The Gospel of Wealth
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 16 October 2019
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What should billionaires do with their money? The world’s greatest philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie said they should give it all away. Andrew Carnegie was born in Scotland and moved to America where he became a steel magnate and the richest man in the world. In his guidebook to philanthropy, The Gospel of Wealth, he challenged people who acquired great wealth to give it back to the community. He also believed the most important cause to support was education. Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown asks why today’s billionaire philanthropists aren’t giving away more money and why education is no longer the top priority.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I went to school in Scotland so I first heard of the great Scotsman when I was there. |
| 0:07.0 | He's a man foot of action, college and energy. |
| 0:18.0 | Libraries he created something like 2,800 libraries around the world. The residue of what he created is still with us everywhere. |
| 0:21.0 | I have no idea what my predecessors, whether they were influenced by him or not, but there's |
| 0:27.0 | a great deal of similarity. |
| 0:29.4 | I am impressed by his understanding of the meaning of life through charitable giving. |
| 0:37.0 | From every continent today's philanthropists acknowledging the enduring influence of Andrew Carnegie. |
| 0:45.0 | Born in Scotland, his fortune made in Pittsburgh America, Carnegie is indisputably the |
| 0:49.7 | world's greatest ever philanthropist. |
| 0:52.2 | He built libraries, supported universities and gave |
| 0:54.4 | scholarships to poor black and female students. He created spaces for |
| 0:58.3 | appreciating music and culture like the famous Carnegie Hall in New York. |
| 1:03.0 | By the time he died in 1919, |
| 1:05.0 | he'd already given away more than 90% of his fortune, |
| 1:08.0 | $300 billion in today's money. |
| 1:11.0 | Wealth he'd accumulated as the world's biggest steelmaker. |
| 1:15.4 | No one comes near to him for this scale of giving, much more than today's biggest donors, |
| 1:20.1 | Bill and Melinda Gates. |
| 1:21.8 | He was not just the biggest of the world's |
| 1:23.2 | philanthropists. He was the first modern philanthropist and the man whose |
| 1:26.6 | Gospel of wealth set down the principles forgiving that his successors, no |
| 1:30.6 | matter how rich are powerful, have had to be judged against. |
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