http://www.forbes.com/sites/luisakr...philanthropist-alfred-taubman-dies-at-age-91/ Alfred Taubman, founder of Taubman Centers, died on Friday evening in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. According to his son Robert, the company’s chairman and CEO, his father has a heart attack after dinner and later died. Taubman, 91, a billionaire worth approximately $3.1 billion at the time of his death, was active until the end. According to his son’s message to employees, Taubman was in Puerto Rico in March to celebrate the grand opening of The Mall of San Juan. On April 3, he posted a piece on his blog about his “great friends” Les and Abigail Wexner’s gift to the University of Michigan’s A. Alfred Taubman Medical Reseach Institute. A University of Michigan dropout, he was the largest donor in the school’s history, having pledged $56 million to the University of Michigan in 2012 on top of $142 million he’d already given. The school’s college of Architecture and Urban Planning bears his name, as does the research institute at the medical school. In all, Taubman had given away more than $250 million to charity, including millions to Detroit-area schools. He was also a strong supporter of stem cell research. Taubman grew up in Detroit during the Depression. He apparently started working at age 9 and got his start in retail at age 11 working at Sims department store after school. He graduated high school and went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor but World War II interrupted his education and he enlisted in the Army. He later returned to the university on the GI Bill, and studied art and architecture but never graduated from there, transferring to night school at Lawrence Tech to be closer to home and starting a job at an architecture firm. Shopping mall pioneer Alfred Taubman (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage) In 1950, recognizing the growth of the middle class in post-war America, Alfred decided to start his own real estate business. His first project was a freestanding bridal shop in Detroit. Leveraging the country’s shift to the suburbs, he started building high-end shopping malls and turning them into the nation’s modern town square. As his retail centers thrived, Taubman expanded his personal reach, serving at one time on the boards of Chase Manhattan Bank of New York, R.H. Macy Co., and Getty Oil. He once owned the A&W Restaurant Franchise. While he built many well known malls, he was known to many as the man who rescured British auction house Sotheby’s but later was implicated in a scandal that shook the art world and landed him in jail. He took the auction house private in 1983, turned it around and took it public again in 1988.The auction house later became embroiled in a price-fixing scheme that also implicated rival Christie’s.Taubman was convicted in 2002, fined $7.5 million and served nine months in jaiil. Taubman, who always denied the charges, published a memoir, Threshold Resistance: The Extraordinary Career of a Luxury Retailing Pioneer, about his career and how he ended up in jail.
Another self-declared "philanthropist" who spent just 10% of his entire wealth for good causes. That's how much Christians are to tithe. Not sure how that sets him apart From everyone else.
A person worth $5,000 who decides to donate his entire $5,000 net worth, or 100% of it, would probably not be called a philanthropist by anyone's definition except perhaps his own.
Really? I cannot disagree more. The heart, attitude and convictions is what counts and which makes all the difference. If you ever sat down with someone who was in dire need then they would attest to that. Having said that I do believe in the "bread before prayer" concept if you know what I mean. But in most every culture and religion it is it is emphasized that what counts is the relative amount and degree of giving not the absolute one. If it was true what you were saying then we would see an improvement in world poverty with an increasing amount of total giving and donations. But that is factually just not the case. Someone pledging 10% of his wealth is doing a respectable work but is by no means a philanthropist nor does he make a true sacrifice. I repeat that every Christian is called to return 10% ...not any different from a billionaire giving 10%. I am not sure why so many Americans are addicted to absolute numbers while pretty much every part in life, including trading, calls upon the application of relative concepts.
These are your word's "I repeat that every Christian is called to return 10% ...not any different from a billionaire giving 10%."
You have taken my comment slightly out of context. What I meant was that giving 10% of one's wealth is not a spectacular feast, regardless of the absolute amount given. My point was that millions of Christians around the globe choose to give/donate 10%. In fact I would argue that someone with low income giving 10% is making much more of a sacrifice than someone worth billions. But if you insist the two cannot be compared then I still do not see your point: Christians are not forced to give (according to my understanding nowhere in the bible is salvation conditional on tithing). So both donate out of their free will.