Culture of Donation Is Barometer of Social Health

The harder life becomes, the warmer peoples' hearts get, Koreans used to say. Unfortunately, this no longer seems to be the case.

According to the Joint Fund-Raising Association for Social Welfare, popular donations over the past two months reached only 43 percent of the targeted 221 billion won, way below the 51 percent progress marked in the same period of last year.

Especially disheartening was the sluggish increase in individual donations which normally account for 30 percent of the total, reaffirming the often-cited income polarization amid the worst global recession in seven decades. In fact, the portion of households whose incomes fall short of the 50 percent of median income had remained at 8 percent before the 1997-98 financial crisis, but has now surged to 13 percent.

What this means is that the relatively well-to-do, not to speak of the high-income brackets, should do more to help the less privileged around them. The government can help, too, with a policy aimed at spreading a culture of giving.

For instance, to jack up the individual portion among private donations, which stands at 60 percent in Korea compared with 80 percent in the United States, Seoul ought to increase tax incentives and develop related financial instruments, while trying to enhance transparency in the operation of organizations working for the public good.

Big businesses for their part also need to drastically increase donations from the present level. The nation's biggest family-controlled conglomerates have reluctantly contributed $1 billion or more only as a means of earning popular ― and legal ― leniency for their owners' irregularities.

Just compare them with U.S. billionaires, such as Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, who has returned $37 billion, or 85 percent of his entire worth, to society, exerting huge influence on other individuals' donation boom.

Whether they return individual wealth to society or simply leave it to their descendants shows the health and maturity of a country's capitalist system, and the gap between Korea and America appears too wide to narrow in this regard.

In a way, the government can ― and should ― be the biggest donor of all by implementing policies, which benefit the people on the lowest rung of the income ladder. The Lee Myung-bak administration's tax cuts for the wealthy have apparently failed to produce its ``trickle-down effect,'' as the rich have squeezed their purse strings even tighter. A broader shift in policy is needed toward showing more sympathy for less competitive elements of society.

At a time when politicians enact comedies, comedians play politics. In one of the most popular TV comedy shows, a drunken man asks back a police officer, ``What has the state done for me?'' adding, ``It's a lousy world that remembers only the first.'' These are the lines President Lee should heed, a man who vowed to make Korea a country of ``warm conservatism.''