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It's been argued that it gives a few incredibly wealthy people undue influence on public spending. Instead of being taxed and then spent according to the govern

It's been argued that it gives a few incredibly wealthy people undue influence on public spending. Instead of being taxed and then spent according to the government's priorities, which is at some level accountable to the public, a few wealthy people get to decide what programs have merit and pour their money into them.

mullingitover 11y ago
Eh, the United States spends a lot of that tax money on the military. I don't have a problem with wealthy people making their own call on the guns vs. butter question.
- mystikal 11y ago
  > I don't have a problem with wealthy people making their own call on the guns vs. butter question. You can donate to military organizations that fund warfare directly?
- interesting_att 11y ago
  Exactly. Would you trust Mark Zuckerberg with spending 15bn for the supposed betterment of society, or would you trust the US government? Given that the US government wastes so much via corrupt deals, inefficiencies, insane surveillance, and absurd military spending- I would favor Zuckerberg directing the fund.
- burkemw3 11y ago
  "A lot" is relative. Wikipedia says the military is 17% of expenditures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_States_federal_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_Sta... This may or may not constitute a lot, depending on who you are.
  - mullingitover 11y ago
    If we're going to talk about relative military spending... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...
  - joegaudet 11y ago
    I'm not sure why you're getting down voted for this. A lot is an interesting question, especially given this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...) which if you sort by percentage of GDP puts the US below Russia. Is it that surprising that the country with far and away the highest GDP has the highest military spending in real dollars?
  - qrendel 11y ago
    So, not a total expert on this, but I'm pretty sure that 17% is the DoD budget, which is (by some estimates) about half of the actual total military spending. By other estimates maybe more than half - it depends what you consider "military spending." For example, iirc, a significant portion of NASA's budget is for military applications - spy satellites and such. Similarly, the DoD budget doesn't consider veteran's benefits owed to former soldiers, which is a large portion of the long-term obligations comprising the national debt. It also leaves out most of the national security complex (DHS, NSA, FBI), military applications in the Department of Energy, and so on.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#Other_military-related_expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
    - burkemw3 11y ago
      I figured some expenses were hiding, but hadn't found enough of them yet. I'm cobbling together some more data points here. They aren't all for the same year, but are close to recent. - Veterans Affairs: ~160B [0] - DHS: ~65B [1] - "non-military intelligence spending" (I assume including a solid chunk of NSA and CIA): ~55B [2] - FBI: ~8B [3] - retirement from Treasury (for service before 1984. The reference is interesting!) ~8B [4] This tallies up to an additional $296B or 8% (for 25% total). The Project On Government Oversight has a similar table [5] that includes some of my items, some additional items, and excludes some of mine. It reaches a $1 trillion "National Security" budget, which shakes out to about 28% of spending. Thanks for the linking and push to keep digging! The "Military budget and total US federal spending" section of the article linked in the parent was a good jumping off point for me, as well. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Veterans_Affairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Ve... [1]: http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/FY_2016_DHS_Budget_in_Brief.pdf http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/FY_2016_... [2]: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/02/02/black-budget-requests-remain-secret http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/02/02/black-budget-... [3]: http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/jmd/legacy/2013/10/03/fbi-justification.pdf http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/jmd/legacy/2013/1... [4]: http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB3005/index1.html http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB3005/index1.html [5]: http://www.pogo.org/our-work/straus-military-reform-project/defense-budget/2014/americas-one-trillion-national-security-budget.html http://www.pogo.org/our-work/straus-military-reform-project/... EDIT: formatting
haberman 11y ago
Or put another way, the people who create something worth $300B out of nothing get to decide what happens to their share of the $300B. And as a bonus, these are people with demonstrated success in their ventures, and they are given free reign to pursue their vision fully. Whereas the public sector is a mess of a dysfunctional congress, infighting, posturing, pork, global warming deniers, and discourse targeted to short attention spans and the 24 hour news cycle. There is something very troubling about the idea that the more successful/valuable your creation becomes, the less entitled you are to invest the fruit of your success into your next idea.
- turar 11y ago
  Why should Joe Schmoe earning an honest $75K/year have less say than that though?
  - haberman 11y ago
    Mark Zuckerberg isn't taking anything away from the $75k/year guy. He just has more because he created something valuable. If you are an artist so good that your paintings are worth $1M each, should you get to have them? Or should someone walk in your door and say "whoa there, you have too much now, we're taking your paintings until you have the same amount of wealth as the $75k/year guy"?
    - stephenr 11y ago
      > If you are an artist so good that your paintings are worth $1M each, should you get to have them? Or should someone walk in your door and say "whoa there, you have too much now, we're taking your paintings until you have the same amount of wealth as the $75k/year guy"? If you paint million dollar paintings and leave them in your studio, I guarantee you the IRS will not knock on your door and say "you have too many paintings now, we're going to take them now". If you sell those paintings, and make an INCOME, the IRS will expect you to pay INCOME TAX. Seriously. How is the basic concept of taxes so hard to understand?
      - 11y ago
prostoalex 11y ago
The easy fix would be to strip the charities of their tax-free status. That does have some unintended consequences though.

