Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World

Modern philanthropy began when major corporations, like those run by the Rockefellers and Andrew Carnegie, began to give away part of their fortunes. However, critics held that those fortunes were made in “dirty” ways, such as the monopoly held by John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. Furthermore, suspicions arose that the money given by these philanthropists was being used to influence society in ways that were undemocratic.

Carnegie’s influential essay “Wealth” rejected the idea of giving wealth away to descendants or to giving it to charitable causes after death. Instead, Carnegie believed that the wealthy should be giving actively during life, and he supported estate taxes as an additional incentive to encourage the wealthy to give. However, Carnegie also argued that inequality was the undesirable but inevitable cost of genuine progress” (160). He believed that philanthropy erased inequality but believed it was better to give money to public institutions like libraries and museums rather than to pay people more from the start. Carnegie’s essay gave rise to the idea of the “Gospel of Wealth.”

Giridharadas discusses several philanthropists and individuals working within the world of philanthropy, including Kat Cole (CEO of Focus Brands), heir Laura Tisch, and