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That's my (european) perspective on this: Philanthropy is like going back to feudalism again: we don't need goodwill; we need social rights. Those kinds of ser

by kome 9y ago

That's my (european) perspective on this: Philanthropy is like going back to feudalism again: we don't need goodwill; we need social rights. Those kinds of services shouldn't depend on the generosity of the rich and powerful: those services should be provided because they are social rights. Just like healthcare and education. Of course I am happy that some homeless in Seattle will have a nice roof over their head thanks to Amazon's generosity, but I would be even happier if Amazon would start paying its fair share taxes across Europe, instead of eluding taxation thanks to financial tricks. That's not negativity: that's the elephant in the room. We should be aware between a nice action and a systemic problem, or between good advertisement and reality.

RodericDay 9y ago
As a South American, I fully agree. Tax-dodging + charity-giving is an awful, awful alternative to proper wealth redistribution.
- cmdrfred 9y ago
  I never understood the wealth redistribution argument from (USA) Americans. If you make $32,400 a year you are in the top 1% globally. Thus you have the power to fix it, at least on the small scale and yet I haven't heard of a single person who holds these views even attempting to do so. When it comes to most of the western world screaming about income equality won't "help you with medical costs/student loans" in fact it will do very much the opposite unless you chose to implement it in a manner that really doesn't create more equality as much as making a certain class in a certain nation wealthier, but then aren't you just as bad as the capitalists you complain about?
  - enraged_camel 9y ago
    >>If you make $32,400 a year you are in the top 1% globally This meme needs to die. You may be in the top 1% globally, but cost of living is based on your country and state/city. Making $32,400 a year as a household puts one not much higher than poverty level in America.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    > If you make $32,400 a year you are in the top 1% globally. Thus you have the power to fix it, at least on the small scale But we also live in a rich nation, and things cost more. If you're a family living in New York, $32k a year isn't going to leave you with a lot of spare cash to send to families in need overseas.
    - cmdrfred 9y ago
      You'll note that many of those expenses are things the majority of the world lacks (homes with electricity, internet and running water/education expenses/entertainment budgets larger than most peoples total yearly income). If this is a valid defense of that policy why isn't "of course I need to make 10 million a year I have 3 mortgages, 5 luxury cars and a fully crewed yacht" a defence for keeping things as is? What is fundamentally different?
  - bradleyjg 9y ago
    "I never understood the wealth redistribution argument from (USA) Americans. If you make $32,400 a year you are in the top 1% globally." The math doesn't pencil out. Global population is approximately 7.4 billion.[1] One percent of 7.4 billion is 74 million. In cannot be the case that every member of the global one percent is American. But there are more than 70 million Americans that made money income of more than $47,000 in 2015.[2] [1] https://www.census.gov/popclock/?intcmp=w_200x402 https://www.census.gov/popclock/?intcmp=w_200x402 [2] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/cps-pinc/pinc-01.html https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p...
    - cmdrfred 9y ago
      Talk to these guys: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615...
      - bradleyjg 9y ago
        Have you outsourced your brain to the first link in the google results? If there's something wrong with the logic of what I've written or the data sources I'm using, please point it out.
        cmdrfred 9y ago
        Just the number I found, what do you say it is? 71% of the world lives on less than $10 a day, average globally yearly income is less than $1,500. Even the worst off Americans are extremely well off comparatively to the majority of the world is my point.
        skj 9y ago
        The comment you are replying to is using the pigeonhole principle to cast doubt on your data by saying that there are more Americans with income over the 1% threshold you cite than can fit into 1% of the world's population. I dug into the data behind your claim, briefly, and I think I ended at a self-reported survey. So, that data is probably wrong.