mullingitover 11y ago

Eh, the United States spends a lot of that tax money on the military. I don't have a problem with wealthy people making their own call on the guns vs. butter question.

mystikal 11y ago
> I don't have a problem with wealthy people making their own call on the guns vs. butter question. You can donate to military organizations that fund warfare directly?
interesting_att 11y ago
Exactly. Would you trust Mark Zuckerberg with spending 15bn for the supposed betterment of society, or would you trust the US government? Given that the US government wastes so much via corrupt deals, inefficiencies, insane surveillance, and absurd military spending- I would favor Zuckerberg directing the fund.
burkemw3 11y ago
"A lot" is relative. Wikipedia says the military is 17% of expenditures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_States_federal_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_Sta... This may or may not constitute a lot, depending on who you are.
- mullingitover 11y ago
  If we're going to talk about relative military spending... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...
- joegaudet 11y ago
  I'm not sure why you're getting down voted for this. A lot is an interesting question, especially given this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...) which if you sort by percentage of GDP puts the US below Russia. Is it that surprising that the country with far and away the highest GDP has the highest military spending in real dollars?
- qrendel 11y ago
  So, not a total expert on this, but I'm pretty sure that 17% is the DoD budget, which is (by some estimates) about half of the actual total military spending. By other estimates maybe more than half - it depends what you consider "military spending." For example, iirc, a significant portion of NASA's budget is for military applications - spy satellites and such. Similarly, the DoD budget doesn't consider veteran's benefits owed to former soldiers, which is a large portion of the long-term obligations comprising the national debt. It also leaves out most of the national security complex (DHS, NSA, FBI), military applications in the Department of Energy, and so on.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#Other_military-related_expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
  - burkemw3 11y ago
    I figured some expenses were hiding, but hadn't found enough of them yet. I'm cobbling together some more data points here. They aren't all for the same year, but are close to recent. - Veterans Affairs: ~160B [0] - DHS: ~65B [1] - "non-military intelligence spending" (I assume including a solid chunk of NSA and CIA): ~55B [2] - FBI: ~8B [3] - retirement from Treasury (for service before 1984. The reference is interesting!) ~8B [4] This tallies up to an additional $296B or 8% (for 25% total). The Project On Government Oversight has a similar table [5] that includes some of my items, some additional items, and excludes some of mine. It reaches a $1 trillion "National Security" budget, which shakes out to about 28% of spending. Thanks for the linking and push to keep digging! The "Military budget and total US federal spending" section of the article linked in the parent was a good jumping off point for me, as well. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Veterans_Affairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Ve... [1]: http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/FY_2016_DHS_Budget_in_Brief.pdf http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/FY_2016_... [2]: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/02/02/black-budget-requests-remain-secret http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/02/02/black-budget-... [3]: http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/jmd/legacy/2013/10/03/fbi-justification.pdf http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/jmd/legacy/2013/1... [4]: http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB3005/index1.html http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB3005/index1.html [5]: http://www.pogo.org/our-work/straus-military-reform-project/defense-budget/2014/americas-one-trillion-national-security-budget.html http://www.pogo.org/our-work/straus-military-reform-project/... EDIT: formatting

haberman 11y ago

Or put another way, the people who create something worth $300B out of nothing get to decide what happens to their share of the $300B. And as a bonus, these are people with demonstrated success in their ventures, and they are given free reign to pursue their vision fully. Whereas the public sector is a mess of a dysfunctional congress, infighting, posturing, pork, global warming deniers, and discourse targeted to short attention spans and the 24 hour news cycle. There is something very troubling about the idea that the more successful/valuable your creation becomes, the less entitled you are to invest the fruit of your success into your next idea.

turar 11y ago
Why should Joe Schmoe earning an honest $75K/year have less say than that though?
- haberman 11y ago
  Mark Zuckerberg isn't taking anything away from the $75k/year guy. He just has more because he created something valuable. If you are an artist so good that your paintings are worth $1M each, should you get to have them? Or should someone walk in your door and say "whoa there, you have too much now, we're taking your paintings until you have the same amount of wealth as the $75k/year guy"?
  - stephenr 11y ago
    > If you are an artist so good that your paintings are worth $1M each, should you get to have them? Or should someone walk in your door and say "whoa there, you have too much now, we're taking your paintings until you have the same amount of wealth as the $75k/year guy"? If you paint million dollar paintings and leave them in your studio, I guarantee you the IRS will not knock on your door and say "you have too many paintings now, we're going to take them now". If you sell those paintings, and make an INCOME, the IRS will expect you to pay INCOME TAX. Seriously. How is the basic concept of taxes so hard to understand?
    - 11y ago

prostoalex 11y ago

The easy fix would be to strip the charities of their tax-free status. That does have some unintended consequences though.