Orthodox Reflections

It is not uncommon to find comparisons of the decrepit United States Empire with the decaying late, pre-Christian Roman Empire.  In one area, the disparity in wealth between the rich and the poor, the US are not only comparable to the Romans – they surpass them.  A study in 2011 found the following:

Over the last 30 years, wealth in the United States has been steadily concentrating in the upper economic echelons. Whereas the top 1 percent used to control a little over 30 percent of the wealth, they now control 40 percent. It’s a trend that was for decades brushed under the rug but is now on the tops of minds and at the tips of tongues.

Since too much inequality can foment revolt and instability, the CIA regularly updates statistics on income distribution for countries around the world, including the U.S. Between 1997 and 2007, inequality in the U.S. grew by almost 10 percent, making it more unequal than Russia, infamous for its powerful oligarchs. The U.S. is not faring well historically, either. Even the Roman Empire, a society built on conquest and slave labor, had a more equitable income distribution.

To determine the size of the Roman economy and the distribution of income, historians Walter Schiedel and Steven Friesen pored over papyri ledgers, previous scholarly estimates, imperial edicts, and Biblical passages. Their target was the state of the economy when the empire was at its population zenith, around 150 C.E. Schiedel and Friesen estimate that the top 1 percent of Roman society controlled 16 percent of the wealth, less than half of what America’s top 1 percent control.

With the transfer of trillions of dollars to the world’s richest people because of covid, this inequality in the US has likely gotten even worse.  This wouldn’t be quite so bad if the super wealthy were using their money for good purposes.  In the Roman Empire, the richest class made good enough use of their money that we still admire their works today.  From the same 2011 study:  ‘But buried at the end, they make a point that’s difficult to parse, yet provocative. They point out that the majority of extant Roman ruins resulted from the economic activities of the top 10 percent.’  In other words, the Roman upper class was responsible for the aqueducts, theaters, temples, baths, etc., before which people stand in awe when they visit former Roman lands.

What have the US billionaires been spending their money on?  Nothing quite so admirable, unfortunately.  While there are some respectable projects funded by some of them, such as housing the poor and treating malaria patients, much of it is going towards a conglomeration of woke social justice nonsense, transhumanism, promoting a one-world government, and regime change operations.  A couple of examples, via Forbes:

Mark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan

Source of Wealth: Facebook

Net Worth: $112.8 billion

Giving Focus: Science, education, criminal justice

Lifetime Giving: $3 billion

The Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) CEO and his wife Priscilla Chan, a doctor, have multiple ambitious goals, including to cure, prevent or manage all diseases. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, their philanthropic and advocacy organization, says it has given out $3 billion in grants since it was founded in 2015, backing scientific and medical research, as well as education and criminal justice reform. At the end of 2021, CZI announced a new, ten-year, $3.4 billion initiative focusing on measuring and analyzing biological processes in the human body. The effort includes the creation of an institute for advanced biomedical imaging and a hub at Harvard working on using AI and machine learning in biology and medicine.

Ted Turner

Source of Wealth: Cable television

Net Worth: $2.3 billion

Giving Focus: United Nations, environment

Lifetime Giving: $1.4 billion

If not for his $1.4 billion of lifetime giving, the man behind Turner Broadcasting and CNN wouldn’t have fallen off Forbes’ list of the 400 richest Americans in 2021. But it was only a matter of time: like many other philanthropic billionaires, Turner signed the Giving Pledge and will donate the majority of his wealth eventually–he’s just closer than most to reaching this goal. The bulk of his philanthropy came before 2014, when he completed a $1 billion pledge to establish the United Nations Foundation, enabling the U.N. to raise money from philanthropists. Turner’s own namesake foundation is focused on environmental protection, which he views as “an effort to ensure the survival of the human species.”

It would seem that the States will not be getting much in the way of timeless architecture, useful public works, etc., from these folks.

Even worse, much of the billionaires’ donations are given in such a way as to further increase their wealth, i.e., to help themselves, rather than to truly help others:

Low and middle income givers are more likely to give directly to local nonprofit charities in their community including youth centers, food banks, and organizations addressing poverty, social needs, arts, and environmental issues.

