The death of Apple
founder Steve Jobs has left his widow
a very wealthy person. She is now estimated
to be the ninth wealthiest woman in the world, (although why these statistics
should be divided by gender is a mystery).
So as a multi-billionaire doesn’t everyone expect her to use her vast
fortune to rail against high taxes on wealthy people, and argue for electing a
government that will let her and every other multi-billionaire gain even more
money and escape the tyranny of a Federal government that limits people like
her to only a few billions?
Maybe she is doing this, after all she has not set up a foundation and
has not engaged in publically disclosed large donations.
Ms. Jobs - Actually wants to help people with her vast inherited fortune What a traitor to her fellow billionaires |
While some people said Ms. Powell Jobs should have started a
foundation in Mr. Jobs’s name after his death, she did not, nor has she
increased her public giving.
But no, Ms. Jobs seems
to be the kind of person that apparently thinks she should actually help
people with her time and money. And she
wants to do it quietly, in her own way.
she has redoubled her
commitment to Emerson Collective, the organization she formed about a decade
ago to make grants and investments in education initiatives and, more recently,
other areas.
And she has done
a lot without any publicity.
“It’s not about getting any public recognition for her giving,
it’s to help touch and transform individual lives,” said Laura
Arrillaga-Andreessen, a philanthropist and lecturer on philanthropy at Stanford
who has been close friends with Ms. Powell Jobs for two decades. She is also
the daughter of a wealthy real estate developer in Silicon
Valley and the wife of Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist.
“If
you total up in your mind all of the philanthropic investments that Laurene has
made that the public knows about,” she said, “that is probably a fraction of 1
percent of what she actually does, and that’s the most I can say.”
So great Ms. Jobs, go
right ahead, do things the way you want to do them. And thanks for not using your billions to
fight government support for education, clean air and water, decent housing,
good medical care and the like. And the
fact that this must infuriate people like the Koch Brothers and their ilk, well
for us that’s just icing on the cake.
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