"Why the rich don't give to charity"

Goody, so I can tell the government they can't have the money I'd pay in taxes that would go to help businesses.

And you can give to what you wish, but the government doesn't have to reward it with a tax break.

 

You realize, don't you, that much of the conservative budget plan involves cutting back services to the poor and expecting private citizens to donate. Everyone is happy.

Except if people with the money hang onto it -- or commission a statue of themselves for the yacht club -- it puts the burden mostly on the blue-collar folk.

That's why conservatives can't say everyone can go fuck themselves about how people spend their own money. Their plans always assume some actual compassion from people with money.

 

I like it, Ragu.

 

Again. 1.3%?

I don't much care where or to whom or to what the "rich" give.

But 1.3% - deduction or no deduction - is heartbreaking.

From the link:

'One of the most surprising, and perhaps confounding, facts of charity in America is that the people who can least afford to give are the ones who donate the greatest percentage of their income. In 2011, the wealthiest Americans—those with earnings in the top 20 percent—contributed on average 1.3 percent of their income to charity. By comparison, Americans at the base of the income pyramid—those in the bottom 20 percent—donated 3.2 percent of their income.'

 

I believe a person making $1 million would be quite taken with his superior morality in giving $13,000 to charity while wondering why the slackers who make $25,000 are only giving $800.

That's essentially the argument when it comes to taxes, anyway.

 

This is a wild-ass guess of mine, but I am going to throw out the theory that many rich people see what they pay in taxes (dollars, not percentages) in comparison to the rest of the country, and say, "You want charity? There's your fucking charity".

The numbers surprised me from this story, but Azreal, there is something kinda unseemly to me about you and others moralizing about what other people should do with their money.

 

I presume that unseemliness would extend, too, to how poor people spend their welfare checks or part-time wages.

 

Actually, no - and I am not going to get into a Texas Deathmatch over this dreary topic.

 

Here's the thing -- the issue is not how the rich spend their money. It's how our tax system rewards the rich for how they spend their money, and whether the system is really driving the behavior as intended, or rewarding the right things. It seems like it's fair game to ask any time public money or tax breaks are used, for any purpose, whether it's really working out, no matter what the income level of the recipients, no matter whether we're talking about tax breaks for oil companies or solar-panel makers.

 

I'm with you.

 

The tax code sure seemed to go a good job making wonderful philanthropists out of a gaggle of robber barons in the early part of the last century.