Book of the week: No good deed goes unpunished

published 17 November 2017

The Givers: Wealth, Power and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age

By David CallahanPublished by Knopf Publishing, £25(Buy at Amazon)

Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have all pledged to give away most or all of their vast fortunes. Unlike previous tycoons, they have taken a hands-on approach to giving, treating philanthropy like an investment. That sounds good, but as David Callahan's book shows, it gives the rich inordinate clout over public policy. The power of the mega-donors has led "many ordinary Americans to feel marginalised from civic life", says Daniel Ben-Ami in the Financial Times, as "key decisions on how their communities are run seem to have been ceded to the rich in this new gilded age". To combat this trend Callahan suggests "stronger watchdogs and greater transparency", but what is required is more a "democratic renewal that involves the people as a whole".

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Callahan yearns for a rose-tinted past where progress was publicly funded and not dependent on the "munificence and preferences of millionaires", says Michael Moritz in The Wall Street Journal. But the reality is that philanthropy has always played a role, and must step in when government funding dries up. The hostile reaction of the left to the generosity of such billionaires just goes to show that no good deed goes unpunished.

Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.

He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.

Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.

As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @DrMatthewPartri