  - gjm11 9y ago
    > Thus you have the power to fix it, at least on the small scale, and yet I haven't heard of a single person who holds these views even attempting to do so. That could be because they aren't trying to help -- or it could be because of the difference between "I haven't heard of ..." and "I know they aren't". What reason do you have to think that it's the former? Specifically, do you know whether the people you're talking to give money to charities that try to help poor people? (Whether in the US or abroad in poorer places where one can do more good per dollar.) In any case, I think your criticism is logically unsound. That is, you can't get from "X doesn't spend his own money trying to change Y" to "X is insincere when saying Y should be changed", and still less to "Y should not in fact be changed". Let's take a concrete example. X has an income of $100k/year and says that incomes at that level should be taxed an extra $1k/year in order to help the poorest people in society. X could find a poor person and give them $1k/year, but doesn't. Does this show that X doesn't really mean what he says? Nope. Let me sketch for you a position X could (somewhat plausibly) hold. X is a kinda-utilitarian. He wants to maximize overall well-being, except that he cares (let's say) 100x more about his own well-being than any other person's. Of course there's more to well-being than money, but let's say that (in X's opinion) income makes a contribution to well-being that's proportional to log(annual_income+$5k) -- I remark that this sort of dependence of utility on money is very widely used, and isn't some sort of unnatural cherry-picked thing chosen to get the results I want. And let's suppose that X is in the US, that the US's labour force is 150M people, of whom 20% are at or above that $100k/year threshold and 10% are at or below let's say $12k/year. X's proposal is to take $1k/year from each of the 30M comfortably-off people and give $2k/year to each of the 15M poor people. So, how do the utility calculations stack up? For the "global" change: 30M people go from log(105k) to log(104k) and 15M people from log(17k) to log(19k). (Actually, some of the 30M will be on higher incomes and lose less utility, and some of the 15M will be on lower incomes and gain more utility.) So each of the comfortable people loses 0.0096 units of utility and each of the poor people gains 0.111 units. Since 0.111 is much more than twice 0.0096, this is a big win overall. Of course we also need to count X's loss 100x more -- but that's completely swamped by the millions of other people affected. But for the "personal" change where X alone makes the sacrifice: he goes from log(105k) to log(104k), losing 0.0096 units ... but remember that he counts himself 100x more, so he actually loses 0.96 units. That's much more than the 0.057 units his $1k could provide to a poor person.(Not 0.111 -- remember that the plan was to redistribute two lots of $1k/year to each poor person, but there's only one X.) A society all of whose comfortably-off people think as X does would choose to make that change, making the poor richer and the rich poorer for an overall benefit; all of them would agree with this despite caring 100x more about themselves than about each other person, because there are so many other people. But a single X would not choose to make the donation on his own. No inconsistency or insincerity required. (Well, maybe there's a little inconsistency, to the following extent: someone whose values are exactly as I described would in fact support more redistribution than the proposal above. Note that this goes in exactly the wrong direction to help your argument.) The numbers above are not cherry-picked for anything other than plausibility and simplicity of calculation, and in particular I picked them all before doing any actual utility calculations. Most people are not exactly "weighted utilitarians" like X, but I think X's weighted utilitarianism is a reasonable -- though of course imperfect -- approximation to many people's moral values. Logarithmic dependence of utility on money is a very standard assumption, with a pedigree going back to the 18th century and widespread usage continuing to the present day.
- akgerber 9y ago
  You can call it 'wealth redistribution' or you can call it 'an acknowledgement that things like the state enforcement of the artifice of private property in urban areas results in humans being unable to build themselves homes'.
  - mediaman 9y ago
    I'm trying to make sure I understand your comment: are you suggesting urban areas are better without the concept of private property, because if there is no private property then humans can "build themselves homes"?
    - RodericDay 9y ago
      he's suggesting that you can turn it from an angry "the poor take from the rich", into an enlightened "the rich know that it's best to appease everyone in the long run".
mythrwy 9y ago
I agree. Additionally I believe organizations are better when they serve a prime directive. I always shake my head in disgust when I see companies like Chick-Fil-A or Hobby Lobby trying to promote religion, or the myriad of Silicon Valley companies trying to promote some progressive social agenda, or even fireman in uniform out on the side of the road collecting money for something. It's not that I disagree with helping people but I think it's best done if fireman are putting out fires and Amazon is delivering goods and Chick-Fil-A is making sandwiches to the best of their ability and at the best price point rather than posturing about Jesus. The organizations for helping the helpless should be charities, churches, and since we can't depend on these (and many have ulterior motives), indeed mostly government itself. We don't need puff PR moves. We need efficiency. And dependable results that scale to society at large.
