|
|
ONLINE FEATURES
Book Reviews
BW Video
Columnists
Interactive Gallery
Newsletters
Past Covers
Philanthropy
Podcasts
Special Reports
BLOGS
Auto Beat
Bangalore Tigers
Blogspotting
Brand New Day
Byte of the Apple
Economics Unbound
Eye on Asia
Fine On Media
Green Biz
Hot Property
Investing Insights
Management IQ
NEXT: Innovation
NussbaumOnDesign
Tech Beat
Working Parents
TECHNOLOGY
J.D. Power Ratings
Product Reviews
Tech Stats
Wildstrom: Tech Maven
AUTOS
Home Page
Auto Reviews
Classic Cars
Car Care & Safety
Hybrids
INNOVATION
& DESIGN Home Page Architecture Brand Equity Auto Design Game Room SMALLBIZ Smart Answers Success Stories Today's Tip INVESTING Investing: Europe Annual Reports BW 50 S&P Picks & Pans Stock Screeners Free S&P Stock Report SCOREBOARDS Hot Growth 100 Mutual Funds Info Tech 100 S&P 500 B-SCHOOLS Undergrad Programs MBA Blogs MBA Profiles MBA Rankings Who's Hiring Grads | |
DECEMBER 20, 2004
Philanthropy: Who Are The Real Beneficiaries? Your article on "The top givers" (Special Report, Nov. 29) and specifically the table on "How corporations hand it out," showing corporate gifts as a percentage of revenues, do not give a true picture of corporate giving. A better method would be to compare a company's donations with its pretax or aftertax income. The list as you have it does not take into account expenses, the cost of goods sold, and thus margins. Reconfigured, it would show a completely different picture as to who donates the largest share of their wealth. Ken Swanstrom Danboro, Pa. Why would your magazine measure corporate giving both for cash and in-kind contributions as a percent of gross revenue? Within various industries, there is a big difference in the profit on sales dollars. May I suggest contributions per net earnings or even contributions per employee? Jerry B. Jackson Heber Springs, Ariz. Philanthropy? Charity? These are the terms used by the writers of this article, but maybe the terms "notoriety" and "tax deductibility" should have been used. Of "The 50 most generous philanthropists," only a few gave to true human needs. None that I saw gave to world hunger, only one to poverty, and one to the homeless. Giving money to the arts, environmental issues, poetry, and science hardly qualifies as charity, but more as donations to special or personal interests. Bob Leake New London, Pa. My grandmother wasn't as rich as William H. Gates III. A widow most of her life with three children to care for and enjoying a minimal widow's pension, she was nevertheless more generous than Gates and his fellow philanthropists ever will be. Marcel Hendrickx Brussels Well done on your Special Report: Philanthropy 2004. But after all that research, how could you possibly have missed Arnold O. Beckman, who died this past May at age 104 after giving about $400 million to science and education? He changed the world with his introduction of electronics into chemistry, and he leaves a charitable foundation of nearly $500 million dedicated to distributing funds for scientific research in perpetuity. It makes a wonderful story with global impact. Jerry Gallwas Fullerton, Calif. Editor's note: BusinessWeek includes only living donors in its Top 50 ranking. One very important element is missing from the report: Money spent on philanthropy comes also from manufacturing workers whose working and often living conditions are disastrous and who do not get a living wage. Manufacturers should treat their workers decently instead of taking out "social insurance" with their philanthropy. Marie-Claude Hessler Paris I hardly believe that giving a large amount of money to your own foundation is philanthropy. It becomes charity only when the funds are used to improve the condition of those in need. Paying high administration costs to manage a foundation is not charity. Jerry Steakley Orlando In "Ordinary people, extraordinary gifts" (Special Report, Nov. 29), I was somewhat troubled by the line "there are those motivated by a sense of guilt, while others may follow a purely capitalistic calling for many years, only to be moved by a midlife wake-up call to do good." When did a capitalistic calling need a "wake-up call" to do good? If I am not mistaken, most of those folks listed as gargantuan givers relied on capitalism for their wealth and worth in the first place. David Simpson Marshall, Tex. In your issue, you talk about kidney donation, and how only 242 people have given their kidneys to strangers since 1998. I inherited two bad kidneys, and have about 15% of normal kidney function. I'm approximately No. 80,000 on the United Network for Organ Sharing transplant list. The wait for a cadaver kidney is six years. Getting awareness to the public is a priority only for a few small groups. Everyone will die, and one person can help 50 organ and tissue recipients. Robert Berend Kensington, Calif. GM: Leaving Daewoo Drivers Out In The Cold? I was interested to read "Daewoo: GM's hot new engine" (Asian Business, Nov. 29) on General Motors Co.'s (GM ) enormous success with the assets it purchased from Daewoo in 2002. This story neglects to mention that GM's windfall comes at the expense of thousands of Daewoo automobile owners in the U.S., as well as Daewoo's former dealer network. Even though GM essentially bought an entire auto company and is profiting nicely from that purchase, GM structured the deal in such a way that Daewoo owners were cut off from all service and replacement parts for over a year. Even today, parts and service are hard to get, although GM is selling virtually identical cars under the Chevy nameplate. GM sought to rationalize its business by eliminating brands and thus was motivated to end the Daewoo dealer network. While I have sympathy for those businesses that lost everything, I'm more sympathetic to people who, like me, purchased a Daewoo in good faith and who received numerous mailings suggesting that GM would assume responsibility for all warranty service, and that Daewoo would in fact become an arm of GM. Mark Bauer St. Petersburg, Fla.   President McKinley Had It Right Your editorial "Just say no to more spending" turns a blind eye to why our trade deficits caused 90% of our federal debt (Editorials, Nov. 22). Based on a conservative 3-to-1 ripple multiplier effect and the prevailing 50% federal, state, and local marginal tax rate, had the goods represented by our $600 billion trade deficit this year been produced in America, they would have generated $300 billion in added tax revenue for state and local agencies and $600 billion for the federal treasury. Foreign workers don't pay taxes in America; only American workers do. President William McKinley said: "If you want cheap labor, cheap prices, cheap products, you will get a cheap country." To which I would add: "A bankrupt country." Gus R. Stelzer Mill Creek, Wash. Thank The Amex For Its Many Innovations Re "The Amex: Worth more dead than alive?" (Finance, Nov. 29): Anyone who says the "Amex as an institution lost its reason for being long ago" needs a reminder about the innovations of the American Stock Exchange: ETFs, Spyders, Diamonds, QQQs, and, equally important, liquidity and capital-raising assistance for many small companies. William Silver New York Radio And Broadband: Crossed Signals The National Association for Amateur Radio has participated in testing in a number of the broadband-over-power lines (BPL) marketing trials and has seen interference to radio reception in each of the sites that its staff and volunteers examined ("Easy broadband -- and smarter power," Science & Technology, Nov. 22). Your article also did not address the reverse problem of interference to BPL by licensed, legally operating radio systems. Tests carried out by amateur radio operators show that even a few watts of transmitter power nearby can cause the BPL system to stop working temporarily. Amateur radio operators are not against BPL. Instead, they oppose the pollution of wide areas of the radio spectrum by interference from BPL. Allen Pitts Media and Public Relations Manager National Association for Amateur Radio Newington, Conn.
| | |
 Copyright 2004, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.Terms of Use | Privacy Notice |
Printer-Friendly Version
