THE month of December began with something to like: a post on Facebook in which its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, promised to use the vast majority of their vast fortune to support charitable causes. (More than 1.5m people responded with a thumbs-up.) In celebration of the birth of their first child, the pair announced the creation of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which will eventually receive 99% of the shares they own in Facebook, a pile currently valued at $45 billion.
Mr Zuckerberg has already added to the lives of more than a billion people by creating an extraordinarily popular social network. Now he is compounding that good with an act of generosity that can only be applauded. Nonetheless, the donation—and others like it—raise two thorny questions. The first concerns how such a staggering fortune could ever have been accumulated; the second whether philanthropy can salve the sting of the increasingly unequal distribution of wealth that it exemplifies.
That the rich are getting richer, and the richest are getting richer fastest, is beyond doubt. Research* by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman of the...Continue reading
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