Some thoughts on Modern Philanthropy & Humanist Values in a Winners Take All World

by Gary Berg-Cross (WASH Board Member)

The super wealthy are meeting in Davos again and as one context Oxfam notes that the wealth gap widening. This is not a new topic for Oxfam but this year they observe that around the world wealth inequality is what they call "out of control." They observe that it is doing particular harm to women and provide a report with these stats:

“billionaire fortunes increased by 12 percent last year—the equivalent of $2.5 billion a day—while the 3.8 billion people who make up the world's poorest half saw their wealth decline by 11 percent. “

So while we live in what seems a productive time all around us there is also failure (like students learning less), along with but expensive new things like American medicine and its drugs that more people are being shut out from. Sure there has been a tremendous amount of innovation over the last 40 years but still there are stats that show that half of Americans, the bottom half of Americans, 117 million Americans, literally have no more money in their weekly paycheck after this 40 years of innovation. Why?

It doesn seem to be an innovation shortage. Heard about the latest AI renovation? What we have may be a progress shortage. Meaning that in this wealthy era the wealth is not trickling down in a progressive fashion to help the common need.

As Oxfam's report suggests the poorest half of the global population is actually seeing its net worth dwindle so it is also a gap era like the 1920s & the Gilded Age. It's an argument that economist Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, makes and explains why is simple terms. It's about the growing inherited wealth via return on investment.

The ratio of wealth to income is rising in all developed countries and absent extraordinary interventions, we should expect that trend to continue. But if it continues, the future will look like the 19th century, where economic elites have predominantly inherited their wealth rather than working for it. Since this wealth does not rely on work, or work's values it may not even care about the quality of life of those who do the work. And that is a problem.

This point is also made by Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. Both warn of the socio-economic impacts of a widening gap. Among those problems are changes in the lives of working-class Americans, rooted in policy choices and shifts in technology as well as the world situation. Shifts include outsourcing to poor parts of the world without union protection, stagnant wages, erratic hours, defanged unions, deindustrialization, ballooning debt, nonexistent sick leave, dismal schools, predatory lending, and dynamic scheduling. All problems.

But wait. There is mitigating charity and philanthropy. Can the super-rich and their companies may save us through enlightened charity? Take Microsoft for example. Microsoft has unveiled plans to commit $500 million to advance affordable housing solutions across the city of Seattle, Washington. The money, to be distributed as loans and grants, will kick-start new solutions to the city’s housing crisis, where income increases have lagged behind rising housing costs for professions like teachers. Good.

But is it good enough and the right stuff?

Some think not. Philanthropy of the super-rich may not be an inadequate substitute for a fairer world – it may actually be intentionally and unintentionally part of the system that perpetuates the gross unfairness of mass inequality. That is the argument made in Anand Giridharadas “Winners take all.” He argues that you can inspire the rich to do more good but never tell them to do less harm (such as moderating the wealth gap by imposing inheritance taxes). And he goes to argue that you can inspire the super-rich to give back in a personal charity say, but not to take less by such things as providing a living wage or keeping jobs in the US.

And you can inspire them to join a benign, light solution, but never accuse them of being part of the problem (how come you let foreign sources run free on your web site?)

As Stiglitz insists we need to ask more of the wealthy and have them understand the larger non-economic picture. A humanist picture if you will.

It starts with us all understanding that inequality is not just the result of bottom line economic forces. It is soceo-political and always has been. With current Citizens United type rulings and policies that give wealth political influence we are stuck with the problem. It isn’t inevitable that return on large capital will also be greater than overall economic growth. It is targeted political policies, processes and laws themselves currently make this so. And these policies are affected by the historical level and nature of built in status, political and economic inequality. Greater inequality entrenches greater power in the wealthy, who will reflexively use that greater power to double-down on policies (low capital-gains rates, low inheritance taxes, low barriers to campaign finance itself) that ensure greater inequality, and so on, in a vicious cycle.

So sure, economic charity may patch things up here and there, but in a wider view only an enlightened politics can correct for the depredations that the super-rich's gobbling wealth growth promises.

As a Humanist these problems trouble me. And these things are part of a rationally compassionate future that we envision (as discussed in a September – Is this a Humanist Century). They are important for all Free Thinkers to consider. Humanists need to concentrate on improving the things of this world rather than simply combating the illusions of supernaturalism. As secular humanists we may applaud some charitable efforts, but question them from a deeper look at a deeper constellation or system based on humanist values and principles. These including promoting fairness, truth and justice.

Who can we partner with us and how can be shape philanthropy to take on some of these issues we value like the separation of church and state? This would include the continued problem of the massing of wealth and power by religious and ethically religious groups.

We can also ask, “Does a notable amount of philanthropy support value free inquiry & truth, as a norm?” or

“Does a notable amount of philanthropy support ethics based on critical intelligence and critical thinking to establish truth?”

And what about supporting a moral education, that the value of a person is not entirely based on their group identify?

These and other issues such as how hard a sell is it to promote action that will mitigate likely problems and advance the common good will be discussed at the January 26^th meeting of the WASH Maryland-DC chapter at the Maryland Chevy Chase library (1:30 -3:30).

All are welcome.

Historical Context for Putting Humanism to Work on Social Issues

by Fred Edwords

The following is a portion of the talk:
Putting Humanism to Work on Social Issues  
presented by Fred Edwords to the WASH MDC group on March 28th, 2015.  This material provided context for small group sessions to develop ideas on how to make society "more humane, fair and inclusive."
This is copyrighted material is posted here with Fred's permission. 

Hisotrical context for group discussion:

".. reactionary faith systems aren’t just personal. They’re political. People with theocratic ideas are hard at work in our government, finding ways to spend our tax dollars to defeat our values. And it has often been we humanists who have served as the early warning system for others—alerting our liberal and moderate religious friends that the extremists are going to get a piece of them after they finish with us.

