Today’s Wall Street Journal has an excellent article by Harvard economics professor Robert Barro. Barro comments on the philanthropy of Bill Gates and doubts that his money will accomplish very much good. What is really effective in reducing poverty is a change in governing philosophy — toward laissez-faire capitalism and away from the kleptocratic, highly-regulated approach that prevails across most of Africa.
A point I wish Barro had made but didn’t is that even less beneficial than private philanthropy is for government to tax money away from successful people like Bill Gates so that politicians can then decide how to spend the funds. We keep hearing from politicians like John Edwards that the nation would magically become a better place if only the feds taxed away more from those with high incomes (thereby reducing the leftist bugaboo of the “income gap”), but it’s obvious that allowing the wealthy to keep their money and invest or spend or donate it as they think best does more for the poor than if the government seizes the money and runs it through the political process.
