An editorial yesterday in the Wall Street Journal praises a $30 billion gift from Warren Buffett to The Gates Foundation. This is something eminently praiseworthy.
The Gates Foundation is clearly focusing on issues that deserve and demand attention. In terms of the really big problems in the world (and I'm not talking about flag burning or the pledge of allegiance), they have it completely correct. For example, this foundation is targeting global health threats such as tuberculosis (a bacteria) and HIV (a virus). Please take a pause today and think about this for a moment:
* The World Health Organization estimates that one of every three people on earth today is already infected with the bacterium that causes TB. Approximately two million people (about the population of the St. Louis metro area) die every year from the disease.
* An incredible 70 million deaths from AIDS are estimated in the next 20 years, according to the World Health Organization, with almost 40 million people currently infected. Nearly 3 million people died from AIDS in 2003; nearly half a million were children under the age of 15.
Now for the part I can't make up. Near the end of the editorial, the Wall Street Journal writes:
... we'd suggest that they put at least a smidgen of their money back into strengthening the foundations of the free-market system that has allowed them to become so fabulously rich. There's something to be said for reinvesting in the moral capital of a free society and trying to sustain and export free-enterprise policies.
Uh, yeah, well, where do I start? So, in other words, we need to help prop up the free-market system with "welfare" from Warren Buffett. Aren't there better things to worry about? Isn't the free-market system doing very well on its own, thankyouverymuch?
Somewhere in Africa, there's a kid with tuberculosis who is spitting up her lung. I don't think she'd care about "reinvesting in the moral capital of a free society." She just wants a cough drop.
Matthew, Chapter 25, verse 40.
Case closed.
1 comment:
Happy Birthday to our favorite cup of joe!
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