Americans, on the whole, are generous when it comes to charitable giving, especially compared with Europeans. Part of the reason may be that there’s less of a safety net and more reliance on donations, part may be that Europeans are stingier. Here are some questions about philanthropy:
- Why don’t billionaires fund opera buildings or museums any more like they did in the gilded age? Why is it all biomedical research and poverty reduction? I don’t think this is a problem, but I’d like to know why this changed
- Why is there so much boring philanthropy? Billionaires would be ideally placed to fund exciting, high-risk projects, but they rarely do
- How constrained are billionaires in what they fund because bad choices could damage the valuations of their companies?
- What proportion of philanthropic giving comes from billionaires, how much comes from the merely rich, and how much comes from everyone else? How does this compare to tax receipts?
- To what extent is it true that philanthropy is just a way to avoid taxes?
- What’s more effective, philanthropy or public funding? There are areas like biomedical research where that comparison should be straightforward
- As society has become richer, has the good that money can do decreased since there’s so much of it? Has the relative importance of other factors, such as high motivation in those aiming to improve the world, increased?
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Nehaveigur 