In contrast, the report finds that wealthy donors are more likely to contribute to their own private foundations and donor-advised funds (DAF), intermediaries that they continue to control.  These donors receive immediate tax reductions in the year of their donation, but as this report shows, the funds may take decades to reach working charities, if ever.

An estimated 41 cents of every 2022 individual donation going to charity went to either a private foundation or DAF, up from 37 cents in 2021. In 2022, 27 percent of individual donations went to DAFs, up from 22 percent in 2021. In 2022, 14 percent of individual donations went to private foundations.

“One of the main drivers of DAF growth is the financial industry’s aggressive marketing of DAFs for their considerable tax benefits, secrecy, and non-existent payout rate,” observed Chuck Collins, author of the report.

Over the past five years, the median payout rate for private foundations has hovered between 5.2 and 5.6 percent. And this payout includes compensation to trustees, overhead, and donations to donor-advised funds (DAFs) which have no payout.

Donations to DAFs are now more than a quarter of all U.S. individual charitable giving. The $85.5 billion donated to DAFs in 2022 made up a full 27 percent of the $319 billion in individual giving that year, up from $73.34 billion and 22 percent in 2021.

The largest DAF sponsors now take in more money each year than our largest public charities. By 2021, seven of the top ten recipients of charitable revenue in the country were DAF sponsors, including the four largest affiliated with Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard and the National Philanthropic Trust.

A significant amount of DAF grants go to other DAFs. We found $2.5 billion in grants going from national donor-advised funds to other national donor-advised funds in 2021 alone.

To their credit, some US billionaires have pledged to give away half their wealth before they die, but once again many of those who made this promise are either slow in fulfilling it or using it as a way to bolster their fortunes (via the same Inequality.org report linked just above):

The report analyzes the progress of the Giving Pledge, founded in 2010 by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, that has inspired over 220 billionaires to pledge to donate half of their wealth during their lifetime. The report found that while a handful of donors are moving funds in a timely manner, most have seen their wealth dramatically increase over the fourteen years since the start of the Giving Pledge and need to pick up the pace of giving.

The report suggests that most of these pledges will be fulfilled by donations to private family foundations and donor-advised funds, delaying the public benefit of the taxpayer subsidized donations.  In the worst case, some Pledgers have used their philanthropy for self-serving purposes, such as taking out loans from their foundations or paying themselves hefty trustee salaries.

The 73 living U.S. Giving Pledgers who were billionaires in 2010 saw their wealth grow by 138 percent, or 224 percent when adjusted for inflation, through 2022. Their combined assets increased from $348 billion in 2010 to $828 billion over those twelve years.

Of these 73 people, 30 of them have seen their wealth increase more than 200 percent when adjusted for inflation. Those with the greatest growth include Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan (1,382 percent), Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna (1,166 percent), Elaine and Ken Langone (755 percent), Arthur M. Blank (739 percent), and Bernie and Billi Marcus (714 percent).

Of the $12 billion in identifiable gifts of over $1 million that the Giving Pledge signers donated to charity in 2022, 68 percent — more than $8 billion — went either to foundations or to DAFs.

The action of some billionaire donors raise concerns that what began as a civic-minded initiative to spur generosity is instead serving to concentrate private wealth and power at taxpayer expense.

Someone might wonder just what it would take to prompt these billionaires to be more generous in their charitable giving.  We have a suggestion in this regard – that they read the lives of the Orthodox saints, particularly the life of St. Melania the Younger of Rome (+439; Feast Day 31 Dec.).

Undoubtedly, she was one of the 1% of the Romans of her day.  It was said that when she and her husband St. Pinian (Apinianus) began giving away their many estates, lands, etc., ‘This aroused opposition from some of the Senate, who were concerned that the selling off of such huge holdings would disrupt the economy of the State itself.’  But more on that in a moment.  First we must see how they came to this point (all quotations below are via OCA.org):

Saint Melania was born in Rome into a devout Christian family. Her parents, people of property and wealth, hoped that their daughter would marry and have children who would inherit their wealth.

At fourteen years of age Melania was married to the illustrious youth Apinianus. From the very beginning of their married life, Saint Melania asked her husband to live with her in chastity or else release her from the marriage. Apinianus answered, “I cannot agree to this right now. When we have two children to inherit the property, then we shall both renounce the world.”

