The Decoy of Oppressor Generosity (Part 2)

Taxes Beat Charity

... picking up where we left off in Part 1:

So a Billionaire Wealth Tax beats Billionaire Charity?

Yup.

We’re not even talking about fleecing or bankrupting these put-upon billionaires. Far from it. A progressive tax, by definition, is a tax system where the tax rate increases as the taxable amount increases. In the case of a wealth tax, the larger the fortune, the higher the tax rate, which means those who can most afford it pay the most.

Alternatively, an exemption threshold could be set where only fortunes above a certain threshold would be taxed, but at a flat rate. For example, at 2% per year of the billionaire’s total wealth. Whatever the tax formula, you wouldn’t see Jeff Bezos panhandling on a streetcorner. (Make no mistake. These folks have plenty of fortune.)

But what you would see are hundreds of billions—and potentially trillions—of dollars unlocked to become additional tax revenues that will strengthen public services and address critical societal needs—not to mention help reduce the national debt.

For example, the EU Tax Observatory calculated in 2024 that a global minimum tax rate of 2% annually on the wealth of billionaires could raise around $250 billion per year worldwide. Also in 2024, Oxfam America projected that a progressive wealth tax on U.S. multi-millionaires and billionaires could generate approximately $664 billion every year.

These additional revenues at both the federal and state levels would be a gamechanger for the financial wellbeing of 90% of Americans—and a lifesaver for the bottom 50%.

In 2021, Senator Elizabeth Warren proposed “The Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act.” Warren’s Act recommends a wealth tax on households with net worth above $50 million. (So most of us don’t make the cut.) The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimated that her proposal could raise between $2.1 trillion and $2.7 trillion over a 10-year period (2022-2031 or 2023-2032), depending on factors like IRS enforcement and macroeconomic effects.

Not bad.

How might all this money serve the public need? The real question is how would it not?

Such increases in funding would significantly boost the capacity of various government agencies to improve the lives of average Americans. Here’s a quick sampling:

Education: increased funding for public schools from pre-K to higher-ed—e.g., raising teacher pay, improving infrastructure, supporting disadvantaged students, reducing tuition costs.

Healthcare: expanding affordable care—e.g., raising pay for nurses, lowering costs of prescription drugs, building rural hospitals, broadening public health initiatives, supporting research and development.

Infrastructure: modernizing everything—e.g., roads, bridges, public transportation systems, broadband internet access, the energy grid.

Social Safety Nets: strengthening social programs—e.g., Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, food assistance, all geared toward reducing poverty and providing a safety net for vulnerable populations.

Climate Change Initiatives: investing in a habitable planet—e.g., renewable energy, energy efficiency, climate resilience projects, climate science research, all geared around creating new jobs in clean energy and mitigating the impact of global warming.

Scientific Research: funding research in various fields—e.g., medicine, technology, basic science, all geared toward driving innovation, creating economic opportunities, and addressing societal challenges.

Environmental Protection: protecting where we live—e.g., safeguarding air and water quality, conserving natural resources, reducing pollution.

Affordable Housing: building housing for everyone—e.g., increasing the availability and insuring the affordability of good-quality homes, making homelessness rare if not a thing of the past.

Can billionaire charity accomplish all of this?

Nope.

And isn’t it telling that the richest man in the world, Elon Musk—that ever-so charming oligarch-on-ketamine—is fixated on eliminating every one of these government services and agencies listed above? But, of course, Musk runs his own Musk Foundation to address such social ills.

It would seem, however, that Musk’s charitable giving is something less than pure and selfless philanthropic altruism.

Concerns have been raised about the percentage of assets actually being distributed by the Musk Foundation and to which beneficiaries, about the tax benefits he receives from donating to his own foundation, and about the lack of transparency in some of his charitable donations (see, sadly, here, here, here, and here).

And let’s not forget what happened to Trump’s “charity” foundation (see, sigh, here and here).

But what else is new in MAGA La-La Land?

