karenow stated that she donates what she can to charity. PecanSandy, what makes you state that she does not?
Hang on.
Just one minute.
The OP has yet to provide proof or evidence that the 5 books is the ONLY thing that Rowling has done. Or that the 9/11 Red Cross tv fundraiser is the ONLY thing that Cruise, Roberts, et al. did in the name of philanthropy.
These are some pretty big claims. To think that celebrities don’t donate a good amount of time/resources to good causes is pretty near-sighted. In fact, it took about 3 minutes on Google to find one of her favorite charities, One Parent Families, to which she recently donated £500,000. Additionally, stpauler’s link shows numerous other charities she’s involved with.
Sorry, but it pisses me off to see people bad-mouth celebrities for “not doing enough” when, in fact, they are. I suspect the same inadequate amount of research went into seeing if Cruise, Roberts, et al. are also likewise disposed to philanthropic ventures.
:rolleyes:
That’s the thing; if they do it just nice and quietly, without bringing any attention to themselves, it’s assumed they’re doing nothing.
If their donation/charitable deed gets picked up by the press, but falls short of being a monumental act, it’s assumed they’re doing it for the publicity.
I’m not in any way saying that any person should be treated like a saint for doing their part for those less fortunate, regardless of the size of the sacrifice. I’m just saying that no person should be treated like crap because their gesture wasn’t good enough for someone else.
Besides, I’m not seeing any evidence that the girl didn’t just need “a few thousand pounds” before being able to meet her needs. Besides, a “few thousand pounds” is quite a few American dollars, the exchange rate being what it is.
Hold on - I believe I stated that I do contribute to charity. I give as much as I can afford to. Some years it’s quite a bit, some years not a lot. I have children in several countries that I (rather, my family) have been sponsoring for years. Where did you get the idea that I give nothing?
This is true, and a good point. I’m not very familiar with the British tax system; do they pay as much as Americans have to, especially once in the upper tax brackets?
That is a personal attack and uncalled for, as well as pretty ignorant. One post does not constitute me spending large amounts of time “wringing my hands” over anything. In addition, I am extremely well educated, and financially secure as well. You are making assumptions to try to make yourself sound good that are untrue. Actually, if I were “dumb and poor”, that would have been a pretty cruel thing to say. As it is, I am intelligent, well-educated, and have a comfortable life.
No matter what my personal circumstances are, however, I still have the right to give my opinion on whatever I choose. That is the point of a debate message board, unless I’m much mistaken.
Thanks,
Karen
RE: several of the previous posts above this one.
There have been some good points made. I am happy to read about JK Rowling’s other contributions to charity, that’s great. Obviously I didn’t do a lot of research, and maybe I should have - I certainly would have if I had known it would have gotten this heated. I was originally just curious if anyone else felt this way about the whole issue, in general, not JK-specific. But I will freely admit that I could have checked out the situation deeper.
I feel the need to clarify something though: I am not attacking JK Rowling or any celebrity specifically, I was using her as an example. I can’t help thinking that if I were that little girl’s father and had a child with cancer (and, BTW, cancer treatments, if there is no insurance, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars), and found out that JK Rowling had heard about us and was going to help, I’d be ecstatic. Then if I found out that she was only going to sign some books to auction, I would probably be pretty upset; how could I not help but think of all the money she has and how much more she could have done?
However, no it is not JK’s problem or responsibility. And, I don’t know whether she privately covered the costs in entirety, as someone else suggested. It seems odd that she would do that and then have a book signing for auction to get money from other people as well.
As far as celebrities in general, yes, it’s impossible to say if they do things on the quiet. I’m sure a lot of them do. At least, I hope a lot of them do. Good for them. And good for them as far as “lending their presence” to things like auctions and appearances and things like that. If that’s what they feel they should do, I suppose in the end it’s their own moral or ethical decision to make.
I think that this is a no-win argument; most of what I said is being taken to extremes which makes it difficult to reply to. My point, the only thing that I was trying to say, was that if you are very very wealthy, and want to help someone in a life-or-death situation, why not go the whole way? No, you are not obligated to. No, it’s no one else’s business but your own (except for the whole public figure factor).
I think that the thing that first got me upset about this issue was the 9/11 televised special. About - a month? - not sure exactly, after 9/11, all the A-list celebrities got on TV and asked for money for the 9/11 victims.