- jerf 9y ago
  "The organizations for helping the helpless should be charities, churches, and since we can't depend on these (and many have ulterior motives), indeed mostly government itself." Your cynicism is nearly, but not quite, complete. Government has ulterior motives too. Most simply of the "buying votes" form; anyone dependent on the government isn't going to vote for less of it. But there are more subtle forms of it too. There is almost nobody who is altruistic, but can pass a "no other motives except pure altruism" test. If you think you can name someone, I'm sure someone else will be sure to pop up and explain their ignoble motives.
  - andrewmu 9y ago
    I won't say governments are perfect, but at least buying votes values each individual equally (in theory, there's various issues of how democracy is actually implemented).
  - mythrwy 9y ago
    A valid point. Agents of government also indeed have motive. I probably am a cynic (or a realist as I prefer to consider) but it's less the ulterior motive of churches and charities and more the lack of dependability and ability to scale. I see it to be a function of government to care for the disabled or less fortunate if for no other reason than to avoid the associated social problems. Others might not agree. Government traditionally doesn't do the most efficient job at things, and this one they are doing particularly poorly at, but to be fair it is a hard problem with lots of factors.
Shivetya 9y ago
Sorry but fair share is a crap phrase and completely brushes over the two facts. 1) No business pays any tax, ever. They are collectors of tax only. The embed their taxes and fees in the products and services they sell which means the consumer is the payer. So at most they are guilty of collecting and not turning over taxes. The tricks you bemoan exist because politicians and countries of the EU can still bargain to better support their own people and do so. 2) Considering the level of taxation in Europe, if you think that services are inadequate you need to ask your officials just what have they been spending it on? How are few hundred million or another billion really go to fix it without spending discipline. As for philanthropy, welcome to the US. It has always been a social quirk of the US for people and companies to step in. Its what they do. Its a social agreement built on history. It should be celebrated, not demonized.
- piaste 9y ago
  > So at most they are guilty of collecting and not turning over taxes. "At most"? Do you believe that collecting others' taxes and keeping them for your own profit is somehow better than tax dodging?
- smeyer 9y ago
  >The embed their taxes and fees in the products and services they sell which means the consumer is the payer. This is only true in some cases, but what actually determines whether the business pays the taxes out of profits or passes it along to consumers are the elasticity of demand and elasticity of supply. In an extreme example, think of a monopoly with large profit margins facing extremely elastic demand; it will have no choice but to pay the bulk of the tax out of profits. I didn't review these links carefully, but it looks like you can learn more at [0], [1], and [2] if you're interested. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence [1] https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microeconomics/elasticity-tutorial/price-elasticity-tutorial/a/elasticity-and-tax-incidence https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microec... [2] https://www.boundless.com/economics/textbooks/boundless-economics-textbook/taxes-and-public-finance-16/progressive-proportional-and-regressive-taxes-86/tax-incidence-and-elasticity-328-12425/ https://www.boundless.com/economics/textbooks/boundless-econ...
burkaman 9y ago
> Those kinds of services shouldn't depend on the generosity of the rich and powerful Ok, but they do, so this is a good thing. It's like you're saying that the signing of a peace treaty is a bad thing because we shouldn't have wars in the first place.
- Mithaldu 9y ago
  No, this is a peace treaty for a single block in one city, out of an entire country that is still at war. It's nice that a handful of people are being helped, but they are utterly dwarved by the amounts of people in the same situation who won't ever receive help, not because it's impossible (other countries do it fine) but because the country refuses to recognize the needs of all of its citizens.
Ajedi32 9y ago
My take on this is exactly the opposite. I much prefer companies and individuals voluntarily using their resources to help those in need vs the government forcibly extracting those resources in order to do the same.
- accountyaccount 9y ago
  Then you're always at the will of corporate whims rather than general human decency.
  - jaredklewis 9y ago
    Because modern governments are the epitome of human decency? I'm as cynical as about corporations as the next guy , but what makes you so rosy eyed about the government? Is it because governments invade foreign countries and subjugate their people? That they incarcerate millions of their own people for abusing the wrong kind of drug? That they surveil all of our communications? For sure private philanthropy is not perfect, but neither are government programs.
