Billions to Billionares? This Time Maybe a Good Thing

Before his excellent chat with Al Gore on the Climate Crisis, Jon Stewart and Melissa Bee of the Daily Show had some fun with the announcement that Warren Buffett is donating $31 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It sounds so preposterous to begin with, it hardly needs skilled embellishment to get a laugh: one of the richest humans alive who is not Bill Gates decides to give away a huge fortune, who does he give it to? Bill Gates.

But I watched Bill and Melinda Gates with Warren Buffett on the Charlie Rose show, and I have to say it actually makes a lot of sense. So say what you will about Bill Gates and his empire, or Buffett and his investments, or even Charlie getting so cosy with corporate titans, I have to give these people their props. The Gates Foundation is doing good work, work that no one else is doing, and they're doing it well.

Their work is split between world health and U.S. education. In the poorest areas of the world, they target AIDS and diseases and conditions that kill and maim millions of people, mainly children, that are the result of poverty. Because the victims are almost exclusively poor people in poor places, drug companies have no profit incentive to develop medicines and vaccines. The Gates Foundation works with drug companies, governments and other nonprofits, not to just throw money at problems, but to solve those problems.

Among their domestic educational efforts is the support of public libraries. They must have foreseen the rolling eyes this might inspire: shades of Andrew Carnegie and using ill-gotten gains for some symbolic and self-aggrandizing philanthopy, instead of paying workers a living wage. Aside from the other side of this argument (that millions of workers' sons and daughters started on the road to knowledge and a better life in thousands of Carnegie libraries), it is a brave act to set yourself up for that kind of criticism with such an apparent parallel. But more than in any time since Carnegie's bequests jump-started the idea as well as reality of public libraries in America, these valuable institutions in every community really need the help just to survive.

And Mr. & Mrs. Gates don't just sign checks or hold meetings in their Home of Tomorrow. They go where the aid goes, to work out the best way to deliver it, to see if it is working . Once again, it's easy to make fun of wealthy celebs who get their photos taken with starving babies in their arms, but there is a real tradition of this kind of work--I think of Ingrid Bergman as well as Angelina Jolie--and it does help in many ways. But it sounds like the Gates are doing more than photo ops, and more often. It makes me wonder, who among us would really go back to the poorest parts of Bangladesh repeatedly? How many of us would go even once?

So check out the Foundation's site. Buffett's 31 billions (or however much it turns out to be, since Buffett said a bunch of it is in stocks) will at least be well spent to build a better future, which is more than we can say for the billions Bush and his buddies are burning.