Nonetheless, not all social issues are dominated by a reactionary religious component. So as humanists we’ve tried to think in a larger way about the sort of society we want to live in. This has caused us to examine such conditions as the military-industrial complex, our loss of freedom through government censorship or spying, racial profiling, climate change, and so on. It has also induced us to propose ideas for a better world through improvements in education, the enfranchisement of the disenfranchised, and the spread of democratic institutions.

Humanism has a long history of this. Indeed, it is foundational to Ethical Culture. In 1877, Ethical Culturists established the first free kindergarten in New York and San Francisco. That same year, Ethical Culturists established the Visiting Nurse Service, the first of its type that did NOT do missionary work for organized religion but focused exclusively on the physical care of those in need.

In the 1880s, the Ethical Culture movement established schools for the children of the working class, engaged in relief work, founded the City Club to fight political corruption in New York City, established the first settlement house in the United States to address the social needs of urban slum communities, founded the Child Study Association to develop knowledge about the human nature of children, and launched the Legal Aid Society. To the end of the 19th century, the Ethical Culture movement helped the disabled, built schools, campaigned against child labor, worked for slum clearance and improved public health, and developed food cooperatives. In the twentieth century, the movement advanced moral education for children, helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, engaged in union arbitration, launched the American Civil Liberties Union, aided refugees, developed adult education programs, and developed progressive summer camps for youth.

With the American Humanist Association, activist involvements became known almost from its founding in 1941. Throughout the 1940s and 50s, AHA humanists were involved in civil liberties, birth control, and environmental protection cases tried in court. One of the most prominent of these humanists was Corliss Lamont, a philosopher who successfully stood up to the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joseph McCarthy.  Another was Vashti McCollum; her U.S. Supreme Court victory in McCollum v. Board of Education established that American public schools must be religiously neutral. On the environmental front, a frequent issue was the value of restraint and how the environment is damaged by runaway population growth—matters which are still not adequately acted upon around the world.

Early in the decade of the 1960s, the AHA became the first national membership organization to endorse elective abortion. The AHA and the American Ethical Union worked together to establish the rights of nontheistic conscientious objectors to military service.  

AHA leaders also actively worked to establish memorial societies which offered alternatives to the traditional mortuary-controlled burial arrangements dominant at the time. Because of this humanist advance, cremation and humanistic memorial services became more widely available and less costly.

In 1974 the National Commission for Beneficent Euthanasia was established as an AHA program. It issued the groundbreaking statement, “A Plea for Beneficent Euthanasia,” a position paper signed by medical, legal, and religious leaders.  It called for “a more enlightened public opinion to transcend traditional taboos and move in the direction of a compassionate view toward needless suffering in dying.” All of this was long before the activism of the Hemlock Society, Jack Kevorkian, and current right-to-die legislation.

In 1976, the AHA issued its “New Bill of Sexual Rights and Responsibilities,” prompting Time magazine to remark that humanists celebrate responsible sexual freedom after centuries of bondage to church and state. The issues presented in this statement are still considered controversial, as evidenced by the continuing debates over them in mainline Christian and Jewish denominations.

In 1977, the AHA took a stand against age discrimination in matters of employment and retirement. "A Declaration for Older Persons" was signed by members of Congress, labor leaders, business executives, and religious leaders, earning it national attention. Many of the principles expressed in this statement have since become codified into law.

In the 1980s various humanist organizations developed substance-abuse recovery programs, such as Secular Sobriety and SMART Recovery, which offer a workable secular alternative to the more traditional-religion based Alcoholics Anonymous. Because of this work, in many communities today the courts allow alcoholics and drug addicts more choices in the selection of a substance-abuse recovery program.

Today, on the charitable front, there is the AHA’s Humanist Charities, which now has become a program of the larger and more influential humanist relief organization, the Foundation Beyond Belief. It has occasionally raised more money for particular projects than the churches have.

Humanists, individually and collectively, have also made their presence felt on the international scene. Following World War II, three prominent humanists became first directors of major divisions of the United Nations: Julian Huxley of UNESCO, Brock Chisholm of the World Health Organization, and John Boyd Orr of the Food and Agricultural Organization.

Then, in 1952, at the Municipal University of Amsterdam, Julian Huxley chaired the first international humanist gathering. Over 200 humanist leaders from around the world, met and formed the International Humanist and Ethical Union. Today this organization, representing over 3 million humanists worldwide, is involved in social action projects in various parts of the developing world and is active in the Council of Europe and the United Nations.

So we are part of a grand social-activist tradition that is viewed as an important expression of our philosophy. The underlying premise of it all is that we human beings can make the world over in any way that we will.  If we can agree on it and work toward it, we can eventually have it. That’s how we’ve rendered a number of diseases extinct, or nearly so. That's how we have created international law.

This was part of the reason why, when I was editor of the Humanist magazine, I focused on social issues: particularly the hard questions, the sometimes unpopular questions. I wanted to discover and develop what humanists should say about the central issues of our time.

These, of course, are harder issues to tackle. The facts aren't always as easy to find and the mistaken beliefs not always as easy to identify. Religion and popular superstition are much

easier targets. So we always run the risk of making mistakes, of aligning ourselves with the wrong side, or of not agreeing with each other. But to exclusively take the easier path would not only reduce the invigorating challenge, it would leave us humanists with little to say on leading concerns in our changing world. It would marginalize us as irrelevant.

Therefore, if we agree that the dual humanist values of reason and compassion are among the best tools for building a better world, then it is we humanists who should put those tools to work.... "

© Copyright 2015 by Fred Edwords.  

Posted by Gary Berg-Cross, WASH MDC coordinator