Secret Millionaire

For some reason about a week ago, there were repeated promos for a show called Secret Millionaire. I was knitting while watching TV so was trying to ignore the commercials in general. After the fifth preview of the upcoming show I couldn't take it anymore. In case you missed that night on whatever channel, the premise is that a millionaire goes undercover and slums it among the rest of us with $34 in walking around money for a week. In some ways it's like Undercover Boss I think. At the end there's a big reveal and people like us are thrilled to have been in the presence of a millionaire, and so impressed by her or his humanitarian impulse to leave behind the privileges of wealth. The promo had a soundbite about some millionaire giving $150,000 to a community program...and o-o-oh, what a difference that was going to make. As a pastor and fan of the non-profit world I'm all in favor of charitable giving. But what is it about making so much money via our system of unequal access, privilege and loopholes for the wealthy that gives those with the money the right to determine which needs are valid? This is heightened when it comes to the whole tax-sheltered foundation charitable industrial complex. (Please help with a better name for it!) Putting money into a foundation shelters it from any tax liability, meaning that taxes from that wealth don't flow into the government coffers which provide for the common good (social safety net, education, public safety, environmental regulation, diplomacy, etc., etc.). Instead, having deprived the public of choosing funding via the democratic electoral process, wealthy individuals and families can decide which causes they think are worthy. No one elected them to run programs for the public good! This dynamic is present in the US and around the world. The Gates Foundation is addressing some huge needs in Africa, for example: malaria, HIV, women's education. There's some attention to infrastructure, but very little I'm assuming to equalizing the playing field in developmental innovation for those countries. It's the exceptionalism that concerns me, and how that's fostered by shows like Secret Millionaire and Undercover Boss. Those shows are small potatoes compared to the non-elected rule exercised by multi-national corporations, their CEOs and the foundations that keep wealth under their control.