Andrew Carnegie versus Paulo Freire

I opened this two-part Rant titled “The Decoy of Oppressor Generosity” with quotes from celebrated American billionaire-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) and renowned Brazilian educator and social theorist Paulo Freire (1921-1997). I’ll quote them again here:

It is because I know how sweet and happy and pure the home of honest poverty is, how free from perplexing care, from social envies and emulations, how loving and how united its members may be in the common interest of supporting the family.

Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth (1889)

The generosity of the oppressors is nourished by an unjust order, which must be maintained in order to justify that generosity.

Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968)

Perhaps when you first read these quotes, at the outset of my Rant, you found the Carnegie quote to be sweet and hopeful whereas the Freire quote struck you as a bit perplexing. My hope is that now, at the end of my Rant, you’ve formulated a different take on these two statements by these two very different social thinkers.

Namely, that you suspect the Carnegie quote to be abjectly stupid whereas you fear the Freire quote to be alarmingly accurate.

Andrew Carnegie and The Poor

In his essay, The Gospel of Wealth, Carnegie famously states about his brotherhood of billionaires that “the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” Admirably, Carnegie put his money where his mouth is. In his later life, he gave away approximately 90% of his fortune—a fortune estimated by The Carnegie Foundation to have been, at its peak, around $309 billion in today’s dollars. (But don’t fret. Carnegie still had about $30 million at the time of his death.)

That amount of wealth makes Carnegie, who made his fortune through steel production, shipping, and railroad investments, one of the richest men in history. As for his charitable donations, mainly they went toward distinct and substantial educational and cultural projects.

Nonetheless, Carnegie’s largesse has a dark side.

In his essay linking religious faith with lucre, Carnegie speaks of himself as being “the mere agent and trustee for his poorer brethren.” That is, he casts himself as a good Christian steward of the wealth he has, to put it biblically, gathered unto himself. About his vast fortune, Carnegie solemnly declares that he is:

strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgement, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community.

While this statement might sound high-minded and kindhearted, it’s not. The troublesome words here are “in his judgement.” Paradoxically, Carnegie claims for himself the right to decide where, what he characterizes more or less as community funds, should go. The question, then, must be asked.

What are some of Carnegie’s judgements?

For one, Carnegie regards himself as a “great man” (as he often refers to himself in his other writings). He judges himself to be a man of superlative intellect who has earned (or bought) the right to distribute wealth. Carnegie is convinced that he knows best where the money should go and how it should be used. In The Gospel of Wealth, he asserts that “the man of wealth” has “superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves.”

The “them” in that statement are, of course, those “poorer brethren” for whom Carnegie serves as agent and trustee. So much for public input—let alone democracy.

A second worrisome judgement of Carnegie’s is his conviction that only certain poor people deserve charity. All of his projects were aimed at the poverty-stricken who, in Carnegie’s estimation, demonstrated that they wanted to better themselves. Anyone without ambition, in Carnegie’s view, could go to hell. About such idlers Carnegie says:

...it were better for mankind that the millions of the rich were thrown into the sea than so spent as to encourage the slothful, the drunken, the unworthy. Of every thousand dollars spent in so-called charity today, it is probable that nine hundred and fifty dollars is unwisely spent—so spent, indeed, as to produce the very evils which it hopes to mitigate or cure.

Moreover, Carnegie seemed to regard many—if not most—of “his poorer brethren” to be “drunken vagabond or lazy idler.” (As if there were no such thing as drunken or lazy rich people.) Supporting such freeloaders “by alms bestowed by wealthy people” only furthered the “source of moral infection to a neighborhood.” (The same thinking, by the way, behind MAGA Republicans currently trying to cut Medicaid.) Tellingly, Carnegie used this same low opinion of the poor as a reason not to give them higher wages as his employees, declaring that increasing their working salary would be:

wasted in the indulgence of appetite, some of it in excess, and it may be doubted whether even the part put to best use, that of adding to the comforts of the home, would have yielded results.

How caring and pious of him. Similar to today’s Broligarchs who deeply believe that they are best suited to run the world (see here and here), Carnegie’s magnanimity is laced with megalomania.

Robber Baron tending to the moral improvement of his workers.

