It’s the season of giving. So they say.

And it is true that during this time of year, people seem to feel more charitable. By most estimates, 30 percent of Americans’ total annual giving comes in the month of December alone. That helps a lot.

Americans’ generosity stands out among wealthy nations around the world. The total amount of charitable giving from private citizens in this country is staggering: Americans donated almost $600 billion to charities in 2024, up 3.3 percent from the previous year, after adjusting for inflation. Individual giving in the US represents 2.1 percent of GDP—far more than most other wealthy nations. Brits, for example, give less than 1 percent of their GDP. So good on us.

But the American ethic of giving has shifted in recent years, especially among the wealthiest Americans. Color me unsurprised.

A few years back, I was asked to emcee a charitable event on Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley—the epicenter of American venture capital. Office space along that road is the most expensive in the US, and the people who work there are some of the wealthiest in the world. It was a lovely evening, and I’m sure it raised a substantial amount of money for a good cause. At the end, one of the organizers, a woman who shone with that unmistakable sheen of great wealth and dazzled with a diamond necklace, came up to thank me, and at one point she said, “You know, we never do this here.” Her bejeweled friends around us nodded their heads.

I couldn’t believe it. That moment stuck with me, and in the years since, I’ve thought of all those parish-hall Bingo Nights and American Legion barbecues, the school bake sales, raffles, auctions, and team fundraisers, the Kiwanis Clubs’ pancake breakfasts and the Omega Psi Phi Mardi Gras Balls. All the days and all the evenings when ordinary Americans—with far less wealth than the Sand Hill Road gang has—gather to give together. All that planning. All that teamwork. All that joy in coming together to help others.

There’s something desperately wrong in this country at the very top. We all know it.

For most of American history, great fortunes carried with them a presumption of public responsibility. John D. Rockefeller tithed from his boyhood, and then as an adult invented modern philanthropy because he grew so rich he needed a system to give away the vast amounts he thought proper. Andrew Carnegie declared that “the man who dies rich dies disgraced.” These guys were not saints—not by a long shot— but they believed in what used to be the American civic ethic among the very rich: Great wealth brings a great duty to give back.

That ethic has thinned to the point of vanishing among many at the top of American life.

Today’s billionaire class is larger, richer, and more powerful than any in our history. Yet as a group, they give away astonishingly small portions of their fortunes. Families worth more than $500 million—the ultra-rich by any definition—donate, on average, just about one percent in a given year. And the Forbes 400, the richest people in America, have collectively given away less than five percent of their wealth over their lifetimes. Many have given away under one percent.

There are a few among the super-rich—like Warren Buffett or MacKenzie Scott—who behave as though that older American ethic still carries moral weight. But they are exceptions.

Today’s plutocrats have also transformed giving, and not in a good way. They’re gaming charity itself. The norm among the modern ultra-rich is not civic obligation; it’s “strategic philanthropy.” Tax-efficient vehicles. Donor-advised funds that can sit dormant for years. LLC structures that blur the line between charity and influence. Giving that rarely reduces anyone’s real power or fortune.

Many of today’s tech titans are among the worst. They give, when they give, on their own timeline, through structures they control, often toward ideas that reinforce their technological /political worldviews. That is not public service. It is private power masquerading as civic contribution. The egregious tech billionaire Peter Thiel has even called for his plutocrat buddies to step away from traditional charitable giving in order to avoid supporting “left-wing non-profits.”

In our country today, the gap between what the richest can do and what they feel like doing is one of the defining moral tensions of American life. It’s indecent. Most ordinary, decent Americans sense that. That is one reason so many of them are so angry. That is one of the grounds of the struggle for our country.

And that brings us to our poem this week. It has nothing to do with money. But it does deal with the question “a certain lawyer” asked Jesus of Nazareth two thousand years ago: “Who is my neighbor?”

To whom do we owe our charity? Who has a claim on our hearts? How do we know?

The poem is, “The Death of the Hired Man,” by Robert Frost. It is a very long poem, and a very great one. Frost’s long narrative is clear as a bell. The ending is worth the journey.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedMary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the tableWaiting for Warren. When she heard his step,She ran on tip-toe down the darkened passageTo meet him in the doorway with the newsAnd put him on his guard. ‘Silas is back.’She pushed him outward with her through the doorAnd shut it after her. ‘Be kind,’ she said.She took the market things from Warren’s armsAnd set them on the porch, then drew him downTo sit beside her on the wooden steps.

‘When was I ever anything but kind to him?But I’ll not have the fellow back,’ he said.‘I told him so last haying, didn’t I?If he left then, I said, that ended it.What good is he? Who else will harbor himAt his age for the little he can do?What help he is there’s no depending on.Off he goes always when I need him most.He thinks he ought to earn a little pay,Enough at least to buy tobacco with,So he won’t have to beg and be beholden.“All right,” I say, “I can’t afford to payAny fixed wages, though I wish I could.”“Someone else can.” “Then someone else will have to.”I shouldn’t mind his bettering himselfIf that was what it was. You can be certain,When he begins like that, there’s someone at himTrying to coax him off with pocket-money,—In haying time, when any help is scarce.In winter he comes back to us. I’m done.’

