Here is a small challenge
 

Name me one very wealthy person in this country who has given back or done some marvellous deed of national importance.

Willie Nelson

Just a few living ones:

George Soros
Bill Gates
Ted Turner

John

Let's see George Soros is a speculator in currencey can't think of what else he has done but make lots of money.

Write to Bill and Melinda seeking money for some charitable institution in your area, but unless you are living in Africa, good luck.

Ted started CNN what else?

He has done a lot of philanthropic work in Eastern Europe to help with the transition from communism. He has also donated to many political causes here on his adopted country.

You may be right in that the Gates Foundation doesn't contribute to domestic efforts.

Isn't that enough???? ;)

Seriously, though, he started a foundation that does a lot of environmental and population issues.

John

Overlooked possibly...

Craig McCaw
Steve Case
The Carlson Family Foundation (Curt Carlson founder, local)

I was watching "Sunrise Earth" earlier this morning on HDNET. The show was in Acadia National Park which in large part was either donated by or improved by the Rockefeller and Morgan families. ;)

Henry Ford. He DID, after all, put America-And a lot of the rest of the world-on wheels. And at first, he was a fairly enlightened employer, paying his workers the then-unheard of wage of $5 a day back in 1914, plus he had an early form of profit-sharing as early as 1916. Despite the fact he is reputed to have said "History is Bunk", he spent millions on preserving it at his Greenfield Village, a re-creation of the America of his youth. And his contribution, the Model T, allowed millions of rural people to be freed from the drudgery of farm life, where you walked, rode a horse, or a bicycle if you wanted to get somewhere. Model Ts put the car in the price range of almost everyone-A NEW T could be had for as little as $260 in the late '20s. All those millions of cars going here & there required roads, so the T spurred development of a national hiway system. A T seems quaint & archaic now-They really were even when they were new, in some respects, but the 15 million of them made between 1908 & 1927 really changed this country fundamentally in many, many ways.

There's also Fair Hill north of Rising Sun, Maryland. It's, if memory serves, 5,500 acres of land right smack dab in the middle of the Northeast Corridor. Once mostly farmland, it's now being allowed to pretty much go back to nature. The land was donated by one of the DuPonts. It had been his private riding and fox hunting estate.

One not so natural part of Fair Hill is the race track. There is one race meeting a year. It's a steeplechase and features parimutuel betting, the only steeplechase in the US that does so. It's pretty cool.

John

Greed and generosity comes more from the heart and less from the checkbook
as we all know rich and poor on both sides. Non Issue.