Dolly Parton is immensely talented and her talent has made her very rich. Not only can she sing, write songs, and act, but she has wisely kept control of the publishing rights to her music, meaning she receives royalties both on her own recordings of songs she wrote and those of others, like Whitney Houston’s mega-selling recording of “I Will Always Love You.” Forbes estimated her net worth at $350 million in 2021, attributing substantial portions to her publishing rights and to Dollywood, the theme park Parton cofounded in the 1980s.
As impressive as all of the above is, it begs the question: why isn’t Parton a billionaire like Paul McCartney, who doesn’t own the publishing rights to his most lucrative material, cowritten with John Lennon?
The answer given by numerous articles and popular social media memes is that Parton is not a billionaire because she has given away so much of her money to charity. One viral meme claims:
“Let’s be clear: Dolly Parton is a millionaire and not a billionaire because she *keeps giving money away. * Being a billionaire is MORAL FAILING. She gives away shockingly large amounts of money every year and is STILL RICHER THAN YOU AND I WILL EVER BE.”
Other variations encourage people to “be like Dolly.”
There are two assertions here to examine. The first is counterfactual. If Dolly Parton hadn’t given so much of her earnings away, would she today be a billionaire? It’s impossible to know for certain, but it’s certainly plausible, even likely. Let’s assume it’s true. That means Parton has foregone the accumulation of at least $650 billion in additional net worth by directing earnings she could otherwise have invested in profitable ventures towards charitable causes. The second assertion is that it is a “moral failing” to direct one’s own capital in the opposite way. This is demonstrably false even if one accepts the meme author’s moral premise.
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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?
