Blog Post 1: The Price of Charity

I was sitting in the car with my parents the other day. Let me give you some background on my parents, they are both white, Christian, heterosexual, middle-class republicans. My father is the COO (chief operating officer) of an international company. My mother is a biblical counselor.

Anyways, we are sitting in the car and my father brings up an article that he read about how the CEO of Goodwill makes about $750,000 a year. My mother's response was that she couldn't believe someone trying to help others would make so much money. (Side note: Here is the link to the article my father was talking about. The article really had nothing to do with his specific salary and we did have a discussion about the true issue of the article which was why was Goodwill paying disabled people so much less than minimum wage)

My mothers response (I'll be honest, I had that gut reaction at first too) is so indicative of our culture. In the TED talk we listened to, Dan Pallotta talked about how our culture thinks it is perfectly okay for people of random companies like Google or FaceBook to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in a salary, yet it is seen as outrageously unfair for people who are actually helping others and making a difference in the world to make that kind of money for a salary. Our culture calls them "offenders" and tells people not to donate to these companies according to this monstrosity.

I don't think that this aspect of our culture will change in the near future, but I hope that people who work in and are in charge of non-profits will be able to make livable wages like the people who are only out there to serve themselves.


Observation about Communities:
A kid from my high school was killed. The town/school/alumni showed their support and community by wearing blue and writing the number 33 on their wrists.