Wednesday, January 28, 2009

The Slate 60

Leona Helmsley might possibly qualify as the worst rich person in the world. Leona died at the tender age of 87 this year, and managed to make the Slate 60. She left $12 million to her dog and refused any money to two of her grandchildren. She left the bulk of her estate ($5-8 billion) to the charity she and her husband founded. The main recipients of the charity? Dogs. She has requested (but with no legally binding action) that the money go to help dogs.



She also left her private chauffeur $100,000. Which is nice, kind of.



In contrast Michael Bloomberg has been in the top 10 list of the Slate 60 for the last few years (and possibly longer, I'm a little lazy and only checked back 4 years) and gives to a number of charities. One year he gave to 995 different charities.


Slate recently posted a list of the biggest charitable contributions of the year.

He has given anonymous gifts of 5-20 million each year to an arts fund in NYC. He is truly a great philanthropist. I wish that more billionaires were like him.

1 comment:

allcedars said...

well, if I were a billionaire, first i'd help people, then dogs, and then art. That's the my order of values. :)