Creating Wealth Does More Good than Giving it Back

Wealth cannot be created without solving someone else's problems.

by Paul H. Rubin and Rod D. Martin
December 27, 2017

In this holiday season, we constantly see appeals to “give back.” Google indicates that there are 154 million mentions of “giving back.” While many of these are self-serving requests for contributions, a sampling of these listings indicates that giving to charity helps create a “purpose” in life. The assumption (sometimes explicit, but always implicit) is that what we do in the workplace to earn our money is somehow selfish, but we can help others by giving to charity.

"Giving Back"

I have no issue with charity; my wife and I are regular and faithful givers. But what is not socially useful is to call these or any other contributions “giving back.” The implication of the term is that the donor has taken something from society by earning money and that this has created an obligation to return something through charity.

This view of charity is very counterproductive and leads to the general demonization of markets which has become rife in o…