Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich took to Salon.com to discuss something he sees as a growing problem in America.  The problem: billionaires. 

Becoming so fabulously wealthy that you can only be described properly as a “billionaire” may seem like the ultimate culmination of the “American Dream,” but Reich makes a few solid points in his critique of the super rich. 

First and foremost, it is indeed telling when a group of forty wealthy individuals can come together and donate a whopping $125 billion collectively to various charitable trusts.  No person would ever willfully bankrupt themselves in the name of charity.  Obviously to them $125 billion must not be all that much.   

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are lauded publicly for the sheer volume of their charitable contributions, but this is ignoring the fact that they have so much money to give in the first place.   
Bill Gates, with a net worth of about $50 billion depending on how the markets are doing, could easily give half of his fortune to charity without noticing a dent in his quality of life. In fact, he could give 99 percent of his fortune away and still be one of the richest men in America. Gates could give away 99.9 percent and still be the richest man most of us have ever met – 0.01 percent of Bill Gates’ fortune is roughly $50 million. 

In the last year, the number of billionaires in America increased.  During one of the worst recessions in American history the number of people worth more than some small countries actually went up.  Worldwide the average billionaire saw his or her market value increase by $500 million in the past twelve months. 

Meanwhile, 15 million Americans are out of work, hourly wages have been stagnate for a decade, minimum wage is worse today than it was in 1960, and Republicans are complaining about the evils of taxing the rich. 

The rich can afford to take the hit.  The super rich, like Buffett and Gates, literally have so much money that it is beyond reason.  Yet somehow, given all of this, Warren Buffet pays only a bit more in taxes at the end of the year than the average working mom doing second shift to keep her children in a good school district. 

There is nothing wrong with earning billions of dollars.  We all would love to one day have such monumental wealth.  The problem is what is done with all of that money.  As more and more money is shifted into the hands of the super rich it shifts from being a liquid part of the economy to being a digitized number in a bank account.  Even donating to charity is merely moving the money from one bank to another under a different name. 

If the super rich truly wanted to give back to society and help rebuild America they could start by using that $125 billion to personally fund all of the failing public schools in the United States.  They could cover teacher salaries, building improvements, construction and expansion, and put together full-ride college scholarships for the best students.  That would tackle one of the real problems faced by every American every day.   

Instead, they opted for the public relations bonanza that is “charitable donation.”  Worse yet, as so many wealthy Americans often do, they probably deducted a portion of the donation from their 2010 taxes leaving the rest of America with the bill.

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