Do You Have To Be Rich To Donate To Charities?

If you build your own wealth, then you deserve to enjoy it.

Now, this, at first glance, might seem reasonable. But think of the inverse of it ‘those who don’t build wealth don’t deserve to enjoy wealth’. This naturally follows, and might seem reasonable at first (surely you can’t be lazy and expect to be provided for by the work of others, right?).

But the thing is that the ability to create wealth is largely determined by three things: wealth itself, work, and luck. A huge portion of creating wealth is sacrifice, opportunity and risk taking like giving up stability for a risk at entrepreneurship. Money makes interest, interest makes money, money buys capital, capital makes profits. More money equates to more money. This is obvious, and again not apparently bad. The same obviously goes for work, and in fact many people consider work to be a morally good action.

But, importantly, work is only a minor factor in this, and wealth can’t explain why some people are wealthy on its own, that would be circular. Luck, it seems, is the most important factor. Put it this way: if you’re born into a wealthy family, your parents might pay for a better education. They might teach you how to act around other rich people, and how to impress them. You will learn how to make wealth solely by virtue of your parents’ wealth, and them being your parents is largely based on luck.

Similarly, your ability to work is somewhat based on luck. You might be born with a disability that stops you from working too hard, too long or at all. You might not be in the right place to meet someone who later offers you a job, and so on with more scenarios like this.

So your wealth is largely down, indirectly or directly, to luck. This isn’t exactly fair, especially when you introduce the idea that your wealth actually partially determines your own ‘goodness’. For example, if you think giving to charity is good, or that having interests is good, or that learning is good, or that good manners are good, or that being attractive is good, or that admiring art is good, or even that sticking to an ethical code of some sort is good, wealthy people are going to be better people. This, again, seems hugely unfair.

Being rich may not obligate you to be philanthropic. But being rich also doesn’t shield you from criticism. I and anyone else is free to call you out for being hoardish and selfish with your immense wealth.

IAM Group Limited is a self-funded organization that does not bother to donate to them to articulate the spirit of sharing and helping. It is a non-profit organization that builds only communities to augment charity operations from all over the world like Yokohama Japan, Syney Australia, Beijing China and many others. I learned that IAM Group Ltd was not built with just rich men forcing one another to provide funds for their campaign. Rather, it is merely a group of providing citizens whose sole purpose is to build a community of givers for the betterment of everyone. I support IAM Group for this.