Now, before anyone else says it, NO, I DON’T KNOW IF ANY OF THEM DONATED PRIVATELY. I tend to think that if Julia Roberts donated a million dollars to anything, her publicist would make sure it was heard about, whether Julia Roberts wanted it to or not. But I was upset when it was announced that they had raised about fifteen million total, and all of these elite people were being held up as saints for their efforts (similar to the “We are the World” situation someone mentioned at some point), when 15 million is less than most of them make for one movie.
I think you all get what I’m saying. Whether you agree or disagree, I’m not sure how else to say it. I am not criticizing small donations, I am criticizing donations that, to me, have a faint reek of publicity (i.e., being timed with a movie or book coming out).
Oh, well. I’ve enjoyed this, my first debate! I have read this board for years but never really posted. It is actually kind of stress-relieving, so I thank you all for a reasonable argument (except for the one person who resorted to name-calling).
Cheers!
Karen
Okay, first off, research is your friend. It just wishes you would call a little more often! 
Secondly, the telethon in question (“America: A Tribute To Heroes”, which aired on 9/21) raised over $150 million. One extremely interesting fact about that telethon was that there was no on-screen identification of the celebrites (in other words, “Tom Cruise - Actor” didn’t appear at the bottom of the screen when Tommy appeared). I’m not going to do the work, but if you can find a link that shows commercials that aired during that telethon that correspond to the various celebrities’ projects (movies, albums, appearances), you might have an argument. But seriously, click on that link and tell me that massive list of people who banded together were in it for the publicity.
This is Great Debates - what’s stopping you from trying to find out?
To me, it’s about proportion.
Bill Gates gives away a LOT of money, and that’s good.
Bill Gates probably doesn’t give away 1% of his income, thus I’m not real impressed.
As I said, he gave $1 billion to his foundation a few years ago. I don’t know what his income is these days, but he isn’t making a billion dollars a year. That was more than 2% of his entire net worth at the time. I think he’s actually got less money now than he did then. And I imagine he’s made other donations before and since. So I hope that’s enough to be at least a little impressive?
According to the website of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, the organization has an endowment of approximately 27 billion.
Crap, hit submit before I was finished.
All giving is good, as nobody HAS to donate to anything. I am not minimizing Bill Gate’s contributions. Something like 100k to Bill Gates would be like $100 to us, but we can’t overlook that 100k can change a LOT of lives and help a lot of people if used correctly.
And yes, this Rowling lady could probably afford to pay a lot of medical bills: and maybe she is anonymously. Using her status to get others to give isn’t wrong, though. At the end of the day, those few thousand pounds she helped raise is better than what would be raised if she didn’t bother.
I’m just saying that I am more impressed by proportion.
Bill Gates will never go without anything he needs or wants. And that’s fine; he’s worked for his money. Two percent of his net worth, though, while good, is still a mere 2%, when he could live comfortably for the rest of his life on 1% of his net worth. I am not saying he should give away all his money and do that. I am just saying that in the grand scheme of things, 2% of his net worth is a pittance because it’s nothing to him.
It’s good that celebrities contribute, and I’m sure a lot of them give anonymously and we’ll never hear about it.
But if you want to talk about true givers, it’s the poor and middle class of this country who have the biggest hearts. Show me somebody who makes $1,000 a month and faithfully gives $100 of it to their local homeless shelter. Or show me somebody that took the $500 in their savings account, all they had, and gave it to the Red Cross in September 11th. Or some school kid who gives her sandwich and her bag of potato chips to another kid at lunch because she knows it might be the only thing the kid gets to eat all day. Those kinds of people are the more charitable ones, because they are giving a greater percentage of themselves.
Well, Mike Tyson blew hundreds of millions on parties(etc). Yes, if she helped every needy sick kid a billion dollars would burn up pretty quick.
Why can’t you just appreciate that she gave something?
What, only got 3 posts into the thread, decided to quit, but still had something to say?
No…I can’t believe I read the whole thing, but I did. All the proportion talk was something I didn’t even wanna approach. I just wanted to point out the fact that JK’s billion bucks would not last long in cancer treatment.
Maybe you could review future posts for me to decide their suitability prior to their being submitted.