    - losteric 9y ago
      Are you being serious? That's the most absurd argument I have ever heard. "The government" is not an entity, it's a collection of separate organizations run by democratically elected officials. Military and law enforcement agencies have no relation to domestic programs. Furthermore, it could be argued that your examples actually demonstrate the effectiveness of government programs... I oppose surveillance and warfare, but citizens keep voting those politicians into office, and those programs are achieving their results with astoundingly undesirable effectiveness. I suspect our domestic problems would be resolved overnight if they had similar funding levels.
    - accountyaccount 9y ago
      Government behavior isn't immediately tied to profit (bear with me). Profit's tied to government (in the US especially), but there's at least a single degree of separation (maybe less so recently). Our democracy still has the theoretical power to change it. When it's corporate it's entirely inflexible, directly tied to profit (and the economy), and there's little to no requirement for transparency. It's all the downsides of government, with an included layer of obscurity... and also some more downsides. I think our current administration makes this pretty clear. If left to corporate interests major assets like Planned Parenthood, National Parks, and The National Endowment for the Arts would likely not exist at all (that's just the tip of the iceberg). Corporate funded initiatives can be completely ejected on a whim when profits are down. With the federal government you can't just remove these things without some level of checks & balances...
AdamN 9y ago
Amazon has to lower tax bills wherever possible - it's their fiduciary duty. Nonetheless, the governments can and should be far more aggressive about this. And Seattle, Oregon, and the US at large should be doing this work for homeless families ... not Amazon. Nonetheless, Amazon lives in the world as it is and it's doing what it can do. The space is an unalloyed good for those people and Amazon deserves a ton of credit.
Justsignedup 9y ago
Err... Social rights won't help women fleeing abuse. This helps those. This will always be needed.
- v64 9y ago
  My interpretation is that, if this is something that will always be needed, it should be the responsibility of the government beholden to the taxpayers and voters, not at the whims of a corporation whose motivation or dedication may change quickly depending on circumstances.
  - pchristensen 9y ago
    The government has whims too, and while they may not change as frequently, they can change much more dramatically.
    - v64 9y ago
      Agreed, but we have a system in place for lobbying the government via our elected representatives. It's not always effective, and it has its problems, but it exists and it works for many cases. If Amazon changes their mind on this, there's no recourse.
- Symbiote 9y ago
  In the UK, people fleeing domestic abuse hive high priority to housing, should they not be able to afford the rent otherwise. See https://www.womensaid.org.uk/the-survivors-handbook/money-issues/ https://www.womensaid.org.uk/the-survivors-handbook/money-is... and other pages in the section.
pnathan 9y ago
Didn't read the article. FWIW, local churches of Seattle had a rotation going to host Mary's Place. It was sort of a hassle; you needed people who volunteered for the night to monitor the situation, some food and drink served for dinner & breakfast (if I remember correctly). Only a few people volunteered and burnout was high. I too am really uncomfortable with a local duke offering some of his property to help, knowing that if it becomes troublesome, he'll just pull out. US homelessness is extremely difficult to deal with; in large part of the principle of federated states being semi-independant. In order to manage this at an acceptable level, it becomes a purely national coordinated effort. Otherwise one city/state or the other starts to become the place homeless are routed to by the local governments who don't have resources or interest in helping them. Of course, part of the subtext is that the US deinstitutionalized the mentally ill in the late 70s (for several reasons, including the gross violations of human rights and a general distrust in institutions). So on the street you have drug addicts, runaways, the mentally ill, criminals, people who had too little money to pay rent, travellers (rainbow folk and the like), #vanlifers, and people who broke up with their partner. It's an unpleasant combination that the US is unable to solve without significant multiparty negotiation or federal override.
dashoffset 9y ago
Do you have a real world example of a politician that was elected recently without support of the rich?
fpierfed 9y ago
I agree. Also, we should not forget that there is a significant difference between rights and charity. Rights, once won, are hard to revoke. Charity can be taken away at any time.

by kome 9y ago

RodericDay 9y ago

As a South American, I fully agree. Tax-dodging + charity-giving is an awful, awful alternative to proper wealth redistribution.

