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Greenfield: A mega-gift from the super-richWhat does it say about society when 2 men can give so much?By Jeff Greenfield  YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSWASHINGTON (CNN) -- Of course it's news -- real, gee-whiz news -- when the second-richest man in the world decides to give away the bulk of his fortune -- most of it to a foundation run by the richest man in the world. But there's a bigger story here -- about the massive accumulation of private wealth, the shift toward a less equal America and the potential of what that wealth might do. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates made it official Monday -- some $30 billion of Buffett's fortune will be transferred to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which already has the biggest endowment of any in the United States. (Full Story) "I'm lucky enough to have accumulated it," Buffett said, "and I thought it was time to contribute back to society. The only question was how to do it." This action represents a significant change of heart for Buffett, who has long maintained he would give away his fortune after he died. (I once asked his sister Doris about this, and the sharp-tongued Ms. Buffett, a philanthropist in her own right, said, "Well, the last time I looked, he was alive.") Coincidentally or not, the Buffett announcement comes less than two weeks after Gates said he was giving up day-to-day control of Microsoft Corp. to focus more on philanthropy. In its brief existence, the Gates Foundation has done groundbreaking work in the area of Third World health; its size means it can, literally, "make a market" for drugs to cure diseases not seen in the developed world -- medications that cannot be produced at a profit in the market and would never see the light of day but for the Gates Foundation. This sort of philanthropy is hardly a new phenomenon. A century or so ago, two of the richest -- and most criticized members of the American plutocracy, John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, gave way much of their wealth -- more than $14 billion in today's dollars -- to universities, libraries and foundations. But the Buffett-Gates news comes at a time when a little-discussed issue in America -- inequality -- is generating more attention. By one recent estimate, CEOs of U.S. corporations last year earned 262 times the pay of the average worker. Forty years ago, CEOs earned 24 times as much. Other data show a marked increase in wealth inequality in recent decades -- today, 40 percent of total incomes goes to the top 10 percent. And as for the concentration of wealth, a more telling measurement than income, the disparity now extant in the United States recalls the 1920s. Moreover, public policy more and more has tended to accelerate this trend. The days when Teddy Roosevelt would decry "malefactors of great wealth" or when FDR would proclaim that "the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization" are long gone. Today, tax cuts on incomes, dividends and large estates demonstrate that the appetite for any redistributionist policy appears to have waned dramatically. What this has done is to create an astonishing level of accumulated wealth. According to one study by Boston College's Paul Schervish, somewhere between $45 trillion and $150 trillion will be transferred through inheritance over the next half century. So, in a time when the idea of using public resources to level the playing field has lost political traction, the examples of Buffett and Gates suggest a major new role for philanthropy dealing with such pressing public issues as health, poverty and education. Of course, whether private generosity is what we should be relying on to deal with these issues is a whole other question. 
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