Soon Melania gave birth to a daughter, whom the young parents dedicated to God. Continuing to live together in marriage, Melania secretly wore a hair shirt and spent her nights in prayer. The second child, a boy, was premature and had severe complications. They baptized him, and he departed to the Lord.

Seeing the suffering of his wife, Apinianus asked the Lord to preserve Saint Melania’s life, and he vowed to spend the rest of their life together in chastity. Recovering, Saint Melania stopped wearing her beautiful clothing and jewelry. Soon their daughter also died. The parents of Saint Melania did not support the young couple’s desire to devote themselves to God. It was only when Saint Melania’s father became deathly ill, that he asked their forgiveness and permitted them to follow their chosen path, asking them to pray for him.

At this time St. Pinian was 24 and St. Melania 20.  And here is how they began to use the wealth that the Lord had given them:

They began to visit the sick, to take in wanderers, and to help the indigent. They visited those who were exiled, and mine-convicts, and the destitute, there in debtor’s prison. After selling their estates in Italy and Spain, they generously helped monasteries, hospitals, widows and orphans in Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, Phoenicia, and Palestine.

Many churches and hospitals were built with their assistance. Churches of both West and East benefited from them. . . .

Resuming their voyage, they landed in Africa and helped all the needy there. With the blessing of the local bishops, they made offerings to churches and monasteries. During this time Saint Melania continued to humble her flesh by strict fasting, and she fortified her soul by constantly reading the Word of God, making copies of the sacred books and distributing them to those who lacked them. . . .

At Jerusalem, the saints distributed their remaining gold to the destitute and then spent their days in poverty and prayer. . . .

Later, she founded a monastery, where eventually ninety virgins lived in obedience to Saint Melania. Out of humility, she would not consent to be abbess, and lived and prayed in solitude as before. . . .

By her efforts an oratory and altar were built in the monastery, where they enshrined the relics of saints: the Prophet Zachariah, the holy Protomartyr Stephen, and the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. About this time Saint Apinianus fell asleep in the Lord. Saint Melania buried his relics and there spent another four years in fasting and unceasing prayer.

Saint Melania wanted to build a men’s monastery on the Mount of the Ascension of the Lord. The Lord blessed her intent by sending a benefactor who provided the means for the monastery. Joyfully accepting it, Saint Melania finished the great work in a single year. In this monastery, saintly men began to lift up unceasing prayer in the church of the Ascension of Christ.

What a legacy this is!  Not only providing practical material help to the poor and the sick, but benefiting even more people – thousands and millions – through the building of monasteries and churches, where prayers, divine liturgies with the Holy Mysteries, holy relics, and beauty are present and offered day after day.  To say that these affect thousands and millions is not an exaggeration.  New Martyr Seraphim Zvezdenski in one of his sermons on the Divine Liturgy reminds us that the world exists, the soil produces her fruits, etc., precisely so the Bloodless Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist may continue to be offered; when it is no longer offered, the world will come to an end.  Thus, the Divine Liturgy literally keeps life in continuance upon the earth.  The monastics also pray unceasingly for all the world, a thing of inestimable value; and beauty, as the monks of the Holy Cross Monastery in West Virginia have said recently. Prayer has the power to transform lives and alter the course of history for entire nations; while the relics of the saints in the churches and monasteries have the power to cure illnesses, deliver us from demonic forces, and help us in other afflictions, decisions, etc., that may beset us.

The US billionaires have it in their power to leave behind them a legacy like this that would truly bless and beneficially transform the world for centuries to come, a legacy far greater than anything the ancient Romans have left us. Through the prayers of Sts. Melania and Pinian, St. Philaret the Merciful, St. Syncletike, and the other rich Orthodox saints who generously gave their wealth to others for the sake of Christ, may the billionaires of the States and all the world choose to use their own riches in such a way, that their passage at death from this short life may be peaceful, and that they may hear, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’ from God Himself – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit:

. . . the saint sensed the approach of death, and told this to the priest and the sisters. They listened to her final instructions with deep sorrow and with tears. Having asked their prayers and commanding them to preserve themselves in purity, she received the Holy Mysteries with joy. Saint Melania peacefully gave up her soul to the Lord in the year 439.

–Walt Garlington is an Orthodox Christian living in Dixieland.  His writings have appeared on several web sites, and he maintains a site of his own, Confiteri: A Southern Perspective.