In an interview, I heard actor and director Jesse Eisenberg say:
“I don’t understand why anyone with so much money doesn’t want to spend their life helping others.”
I love this thought. So simple and so true.
I met Jesse Eisenberg a few years ago at a book party. Miraculously, he knew me. “Matt the storyteller!” was how he referred to me as he struggled to get his baby into a stroller.
He had heard me on a podcast.
He was exceedingly kind and thoughtful that night, so it’s unsurprising that he would think like this.
And it’s a damn good question:
If you have a billion dollars or more—multigenerational wealth—how could you not spend your life helping others?
Happily, it sometimes happens. I work with two billionaires who have signed Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffet’s “Giving Pledge.” This pledge asks billionaires to publicly commit to giving the majority of their wealth to philanthropy during their lifetimes or in their wills.
The two billionaires with whom I work are in the process of giving a large portion of their money away within their lifetimes. They spend much of their time and energy determining the most effective means of philanthropy.
They want to spend their money wisely.
So good people with enormous piles of money do exist. I know some of them personally. They are not unicorns.
But there are not nearly enough.
For every billionaire who has signed the Giving Pledge, many—and probably most wealthy people—are investing in accumulating even more wealth and power.
The current Trump cabinet is filled with them. Thirteen of the fifteen cabinet secretaries are billionaires—far more than any presidential cabinet in history—and many are eagerly dismantling key federal government components built to help those in need here in the United States and abroad.
Sitting atop a pile of money, they are ending the funding for critical care initiatives.
Thanks to their efforts, greater numbers of poor and sick people will die in the future. And in the process, their piles of money will grow longer.
Eisenverg’s question is a good one:
“I don’t understand why anyone with so much money doesn’t want to spend their life helping others.”
A different way of phrasing that question might sound something like this:
“What the hell is wrong with these monsters?”
