"These new super-rich won't loosen up their wads because they're afraid they'll reduce their net worth and go down on the list," he told Dowd. "That's their Super Bowl."

Turner suggested that somebody create an alternate list of the nation's top givers, so that the blindly status-driven could at least fight to be the top donor.

Michael E. Kinsley '72, a friend of Dowd's, and also once a Crimson executive, quickly picked up the challenge in his on-line magazine Slate (www.slate.com). The Slate 60 is now a mainstay of the magazine, listing the top 60 American donors for each quarter of the year.

Whether or not the list has encouraged high-stakes giving, it does make Alter's point clear: too many of the big gifts are going to higher education.

Topping the list this past quarter was Kathryn Albertson, the widow of a super-market-chain founder, who gave $660 million in stock to-unusually-primary and secondary schools in Idaho. Yet many of the weightier donations, including 19 of the top 29, went to universities to endow new chairs, pay for new student centers and fund additions to football stadiums.

But maybe, in calling mainly for a reallocation of donated dollars, Alter is aiming too low.

There is in fact enough wealth in American bank accounts to go around between social service organizations, environmental initiatives and well-funded universities-if only the super-rich would agree to be a bit more super, and bit less rich.

Two days ago, Forbes magazine, the target of Turner's ire, released its annual list of the nation's 400 richest people. This year, the list included 170 billionaires, up from 135 in 1996. When the magazine started the list in 1982, there were just 13 billionaires.

Atop the Forbes 400, as expected, is Harvard's favorite drop-out Bill Gates-who also happens to be the world's richest person.

Bill's net worth more than doubled over the last year, to $39.8 billion-meaning, as Newsweek noted, that his wealth grew by $400 million each week.

To put these figures in perspective, last year Bill made as much in an average week as a person earning $80,000 per year would make in a lifetime-a lifetime of 5,000 years.

Bill has started to open the coffers of late. This year he gave $215 million to provide Internet access to public libraries, and $25 million to Harvard for the construction of a new computer science building.

And yet, together these gifts comprise less than six-tenths of one percent of Bill's swelling estimated worth. And as he settles into his gluttonous Seattle-area palace, the Microsoft mogul says he feels like waiting until he is 50 or 60 to give away the rest of his immense fortune. "Giving away money effectively is almost as hard as earning it in the first place," he says. Sure, Bill. Tell that to someone-anyone-in need. Equally preposterous, the man in second place on the Forbes 400, investor Warren Buffett, has said he plans to wait until he and his wife have passed away to donate his $21 billion for the greater good.

Until then, let the poor suffer, the uneducated remain ignorant, the hungry starve and the forests wither. They say in political philosophy that justice delayed is justice denied. Gates, Buffett and their fellow super-rich should be ashamed of themselves. Generosity delayed is generosity denied.