Abbie, not to make this personal, but have you ever donated 2.5% (to make it a round figure, I’m assuming he was worth $40B) of your entire worth to charity? You could probably afford to- maybe get a smaller house, not send your kids to expensive schools, etc… I’m aware Bill Gates can comfortably afford it. If he couldn’t comfortably afford it, he wouldn’t have made that donation in the first place.
Luckily, the majority of people who donate to charity don’t do so to impress.
That it’s less impressive to some because it isn’t as much of a sacrifice is a little bit saddening to me. It’s less “heart” to give 27 billion dollars, because it’s not as much of a sacrifice as giving 500 dollars is to a more average person?
Heart isn’t about sacrifice. No one said helping has to hurt. No one is better because their “help” hurts more than someone else’s, and it doesn’t make them more “giving” than someone who is in a better position to do so.
It just underscores the point that it’s a no-win situation. Until a rich person gives of themselves so completely that it puts them into a position of financial strain, it won’t be enough.
And any person who has ever received of charity and said “but they could have given so much more” doesn’t deserve a dime of anybody’s money, in my opinion.
The British tax burden is higher than the burden in the US.
Here is the way this often works: Someone writes a letter to Ms. Rowling that gets read by her people. They probably get hundreds of requests for contributions a day (after all she is a wealthy woman), but once in a while, something sticks out and makes it past the filter. Maybe a particularly well written letter. Maybe the letter is from someone she knows slightly…whatever. Then they say “lets do something.” Rowling can’t contribute cash to every letter she gets - her billion would be gone in no time. So someone might say “lets have JK sign a few books for this event.” Julia Roberts’ folks might say “hey, Julia, that dress you wore to the Golden Globes three years ago, lets auction it.”
For every signed book or auctioned dress, there are hundreds of letters that get “filed” and never addressed.
In the meantime, they may (or may not) make significant cash contributions to charities that are more umbrella like in nature - not ones that treat cancer in one child, but ones that help hundreds of children. Sometimes these make the news, sometimes they don’t. Publicity on this is a two edged sword - you certainly want people to think you are a nice person, but you don’t want to give people unreasonable expections and put even more letters in the “sorry, no, here is an autographed photo” pile.
Now, JK has a right to her own personal wealth. Its nice if she contributes some of it to charity, but she can blow it all on shoes if she wants - its her money. And she may feel (and I have no idea) that she would rather pass significant wealth to her decendants (if I had Ms. Rowlings history, one thing I’d want to do is make sure my decendants had money in trust). Or that it would be better used to combat global warming. Or that she wants to open Harry Potter World.
Abbie, not to make this personal, but have you ever donated 2.5% (to make it a round figure, I’m assuming he was worth $40B) of your entire worth to charity?
Nope, I sure haven’t. I do tithe, though, and my church in turn uses it to support over 100 outreach ministries.
**You could probably afford to- maybe get a smaller house, not send your kids to expensive schools, etc… **
Actually I couldn’t afford to because I don’t have a net worth at the moment. I’m running negative. I don’t live in a house and my kid is going to go to private school ONLY because I’ve committed the next year of my life to working for the school in exchange for her tuition being covered. I’m flat broke, kid.
Someday, though, I’ll be giving more than 2.5%
Net worth is not income. Unless you are renting the clothes on your back, you do have a net worth.
Not true. Abbie could most definitely not have a net worth. Debt being the most likely cause. I know that my college loans are worth a hell of a lot more than the clothes in my closet.
Well then Munch, I suggest you donate 10% of your net worth to charity. Even better would be donating 100%! Give till it hurts, man.
See, this is the big difference between the rich and the middle class. Middle class people may have good incomes, but they typically don’t have much net worth, and are frequently in the hole. If they have assets, typically they don’t own much more than their own house, which they can’t sell without needing a new one.
Rich people often may have NO income, or negative income, but they have a lot of net worth. Bill Gates probably lost money for the last few years. But he’s still worth billions. But he doesn’t have billions in the bank, he has billions worth of Microsoft stock. He can’t give that away without giving away his company.
Bill Gates can’t give away a large fraction of his net worth until he is ready to give up being the biggest stockholder at Microsoft. And he’s said many times that once he retires he’ll give away the bulk of his fortune.