“The woman who got the first C4SI $ecurity Card, said she would use the money for a badly needed oil change for her car (which she lived in previously!). Another broke down and said she could now buy her grandson eyeglasses“.
If Mr. Market came to me for advice on a New Year’s resolution, here’s what I’d suggest: “Capitalism needs to self-regulate its inequities so as not to fall out of favor with the population it so greatly serves.” Then I’d have to admit that I stole that quote from Bram Zeigler – professional money manager and founder of an intriguing new charity called Capitalists For Shared Incom e, or C4SI. (Full disclosure – Zeigler is a former colleague and he asked me to join C4SI’s advisory board, but all of the very heavy lifting in starting the organization was his.) What’s so unusual about C4SI? First of all it aims to be around for a long time – basically forever. Zeigler’s ambitious goal is to create a privately funded, permanent endowment which would distribute roughly 5% of its assets each year to those living in poverty. “It will be similar to Norway’s Oil Fund or the Alaska Permanent Fund, but instead of building an endowment from natural resource wealth, we’re building an endowment from the wealth spawned by the ingenuity, productivity and entrepreneurial spirit of the capitalist system”. Elite schools like Yale and Stanford have long used this model to fund tuition and research. Yes, it’s important to have well-funded world class universities, but let’s be clear – the beneficiaries are, or at some point will be, part of the 1%. It’s a process that reinforces inequality. C4SI aims to use the same model but to lean in the other direction, helping those at the bottom end of the wealth spectrum.
