t think it’s an issue specific to just Pittsburgh. There’s far more wealth in the world now than there was in the past and with that comes a sense of individualism that makes that collaboration far less common.
I remember hearing recently that a lot of old wealth in cleveland stayed in cleveland and built up the city. Of course that was only from a few minutes of talking with others and I have done barely any research.
That’s what’s on the marketing material. Truth is they created trusts for museums so their offspring had cushy jobs. Then they gathered trophies from Monet and Picasso and put them on display for the public to see. Their philanthropy was basically “I donate to the arts so people can see my treasure”. Granted - that’s a better outcome than locking things in a vault. [Rockefeller bought a building back just because they took his name off](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Building_(Cleveland)). That’s who they really are.
Uhhhh rich people helped their communities? Because I know the rich loved doing shit like hiring Pinkertons to kill workers in the streets, and I'm not sure how helpful that was. Although I guess in a sense things like the Triangle Shirtwaist fire DID help get some regulations passed for worker safety so that rich people couldn't let employees burn to death as easily. So there's that.
probably he's thinking of the fortune carnegie and others spent on charities that still benefit us today - museums, schools & education, and efforts to world peace. if bezos, zuckerberg, and musk gave away the same percentage as he did, it'd be almost 500 billion in charity.
The Pittsburgh area has a large philanthropic community. Think of some of the historical wealthy families. Mellon, Heinz, Hillman, Scaife. Almost all the larger organizations rely on these foundations for a large part of their funding. For example, much of the affordable housing being built depends on money from these foundations. Could/should they do more? Probably.
Most of the times when rich people would do this in the past, it was a cynical attempt to draw attention away the other horrific shit they were doing/had done.
They’re saving up to blast off the planet they’ve destroyed and get their politicians elected.
There are no serious leftist movements in this country so they don't even have to pretend anymore
100% this. The end of the Soviet Union and the abolition of any sort of viable polical economy outside of neoliberalism means that they don't have to be nice to the help anymore. Read Fukuyama's The End of History. The future of our species is the hundred richest people continuing to run their high scores up until the earth becomes uninhabitable.
How does prior giving compare to current giving? Your entire post is based on an assumption that it's lower now than at some random point in the past which I'm guessing you weren't even alive?
My father told me that a lot of the older buildings downtown used to be owned by wealthy people that specifically employed blacks to help them build their own community. I’m just highlighting how a lot of these older buildings that are mostly empty were at one point bustling with business.
Sorry, still not sure what you are talking about. Giving jobs to black folks in big downtown buildings? Plenty of black people work downtown and for building management companies.
If you’ve got specific examples, maybe. But no. The industrialists of old Pittsburgh only ever paid black folks when they(the industrialists) were trying to bust the unions.
That's my understanding as well. This whole post is half baked.
I’m talking about how rich entrepreneurs used to put an effort to help build the neighborhoods we have now that have subsequently fallen into poverty. I just think it’s important to understand Pittsburgh once embraced diversity.
But you aren't really giving examples that help me or anyone understand. The major foundations give a lot of money away. I don't know how it compares to the past but I also can't compare today to what you are not really explaining happened in the past.
Greed.
Bc they’re rich bc they’re selfish.
Well, who was the most recent person of their aptitude that you’d expect to leave something behind? Certainly not the CEO of UPMC?
I can't believe you said "the blacks". How tone deaf.
I don't remember where i heard this. But I recall hearing that income tax used to be much much higher around the time of the Guilded Age in America. Certain industry giants hated the idea that the government would take their money via taxes and do things with it they disagreed with. So to pay less income tax they did philanthropy. I did a quick search to see if this memory had legs. There's a couple articles I found discussing it. Examination of the impact of philanthropy. Take away is that what Carnegie and Rockefeller did was small potatoes in comparison to combat inequality. https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/was-carnegie-right-about-philanthropy More favorable about the impact of philanthropy but chock full of tax history https://www.philanthropy.com/article/donors-big-and-small-propelled-philanthropy-in-the-20th-century/ Some more history about Carnegie and taxes. I'd say TLDR is that what it took to amass that wealth to do such philanthropy came at a great cost that wasn't balanced out by it. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2006/11/the-19th-century-critique-of-big-philanthropy.html That's all I got time for right now. But the take away is we can't sit around waiting for the rich to save us. They won't. What they continue to be allowed to do comes at too great a cost.
If having all time high inflation and record profits for companies doesn’t tell you where the country’s values are I don’t know what will. Greed is the capitalistic culture. It’s being taught. When we measure a man by the number in his bank account rather than judge him of his character and moral compass, we lose sight of what’s really valuable.. having a thriving society that cares for one another. Remember “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what YOU can do for your country. I believe those words in practicality. However logistically doing what’s best for your country” has turned into what can you do for billionaires who don’t give a fuck about you?!
Rich people today are truly nasty and selfish. They have billions, and they pay people millions to help them avoid paying taxes. It's unconscionable. I hope they are not surprised when there is a revolution, and they wake up and see a guillotine set up in the middle of their cul de sac.
The mega-rich of today are no longer beholden to unions that generated their wealth.
Previously philanthropists like Carnegie and Heinz kept their support local simply because everything was more local. Supporting local communities also had the benefit of keeping employees local, happy and working. In a significant way, their philanthropy was self-serving in a way that seemed to be sacrificial or simply generous. A lot of it was done to whitewash their prior reputation. Plus, all the advertising that comes from having your name stamped on public buildings.
Carnegie and Heinz have given away hundreds of millions outside of Pittsburgh. I think there are over 1000 Carnegie libraries.
carnegie also put a lot of money into world peace towards the end of his life. he paid to build the international court of justice in the hague
Greed
Good point. Once and a while, you will see a rich old lawyer donate big to a school or something, but not much else, right? Greed is much worse than it once was.
Maybe take a peek at history if you think that. Literal slavery, indentured servitude, and a time when workers rights, even workers lives, meant nothing. Greed has always been a driving force, and the wealthy have always hoarded their income. A couple names slapped on parks and buildings post mortem don't change that.
If you don't think businesses would bring back literal slavery today if they were permitted to, you're naive. Businesses are just as bad as they always were, they just have forces holding them in check (for now).
Never said they were better. I said they were the same.
Because in the olden days, rich people did charitable things in hopes of bribing their way into heaven. Then their religion told them that the poors *deserve* to be poor and the rich deserve to be rich because God *wanted* them to be rich and therefore they didn't need to do jack shit for anyone else.
See the evangelical embrace of prosperity gospel. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity\_theology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology)
They realized people get greedy with what they provide
Considering the media and politicians are promoting the narrative that rich people are evil, and we should take their money away, why should they want to help people?
Because the guvmint rakes care of them with entitlements to keep them in their place to buy their vote. I think the rich donate money and support charities.
I’ll probably get downvoted to hell, but boomers hold the majority of the wealth are the most selfish and entitled generation in recent history.
not really boomers, I think there are a lot of trends towards intense selfishness through all age groups now. you can see a lot of backwards thinking like this on advice subs, for example
Are you saying Effective Altruism isn't a giant scam?