All of Carnegie’s judgements about the poor crystalize in the opening quote above where he speaks with loving nostalgia about the bliss of “honest poverty.” Carnegie grew up in Scotland in what could be described as an upper-working class household. His father was a master handloom weaver. His maternal uncle secured Carnegie early schooling. When the family immigrated to America in 1848 (the industrial revolution putting his father out of work in Scotland), Carnegie joined his father to work in a cotton mill in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. At age 13, Carnegie was hired as a “bobbin boy,” changing spools on large industrial looms. He worked dawn-to-dusk six days a week for $1.20 a week—presumably savoring the “sweet and happy and pure” joys of child labor.

In 1849, Carnegie got his first big break in climbing the socio-economic ladder. He landed a job as a telegraph messenger boy in the Pittsburgh Office of the Ohio Telegraph Company. Once again, it was his maternal uncle, Geroge Lauder, facilitating the boy’s advancement. Carnegie got the job because of his uncle’s connections. Crucially, Carnegie was hired because he could read due to his early schooling in Scotland.

Ah. Nepotism and education. A powerful boost to prosperity—as every legacy student at elite universities knows.

No doubt Carnegie worked remarkably hard to achieve his status as a leading Robber Baron of his day. But he did not start out his life in the kind of crushing poverty suffered by so many millions of his day—and of ours. Moreover, it’s a shame that Carnegie blindly romanticized his early life in the working class, obviously putting out of his mind the desperation and destitution he certainly saw around him. In his fairy tale of “honest poverty” being “free from perplexing care” and populated by “loving and...united” family members, the adult, fabulously rich Andrew Carnegie seems to have internalized the oppressor—which is a fancy way of saying forgetting where you came from.

And that brings us to a consideration of the countervailing social viewpoints of Paulo Freire.

Paulo Freire and The Oppressed

In previous Rants, I’ve discussed the liberatory education of Freire (It’s the Intellect, Stupid and School Maze) as well as his key idea of internalizing the oppressor (Ted Lasso: a Jovial Exploration into the Brutality of Sport). In his educational theories, Freire advocates empowering students to recognize and challenge oppressive social structures and become active agents for change. In his concept of internalizing the oppressor, Freire refers to the phenomenon of individuals taking on the attributes, beliefs, and behaviors of the person or group who has social power over them.

Growing up, we’re prone to emulate, before we know any better, the models of social “success” (i.e., dominance and power) we see around us. The practices of traditional, restrictive, teacher-centered education have everything to do with this indoctrination. Thus, in a capitalistic society, we’re predisposed to adopt the ideology of wealthy capitalists as our guiding star.

Likely, this social phenomenon happened to Carnegie. It would certainly help explain the disdain he shows for many of the poor (as well as his employees) in The Gospel of Wealth.

Along with internalizing the oppressor, I’d like to suggest that another compelling theory by Freire is pertinent when it comes to considering not just Carnegie’s ideas about philanthropy, but the notion of billionaire charity in general.

That theory is oppressor generosity.

In Chapter 1 of his most influential work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire defines oppressor generosity as the calculated strategy of the rich and powerful to preserve their dominance by way of appearing to be benevolent and helpful to the poor. In reality, however, their “philanthropy” is a diversionary tactic that serves only to uphold the existing economic and social structures that enable their advantages and supremacy in the first place.

In other words, billionaire charity is not “generosity” at all. In fact, it’s a cruel ruse designed to bamboozle us all.

The effects of such false charity are pernicious, according to Freire. For starters, the aid provided to the poor is limited and superficial. These so-called acts of kindness are mere concessions that might address immediate needs, but they do nothing to challenge the root causes of poverty and repression. Notes Freire:

Welfare programs as instruments of manipulation ultimately serve the end of conquest. They act as an anesthetic, distracting the oppressed from the true causes of their problems and from the concrete solutions of these problems.

Oppressor generosity also creates a sense of dependency and obligation in the poor who receive these measly handouts. In turn, these feelings foster resignation in and demand gratitude from the oppressed, making them less likely to challenge the authority of the wealthy or to fight for fundamental change. The poor become reliant on the handouts rather than striving for self-determination. As Freire writes:

False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the “rejects of life,” to extend their trembling hands.

