Before I write anything else about the Clinton Global Initiative, there's something I've wanted to say about charitable corporate giving of all kinds ever since I went last year.
Companies like WalMart and Goldman Sachs who headline such well-intentioned, high-powered gatherings where so much good is done should be told every day, that if they want to really help their fellow humans, they should just pay their sodding taxes as a small demonstration of good faith.
They should be asked, perhaps, for their charity commitment next year to be that they will faithfully pay their full dues to the governments that provide the roads, educated workers, municipal utilities, free community policing and regulatory services that let customers feel comfortable buying sealed containers from complete strangers - all the things that allow them to make those profits in the first place. You couldn't have most modern businesses without these things, except maybe Blackwater Xe. Seriously. Pay. Your. Taxes.
CGI headliner Goldman Sachs is likely to pay only $14 million dollars in taxes for 2008. Total. Worldwide. They took more than $10 billion from taxpayers, and a few comments by CEO Lloyd Blankfein stating the perfectly obvious truth that the finance industry should be more transparent and has perhaps created some socially useless products, doesn't really take that fact out of the realm of travesty.
I have been convinced of how much better things are these days, now that corporations have venues like the Clinton Global Initiative to pressure them to be socially responsible. CGI commitments have undoubtedly been part of that, helped a lot of people, saved a lot of lives. It's an unqualified good. But fundamentally, a conference like CGI exists because a great many people's societies have failed them, and part of that failure comes in the form of governments not being able to afford to provide basic services.
It's also an unqualified good that US state and municipal governments can afford water treatment that keeps us from getting parasites. It's an unqualified good that between our minimum wage laws and rock bottom social safety net, opposed by many corporate funders otherwise happy to be seen 'helping the children' in public, that there are very few US families living on the rock bottom world salary of less than $1 a day.
The less US citizens need to rely on the vagaries of private charity, the better that is for the whole world. It's even better for business, as a whole, if maybe not Blackwater Xe. People's value as customers and entrepreneurs tends to vary inversely with their desperation and misery.
Which is to say that as praiseworthy as any philanthropy is, if Obama wants to do some good, if he wants to successfully tackle corporate offshore tax avoidance that costs the federal government billions, he should take a page from the Clinton Global Initiative and give high-flying taxpayers an annual gala with the president. Events like that seem to loosen wallets that don't usually open for the IRS, it'd probably pay for itself many times over.
STATE BLOGS