‘Sh! not so loud: he’ll hear you,’ Mary said.

‘I want him to: he’ll have to soon or late.’

‘He’s worn out. He’s asleep beside the stove.When I came up from Rowe’s I found him here,Huddled against the barn-door fast asleep,A miserable sight, and frightening, too—You needn’t smile—I didn’t recognize him—I wasn’t looking for him—and he’s changed.Wait till you see.’

‘Where did you say he’d been?’

‘He didn’t say. I dragged him to the house,And gave him tea and tried to make him smoke.I tried to make him talk about his travels.Nothing would do: he just kept nodding off.’

‘What did he say? Did he say anything?’

‘But little.’

‘Anything? Mary, confessHe said he’d come to ditch the meadow for me.’

‘Warren!’

‘But did he? I just want to know.’

‘Of course he did. What would you have him say?Surely you wouldn’t grudge the poor old manSome humble way to save his self-respect.He added, if you really care to know,He meant to clear the upper pasture, too.That sounds like something you have heard before?Warren, I wish you could have heard the wayHe jumbled everything. I stopped to lookTwo or three times—he made me feel so queer—To see if he was talking in his sleep.He ran on Harold Wilson—you remember—The boy you had in haying four years since.He’s finished school, and teaching in his college.Silas declares you’ll have to get him back.He says they two will make a team for work:Between them they will lay this farm as smooth!The way he mixed that in with other things.He thinks young Wilson a likely lad, though daftOn education—you know how they foughtAll through July under the blazing sun,Silas up on the cart to build the load,Harold along beside to pitch it on.’

‘Yes, I took care to keep well out of earshot.’

‘Well, those days trouble Silas like a dream.You wouldn’t think they would. How some things linger!Harold’s young college boy’s assurance piqued him.After so many years he still keeps findingGood arguments he sees he might have used.I sympathize. I know just how it feelsTo think of the right thing to say too late.Harold’s associated in his mind with Latin.He asked me what I thought of Harold’s sayingHe studied Latin like the violinBecause he liked it—that an argument!He said he couldn’t make the boy believeHe could find water with a hazel prong—Which showed how much good school had ever done him.He wanted to go over that. But most of allHe thinks if he could have another chanceTo teach him how to build a load of hay—’

‘I know, that’s Silas’ one accomplishment.He bundles every forkful in its place,And tags and numbers it for future reference,So he can find and easily dislodge itIn the unloading. Silas does that well.He takes it out in bunches like big birds’ nests.You never see him standing on the hayHe’s trying to lift, straining to lift himself.’

‘He thinks if he could teach him that, he’d beSome good perhaps to someone in the world.He hates to see a boy the fool of books.Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk,And nothing to look backward to with pride,And nothing to look forward to with hope,So now and never any different.’

Part of a moon was falling down the west,Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw itAnd spread her apron to it. She put out her handAmong the harp-like morning-glory strings,Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves,As if she played unheard some tendernessThat wrought on him beside her in the night.‘Warren,’ she said, ‘he has come home to die:You needn’t be afraid he’ll leave you this time.’

‘Home,’ he mocked gently.

‘Yes, what else but home?It all depends on what you mean by home.Of course he’s nothing to us, any moreThan was the hound that came a stranger to usOut of the woods, worn out upon the trail.’

‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there,They have to take you in.’

‘I should have called itSomething you somehow haven’t to deserve.’

Warren leaned out and took a step or two,Picked up a little stick, and brought it backAnd broke it in his hand and tossed it by.‘Silas has better claim on us you thinkThan on his brother? Thirteen little milesAs the road winds would bring him to his door.Silas has walked that far no doubt today.Why didn’t he go there? His brother’s rich,A somebody—director in the bank.’

‘He never told us that.’

‘We know it though.’

‘I think his brother ought to help, of course.I’ll see to that if there is need. He ought of rightTo take him in, and might be willing to—He may be better than appearances.But have some pity on Silas. Do you thinkIf he’d had any pride in claiming kinOr anything he looked for from his brother,He’d keep so still about him all this time?’

‘I wonder what’s between them.’

‘I can tell you.Silas is what he is—we wouldn’t mind him—But just the kind that kinsfolk can’t abide.He never did a thing so very bad.He don’t know why he isn’t quite as goodAs anyone. Worthless though he is,He won’t be made ashamed to please his brother.’

‘I can’t think Si ever hurt anyone.’

‘No, but he hurt my heart the way he layAnd rolled his old head on that sharp-edged chair-back.He wouldn’t let me put him on the lounge.You must go in and see what you can do.I made the bed up for him there tonight.You’ll be surprised at him—how much he’s broken.His working days are done; I’m sure of it.’

‘I’d not be in a hurry to say that.’

‘I haven’t been. Go, look, see for yourself.But, Warren, please remember how it is:He’s come to help you ditch the meadow.He has a plan. You mustn’t laugh at him.He may not speak of it, and then he may.I’ll sit and see if that small sailing cloudWill hit or miss the moon.’

It hit the moon.Then there were three there, making a dim row,The moon, the little silver cloud, and she.

Warren returned—too soon, it seemed to her,Slipped to her side, caught up her hand and waited.

‘Warren,’ she questioned.

‘Dead,’ was all he answered.