To give is to receive, they say, and I don't doubt it. For example, every time I give money to an organization, I receive a note thanking me for my donation and asking me to give more money, in the convenient pre-stamped envelope. Is there an echo in here? Or is this desperation?
Everywhere you look, people are in need. Among the neediest are the ones who have been "giving" the most to people who say they're needy but are not, if that makes any sense—if anything makes sense about America's economic priorities at present. As New York magazine reports, Dick Fuld, CEO of Lehman Brothers, "earned" $480 million in bonuses in recent years and lives in a 20-room Greenwich (Conn.) mansion, one of his five houses. This even as Lehman went belly up, the largest bankruptcy in history. As our own billions are shoveled to Wall Street sharks like Fuld—who don't even thank us for our donations—we are asked to give still more. That's the crap shoot on which this fragile economy has been based since the 1990s. When the inevitable collapse occurred, despite ample warnings, it was as if no one was responsible, that it was all a big unforeseeable mystery. And that is the greatest con of all.
I'm reminded of when I worked in a D.C. bookshop. Earlier in the day, before I was held up at gunpoint and a robber made off with the princely sum of $77, I had been on the phone to a publisher and a magazine, both of which owed me far more than $77 for work I'd already done. The robber was caught and sent back to prison (on the public's tab), and the $77 was returned to the shop, yet I never heard back from either of my creditors—not even a thank you for my hard unremunerated work. Outside of the threat of violence, I saw no difference in the two robberies. The robbers of my work were never held accountable; they in fact went on to start new business ventures.
There's nothing good to be said about the bailouts to AIG, Citibank and Bear Stearns, and the hoped-for cash infusion to Lehman. We have been shoveling our money at entities that collectively flip us the middle finger while we are still required to pay our own bills. Nor can anything good be said about the drain on our economy of the Iraq War, for which no Bush regime official will be held accountable—a war that could have been avoided had they heeded the myriad warnings about bin Laden. I can still hear Condi Rice saying, after having been presented a month before the 9/11 attacks with a memo entitled "'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States": "No one could have anticipated these attacks." There's that ultimate con again.
I guess, then, it takes some gall for me to ask you to give until it hurts to those who really are less fortunate than you. After all, Connecticut ranks first in the nation in average household income, and yet near the bottom (36th) in per capita philanthropic contributions, says the Connecticut Council for Philanthropy (www.CTphilanthropy.org). Massachusetts ranks in the middle of the pack by most "generosity indices" based on percentage of assets given to charity, while New Hampshire and Vermont are near the bottom. There are other factors to consider, of course, but to paraphrase Bill Clinton, we can do better.
How about this for an idea: rather than spend $25 on a Wal-Mart gift card for your sister or brother—and, yes, there are things that say "I love you" more eloquently than a Wal-Mart gift card—donate to the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts (www.foodbankwma.org) or the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless (www.mahomeless.org).
Think about those gift cards: you are giving $25 to $50 of your cash to a business for a piece of plastic that may or may not be used. Consider that many people are as scatterbrained as I. Consider how small the cards are. Consider the many places in your office or home or car into which they can disappear, never to be found. If they are never found, they are never used. Even if only 5 percent of those who get these cards lose them or never use them, that's a substantial wad of cash going into the corporate till for, literally, nothing.
Money for nothing. That appears to have been the operative philosophy of our economy these past two decades.
