Giving Compass' Take:

• Jay Newman at Medium discusses our current socio-economic culture and how we need to evolve and grow in many ways in this powerful opinion piece. 

• How can we contribute to the well-being of our society? How can donors and philanthropist put more emphasis on working together for the collective good?

• Here are some potential tools to combat inequality through data and research. 

There used to be slavery. Now, we’ve evolved beyond that in the US, yet economic inequality is so extreme and pervasive that it seems to just be a more civilized form of slavery with a different demographic serving as the slaves. We worship power, greed, financial abundance in a way that seems barbaric to me. I’m sure that in a more evolved society, if and when we get there, we will look back at these times and this worshiping and legitimizing of greed and power for its own sake as barbaric times. We are evolving, slowly, to be sure. Football and MMA have replaced the days of watching lions maul gladiators in the Colosseum, and that’s awesome. But how far have we come compared to how far we are potentially capable of going if we survive as a species long enough?

Today I got an email from Alignable with the subject line of “Who Should Win Small Business Person of the Year in Fort Lauderdale?” The obvious meaning, one would assume, is that it’s going to be a matter of who grew their business the most financially. I mean, doing good for society would not be a factor since that’s not the basis of having a business. Oh, sure, there are lofty platitudes about how capitalism is good for society, but really, that’s just talk by those who are able to make a lot of money. Is it really all that good?

Read the full article about evolving our socio-economic culture by Jay Newman at Medium