Page 15 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

Muhammad Yunus: Can wealth concentration be stopped?

in the charity world. Anything that happens in charity world gives us a measure of
selflessness that is already expressed. It is a matter of time to see how to convert
some charity money into social business investment money. After all charity and
social business has the same root. Both focus on helping people.
Charity has been with us since time immemorial. It has been recognized as an
integral part of human beings. All religions put great emphasis on it. Islam puts it up
as one of its five fundamental pillars, and requires every Muslim to give away 2.5%
of wealth and income every year. Imagine how much potentially this sum is. If we
add up the amount actually paid out every year that will be a huge sum too.
Total amount of charity given out by US public charities (organizations based
on raising money from general public and others) each year is over $1.6 trillion
dollars. They have combined assets of over $3 trillion dollars. These two I mention
as examples. There is an enormous variety of charities with huge amounts all around
the world.

Personal Giving
In addition we can go over the innumerable stories of personal giving. Mark
Zuckerberg is a recent one. He announced on the occasion of the birth of his
daughter that he would donate 99% of the shares of Facebook to charities over
course of time. The present value of this is $45 billion. He started out by giving
away one billion dollar a year. I find it a very interesting case of selflessness. It was
done on the occasion of the birth of his first child. Usual story would be that father
handing over the inheritance to his new-born ahead of time as a gesture of love.
Mark did the opposite. He deprived the child from inheritance by giving away his
wealth for creating a better world for her. Usually one gives away wealth at the end
of one's life. Mark made a remarkable decision; he gave away nearly all his wealth
at the beginning of his life. He is only 31. Since the beginning of Facebook Mark
takes a salary of only one dollar as the CEO of Facebook. He already signed up "The
Giving Pledge" when he was 27. Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett signed
a promise in 2010, they called "The Giving Pledge ", in which they promised to
donate to charity at least half of their wealth over the course of time, and invited
others among the wealthy to donate 50% or more of their wealth to charity. The
Giving Pledge started out with 40 multi-billionaires. Now there are 141 multi-
billionaire signatories.
I highlight the case of Mark because he is young. He is at the age when one is
expected to be ambitious about money, and remain busy with “building the future".
He has been doing the opposite. Mark may represent a new trend among the young
generation. They are different. They are more committed to the creation of a better

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