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First, Forbes magazine came out with its annual list of the 400 richest people in America. Then Paul Newman died. The juxtaposition put an even stronger focus than usual on the question: What do rich people do with all of that money?

You have to love what Newman did, build a company on his glowing reputation just so he could donate the profits to charity. Reportedly, it added up to $250 million of good works. He got some glory out of it, but it wasn’t something he did to benefit his own career, and it wasn’t done with profits secretly drained from customers who never knew what hit them. It was all up front and went where it was supposed to go. This is a tough model to beat.

The people on the Forbes list are in a slightly different position. They make gobs of money, mostly through intelligence and perseverance, partly by overcharging; then they have to figure out where to put it. You know what Bill Gates and Warren Buffett do; let’s check out a few of the others.

Jeremy Jacobs, owner of a hospitality company named Delaware North Cos. Inc., has given $10 million to create a heart disease research facility at the University of Buffalo. Donald Bren, a real estate billionaire from California, gave $20 million to the University of California, Irvine law school last year and $8.5 million to an after-school program for low-income students this year. Donald Hall of the Hallmark company has built up an $883 million endowment in Kansas City that gives to education, health, community building and arts causes.

Others give generously to universities and cancer research and the homeless, and you wonder where we would be without this kind of largesse. If they’re doing it for the tax breaks or the glory, who cares? Good things come of it.

A few people on the list – and nobody in this group is worth less than $1.3 billion – have found it necessary to put a fair amount of money into legal fees. Others follow the rules but don’t seem inclined to help anybody out. Maybe they buy a sports team with their extra cash, which is understandable but doesn’t exactly put tears in your eyes. Or they give it all to art. Rich folks are required to like art.

Ronald Lauder, whose mother was cosmetics tycoon Estee Lauder, is worth $3.4 billion and donated $130 million to the Whitney Museum of American Art this year. OK, somebody has to keep the creative world going, but almost any fraction of that sum sure would have bought a lot of schoolroom supplies.

Matthew Bucksbaum of General Growth Properties Inc., who got his start by developing a Cedar Rapids shopping mall with his brothers, reportedly gave $23 million to the Aspen Music Festival. With things going the way they have lately for General Growth, they’d better put some cheerful tunes on the concert schedule.

We’re lucky the rich give to any causes at all. And it isn’t fair to subject everyone to the theory that “there are more important problems in the world,” or we would only work on one thing at a time at the expense of everything else.

But when you read that medical inventor Gary Michelson wants to see most of his $2 billion spent to help unwanted pets, it seems like feeding a dog while starving children watch through a window. He sure could help an awful lot of human beings with, say, half of $2 billion.

Around here, we’re known for being unusually generous with United Way of Central Iowa, and the Greater Des Moines Community Foundation is booming along. This is a fine way to go.

Some of our leading families also have opened their wallets for specific causes. But when you look at the Forbes 400 list, you wonder whether any of our wealthiest citizens will ever decide to become true game-changers. It must feel good to pick out a cause, pour money on it and say, “Remember that problem? Fixed it myself.”