What Should a Billionaire Give – and What Should You?

I just read an amazing article from the Sunday New York Times Magazine by Peter Singer a professor of bioethics at Princeton. Singer combines some of my favorite subjects, philosophy, economics and the need to end extreme poverty in the world.

What Should a Billionaire Give – and What Should You?
By PETER SINGER
Published: December 17, 2006
A philosopher’s case for donating more than you’re comfortable with.

Here is an exerpt:

Few people have set a personal example that would allow them to tell Gates that he has not given enough, but one who could is Zell Kravinsky. A few years ago, when he was in his mid-40s, Kravinsky gave almost all of his $45 million real estate fortune to health-related charities, retaining only his modest family home in Jenkintown, near Philadelphia, and enough to meet his family’s ordinary expenses. After learning that thousands of people with failing kidneys die each year while waiting for a transplant, he contacted a Philadelphia hospital and donated one of his kidneys to a complete stranger.

The article is pretty long, but worth the read.

peace,

will