I just finished streaming the last season of Secret Millionaire. If you
haven't seen the show it is an "unscripted" reality show where
millionaires go slumming disguised as normal people. They join the
unwashed masses for six days scouting for people to donate at least
$100,000 (supposedly of their own money) to. It opens with them
proclaiming their riches by showing how ostentatious their lifestyles
are. One boasts that he has dropped thousands on just a dinner before,
another shows us his wine cellar with bottles of wine in it worth more
than my car. Another has a dozen fancy cars, Ferraris, Mercedes, Aston
Martin...you get the message, they are richer than any of will ever be,
so Nyah!
From a humanitarian perspective, the show is heart
wrenching. Anybody who has lived in the American real world at all is
painfully familiar with the struggles of people who had been laid off,
abused, had sick kids, lost their home, blah blah blah. (Not to be
confused with say the Sudanese, Ethiopian, Zimbabwan...etc, real world
which makes the poorest of use seem as rich as the millionaires on this
show) They also meet different individuals who are giving so much of
themselves to their communities that I started to feel kind of
embarrassed at how easy my own life, such as it is, is. It was these
people that moved me the most. Like the woman whose house was full of
the homeless kids that she takes care of with only her one social
security check. Her homeless were not teens or adults, they were kids,
mostly preteens and younger, or the ladies that ran the center for
homeless teens in Las Vegas, the halfway house for women just released
from prison, the halfway house for men trying to overcome addiction,
the shelter for women seeking escape from abuse...and... and... and...
So many generous and giving souls out there. These were just single
people or small groups that were using their own meager resources to
help those even more destitute than them. Pillars of the community
shoring up the downtrodden.
This show made me cry and cry. I was
so happy for the people receiving the checks, and I did feel that the
millionaires were truly moved by the people they met and what they had
seen out there when they came out of their ivory towers. But if you
think it through there was so much more they could have done (at less
personal cost even) than throwing big checks at these people. First of
all, the IRS will take half of what they received, so you have to
figure after taxes they only got to keep about half of the check. If
the millionaires really, truly wanted to make a difference in these
lives, they would have done something more sustainable (and tax free),
like JOBS to the unemployed single moms, homeless teens, and others
that were truly struggling with no visible means of support besides
charities. These millionaires are very well connected to other
millionaires that own companies, even of they didn't have any
themselves that could hire, they could easily arrange jobs for people.
The cancer ridden girl should have been set up with the best doctor
money can buy, the volunteer organizations should have had trust finds
set up for them. These millionaires could easily set up a trust fund
account with enough money in it that the organizations could just use
the interest to accomplish what they do. That would give them a
parachute and sustainable passive income, and the initial outlay could
be recouped or reinvested. One organization that got a check for
$100,000 to put toward a new building which is just amazing until you
put into into real perspective. When you think about it, you cannot
even buy a 1 bedroom house for that, especially in the community they
are in. I know that the check will help them a lot, but it seems like
again, if that money was invested in their behalf to generate a passive
income stream, it would help them more and for a lot longer. For
someone that spends thousands of dollars on a dinner, and deals in
real-estate foreclosures to make his money, they would have much better
served if he could have given them a building straight up, then they
would not be saddled with payments on a new building and they can focus
on helping people.
It is possible that these long-term
approaches are not practical for the purposes of a TV show. What I
would really like to know is what these millionaires did when they went
back their mansions. Did they just sleep it off and forget it ever
happened? Did they think about it for weeks without doing anything
else? Did they go out and create trusts and foundations to help out
more, volunteer more, let their rich friends in on the amount of
poverty induced suffering there is outside their gated communities? I
hope so!
So, though I think the show had good intentions, the
truth is that throwing a huge check at someone who does not know how to
handle money is only going to help them in the short term, but in the
end, they are likely to be right back where they started, with rounder
bellies. What they needed was not just the check, but also some
financial advice, or jobs, or something sustainable that could
facilitate a real change and a ladder to climb out of the poverty with.
That would have made a real difference, not the temporary feel-good
show of a check for a few thousand dollars.
I am sure I will
continue to watch the show just because of how happy the people are
when they received their checks. Release the floodgate of happy tears.