You Re Not Imagining It The Rich Are Getting Richer

Consider the fact that in 2019 alone, Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth has increased by 40%. He’s added $20 billion to his net worth in 2016, according to a report from Bloomberg. He’s had one of the best financial years of his life despite the turmoil and crisis that Facebook has faced.  Steve Ballmer has seen his net worth double since the beginning of 2017 despite not actively working anymore and buying a $2 billion dollar NBA team. As for Jeff Bezos, even paying out $35 billion to his ex-wife hasn’t hurt him much. His net worth is currently the same as it was at the beginning of 2018. And despite being worth a whopping $103 billion, he’s only the third richest man in the world as of this moment. That’s where things like the Giving Pledge and the push to give more sooner in life runs into trouble. Bill Gates, for instance, saw his fortune increase by $18 billion in 2019 despite running what is regarded as the most serious foundation in philanthropy. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gives away $5 billion every year in grants. Basically, it’s pretty hard to give your money away when you’re worth many billions. The only way to really do it and reduce your net worth would be, as Vox points out, to devote “tons of time, tons of study, and tons of staff.” Billionaires have only a couple of solutions to this problem. Make enormous one-time donations that could be ineffective over the long haul (for a number of reasons including not being well-vetted), try to increase the size of their staff so they can make more donations at a faster pace, or just acknowledge that donating, say $50 billion during their lifetime is an impossible task and set up a perpetual foundation (think John Paul Getty) to handle it once you’re gone. Paul Allen’s heirs ran into this problem when he died last year. Allen had a net worth of $20 billion. He was not married. He did not have any children. His estate was left to his sister Jody, who suddenly found herself thrust into the role of big-money philanthropy as well as the owner of an NFL and NBA franchise. Allen was a member of the Giving Pledge. When he signed the pledge in 2010, his net worth was $13.5 billion. He gave over $2 billion to charity over his lifetime, but his sister is still tasked with $20 billion and what to do with that. Will she give his money to his family foundation or another charity to follow her brother’s Giving Pledge? She is in the process of downsizing his company Vulcan and trying to sell his $400 million airplane. There’s not a huge market for a $400 million plane, as you can imagine. Still though, having the problem of having so much money that you literally can’t give it away fast enough would be a good problem to have.