TYCOON BOON
David Olive finds Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ brand of largesse refreshing,
Quality questions The Social Progress Report, released last week, ranks Canada sixth among 128 countries, based on health, higher education, social safety net, progress in fighting discrimination, environmental protection — 50 metrics in total. The U.S. ranks 18th.
That Canadian ranking is in line with Canada’s performance in the latest World Happiness Report, released in March. It puts Canada seventh and the U.S. 14th.
And the most recent report on social conditions in the OECD countries, published in the distinguished British medical journal the Lancet, ranks Canada ninth and the U.S. 28th.
Scan the history of these report cards, though, and you’ll see their bias toward countries with small populations, jurisdictions that are relatively easier to manage. Micronations, such as Andorra (pop. 85,000) and Iceland (pop. 333,000), are routinely lauded as top performers, while much larger countries, such as Germany, France and Japan, are found to be laggards despite social-justice standards higher than those found in Canada.
Rather than taking repeatedly renewed pride from these reports, Canada should strive to raise our social-justice performance to that of countries ranking below us in these reports.
There is a downside to such sunny reflections on Canada. They encourage a self-satisfaction we know to be unfounded, and a complacency about our urgent challenges in Indigenous living conditions, income inequality (including an unacceptable gender-pay gap) and shortages of affordable housing and enriched daycare spaces.
When you’re within striking distance of first place in the issues that matter, you can’t claim that further progress is beyond your capability. For Canada, it plainly isn’t. No pop (fingers crossed) We’re seeing alarmist reports about the coming burst of a Canadian housing bubble, but they fail to account for some crucial factors.
For at least five years, Ottawa and the Bank of Canada have been working to curb irrational exuberance in the Canadian housing market. Washington, by contrast, was conspicuously absent during the record U.S. boom of the 2000s, certain that the market would “selfcorrect.”
The B.C. and Ontario governments have imposed surtaxes on foreign buyers to remove speculation as a driver of higher prices. And for about two years now, the Big Six banks have applied stricter standards in mortgage lending. Unscrupulous mortgage brokers coaxing U.S. buyers to purchase houses they couldn’t afford have not been a factor in Canada.
Finally, the shelter needs of the 300,000 Canadian newcomers each year create something of a “floor” for housing demand and prices. In May, Canadian housing sales dropped by more than they have in five years, with sellers taking their properties off the market due to weaker-than-expected prices. And in the first two weeks of June, Toronto home sales fell by half compared with the year-earlier period — another sign of easing rather than a free fall.
We’re keeping our fingers crossed, to be sure. But there’s reason to hope for a soft landing from the Canadian boom rather than a late-2000s, U.S.-style crash. Bezos’ boldness Don’t expect too many emulators of Jeff Bezos’ crowdsourcing gambit in obtaining philanthropic ideas. Just one Bezos tweet earlier this month has so far generated more than 42,000 tweeted replies to his call for ideas on giving away a portion of his $86-billion (U.S.) fortune.
The sheer volume of suggestions, experts say, threatens to overwhelm the founder and CEO of Amazon.com Inc. Bezos also has his Washington Post, Blue Origin space project and newly acquired Whole Foods Markets Inc. to manage.
Every tycoon with philanthropic ambitions learns that it is easier to make money than to give it away. “To decide to whom to give it, and how large and when, and for what purpose and how,” said Aristotle, “is neither in every man’s power, nor an easy matter.”
That’s why Warren Buffett opted for the expedient of directing his $24 billion in donations to date to the charitable foundations of his friends Melinda and Bill Gates, who are credited with helping save about 220 million lives in Africa alone.
Still, the idea of asking the world how to best help others is refreshing.
So is Bezos’ philanthropic ambition: to help people “right now,” yet also have his donations make a lasting impact, as Andrew Carnegie’s 1,100 or so public libraries did, as have the Gates’ success in eradicating polio from most of Africa.
Bezos has already been advised by Michigan native Madonna to help in the reinvention of Detroit, and to finance a Chicago leather-fetish museum.
With a range of options that wide, Bezos will find plenty of ways to help improve the world. But sooner than later, his philanthropic impulse will have to staff up. dolive@thestar.ca