Not only do the poor develop a diminished and mistaken view of themselves and their circumstances, conversely, the rich cultivate a self-aggrandizing false consciousness about themselves. As we saw with Andrew Carnegie, the wealthy come to regard themselves as somehow superior beings. They imagine that their mighty intelligence and inborn get-up-and-go entitle them to their elevated status over others—even though many billionaires start out with inherited wealth.

This mindset breeds a paternalistic attitude in the rich toward the poor. As discussed in Part 1 of this Rant, a noblesse oblige sets in that convinces the wealthy that they are responsible for the well-being of the poor. Thus the rich treat the poor like incompetent children rather than recognizing them as equal human beings deserving the right of self-determination.

Oppressor generosity, then, is a giving down that disempowers the receiver and prevents the formation of authentic social solidarity.

Most harmful of all about this oppressor-oppressed relationship is Freire’s contention that the situation dehumanizes both parties. The wealthy become nothing more than robotic misers.

The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves. They cannot see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions and no longer are; they merely have.

The poor become convinced of their worthlessness—that they are sub-human.

Self-deprecation is another characteristic of the oppressed, which derives from their internalization of the opinion of the oppressors hold of them. So often do they hear that they are good for nothing, know nothing and are incapable of learning anything—that they are sick, lazy, and unproductive—that in the end they become convinced of their own unfitness.

This is indeed a sad state of societal affairs. Yet it is one that has prevailed, under capitalism, for a few centuries now.

In the end, the core purpose of oppressor generosity is to cement inequality into the permanent fabric of the society. By appearing benevolent, the oppressors mask the inherent violence and injustice of the system they control. Asserts Freire:

In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetrate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty. That is why the dispensers of false generosity become desperate at the slightest threat to its source.

What the wealthy fear most, then, is the genuine liberation of the people they dominate. That is to say, the disadvantaged becoming aware of their situation, engaging in critical dialogue (that is, education of various kinds), and acting collectively to transform the oppressive structures of the society (such as forming labor unions).

And at this point we return to Freire’s notion of liberatory education.

Perhaps the most important social concept for Freire is that of conscientização—a Portuguese word coined by him meaning the development of critical awareness of social and political conditions. (Yes, it’s the same idea as being WOKE. Or even WOKE-AF.) Particularly in his work around the Americas and in Africa among the illiterate poor, Freire practiced his pedagogy of “conscientization.”

After living in and learning about an impoverished community for a time, Freire would motivate people to read not by subjecting them to lessons of rote memory, but by asking them questions about their underprivileged circumstances. Questions that led to a clear-eyed analysis of their being subjected to unfair laws, inadequate educational opportunities, classist and often racist discrimination, as well as blatant economic injustice. In this way, Freire’s students—the urban and rural working poor—came to understand reading as an ability, as a weapon, to fight back against their oppressors.

Rather than pursuing Carnegie’s sanctimonious and self-serving Gospel of Wealth, Freire practiced, as a Christian Socialist, a gospel of communitarian solidarity and whole-society wellbeing.

Therefore, if, as Freire says, “The generosity of the oppressors is nourished by an unjust order, which must be maintained in order to justify that generosity,” then the social antidote to their oppression is this:

True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity.

So What?

The false charity of billionaires is a form of soft power that works to thwart conscientização. It’s a strategy designed precisely to hinder our developing a critical awareness of the social and political conditions in which we live. Billionaire charity pacifies us, indebts us, discourages us from seeking fundamental social change—all while perpetuating the economic inequity in which billionaires thrive.

As outlined in this Rant, billionaires put on a show of giving generously to charity. But their gifts come at no real cost to themselves. Meanwhile, billionaires enjoy ballooning fortunes, a rigged tax system, and many of them engage in the fraud of tax evasion.

“But what about the good billionaires?” you might ask. Nice guys like Bill Gates, who has recently announced that he plans to give away 99% of his fortune over the next two decades.

Sorry, but I’m afraid the myth of the “good billionaire” is the same as the myth of the “good slaveowner” in the Antebellum South. You know, those fine Christian folks who treated their slaves well—meaning, by-and-large, they refrained from beating and raping their property.

When it comes to oppressor generosity, there is no “good.”

That’s not how oppression works.

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