A ‘Benevolent’ Gesture Of The Rich


04/28/2016

The statistics reveal more solidifying trends among the rich population of the world.


Dailycsr.com – 28 April 2016 – Sangeeta Haindl reports that the “The Sunday Times” of the United Kingdom made an announcement that the super rock star Sir Elton John along with the “best-selling author JK Rowling” have turned out to be the “most benevolent celebrities” in the “Giving List” of the newspaper for the year of 2016. Both the celebrities donated “a large part of their fortune” for charity purposes.
 
Moreover, the “Giving List” also includes “Golfer Rory McIlroy, global boy-band One Direction and Queen musicians Brian May and Roger Taylor”. Out of “1,000” people’s list of the “Sunday Times Rich List”, hundred seventy eight of them contributed “at least a £1 million” as charity in the period of entire last year.
 
Sir John donated “£26.8m”, whereby the majority went to support his “AIDS foundations” spread around the U.K. as well as the U.S., while Rowling offered a total of “£10.3m” to the “Lumos Foundation”. Created by Rowling, the said foundation aims to render “all child institutions and orphanages” needless on a worldwide scale by the year of 2050.
 
The statistics from the Sunday Times reveal that rich people have come in front to donate an amount of “£2.66bn” over the past year’s time frame. The Sainsbury family, “founders of Britain’s second largest supermarket chain”, again makes it to the top of the list marking a ‘hat trick’ in this year. In the year of 2015, the family donated almost forty percent of their total wealth, whereby totalling an amount of “£220m”.
 
The said list also includes a wide spectrum of celebrities, starting from “athletes to musicians”. Likewise, “David Beckham donated £5m to children’s charities, Coldplay gave £1.7m and Ringo Starr gave£1.6m, raised by an auction of Beatles memorabilia through his own Lotus Foundation”.
 
In the beginning of this year, one of Oxfam’s report stated that the amount of wealth possesses by the “62 richest billionaires” is equivalent to the wealth owned by the half of the world’s poor population. It also stressed on the point that fifty percent of the poor lost forty one percent of their wealth within a span of five years, from “2010 and 2015”. However, irrespective of the population boom, the “richest 62 people” had an increment of “$500bn” in their wealth.
 
Accordingly, Oxfam urged the leaders of the world to “adopt a three-pronged approach” which would take care of the gaping disparity. The said approach requires “cracking down on tax dodging, increased investment in public services and action to boost the income of the lowest paid”.
 
The report seeks to end the “era of tax havens”, which would allow the rich people to use their resources in helping the government “tackle poverty and inequality” which otherwise goes into “offshore centers”. In fact, the leak of Panama Papers only reinforces the existence of such bank accounts implicating even “some heads of state, politicians, business leaders, sports and media personalities”.
 
Sangeeta Haindl writes:
“While there is nothing illegal about moving money offshore to protect wealth, yet now a common perception of the offshore industry has evolved into a judgment that it looks like an unethical effort to avoid any social responsibility. X Factor judge Simon Cowell, golfer Sir Nick Faldo, the Duchess of York, film star Jackie Chan are all named in this “ungenerous” list, in this unfolding story”.
 
References:
http://www.ethicalperformance.com/