cmdrfred 9y ago
I never understood the wealth redistribution argument from (USA) Americans. If you make $32,400 a year you are in the top 1% globally. Thus you have the power to fix it, at least on the small scale and yet I haven't heard of a single person who holds these views even attempting to do so. When it comes to most of the western world screaming about income equality won't "help you with medical costs/student loans" in fact it will do very much the opposite unless you chose to implement it in a manner that really doesn't create more equality as much as making a certain class in a certain nation wealthier, but then aren't you just as bad as the capitalists you complain about?
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  >>If you make $32,400 a year you are in the top 1% globally This meme needs to die. You may be in the top 1% globally, but cost of living is based on your country and state/city. Making $32,400 a year as a household puts one not much higher than poverty level in America.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  > If you make $32,400 a year you are in the top 1% globally. Thus you have the power to fix it, at least on the small scale But we also live in a rich nation, and things cost more. If you're a family living in New York, $32k a year isn't going to leave you with a lot of spare cash to send to families in need overseas.
  - cmdrfred 9y ago
    You'll note that many of those expenses are things the majority of the world lacks (homes with electricity, internet and running water/education expenses/entertainment budgets larger than most peoples total yearly income). If this is a valid defense of that policy why isn't "of course I need to make 10 million a year I have 3 mortgages, 5 luxury cars and a fully crewed yacht" a defence for keeping things as is? What is fundamentally different?
- bradleyjg 9y ago
  "I never understood the wealth redistribution argument from (USA) Americans. If you make $32,400 a year you are in the top 1% globally." The math doesn't pencil out. Global population is approximately 7.4 billion.[1] One percent of 7.4 billion is 74 million. In cannot be the case that every member of the global one percent is American. But there are more than 70 million Americans that made money income of more than $47,000 in 2015.[2] [1] https://www.census.gov/popclock/?intcmp=w_200x402 https://www.census.gov/popclock/?intcmp=w_200x402 [2] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/cps-pinc/pinc-01.html https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p...
  - cmdrfred 9y ago
    Talk to these guys: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615...
    - bradleyjg 9y ago
      Have you outsourced your brain to the first link in the google results? If there's something wrong with the logic of what I've written or the data sources I'm using, please point it out.
      - cmdrfred 9y ago
        Just the number I found, what do you say it is? 71% of the world lives on less than $10 a day, average globally yearly income is less than $1,500. Even the worst off Americans are extremely well off comparatively to the majority of the world is my point.
        skj 9y ago
        The comment you are replying to is using the pigeonhole principle to cast doubt on your data by saying that there are more Americans with income over the 1% threshold you cite than can fit into 1% of the world's population. I dug into the data behind your claim, briefly, and I think I ended at a self-reported survey. So, that data is probably wrong.
- gjm11 9y ago
  > Thus you have the power to fix it, at least on the small scale, and yet I haven't heard of a single person who holds these views even attempting to do so. That could be because they aren't trying to help -- or it could be because of the difference between "I haven't heard of ..." and "I know they aren't". What reason do you have to think that it's the former? Specifically, do you know whether the people you're talking to give money to charities that try to help poor people? (Whether in the US or abroad in poorer places where one can do more good per dollar.) In any case, I think your criticism is logically unsound. That is, you can't get from "X doesn't spend his own money trying to change Y" to "X is insincere when saying Y should be changed", and still less to "Y should not in fact be changed". Let's take a concrete example. X has an income of $100k/year and says that incomes at that level should be taxed an extra $1k/year in order to help the poorest people in society. X could find a poor person and give them $1k/year, but doesn't. Does this show that X doesn't really mean what he says? Nope. Let me sketch for you a position X could (somewhat plausibly) hold. X is a kinda-utilitarian. He wants to maximize overall well-being, except that he cares (let's say) 100x more about his own well-being than any other person's. Of course there's more to well-being than money, but let's say that (in X's opinion) income makes a contribution to well-being that's proportional to log(annual_income+$5k) -- I remark that this sort of dependence of utility on money is very widely used, and isn't some sort of unnatural cherry-picked thing chosen to get the results I want. And let's suppose that X is in the US, that the US's labour force is 150M people, of whom 20% are at or above that $100k/year threshold and 10% are at or below let's say $12k/year. X's proposal is to take $1k/year from each of the 30M comfortably-off people and give $2k/year to each of the 15M poor people. So, how do the utility calculations stack up? For the "global" change: 30M people go from log(105k) to log(104k) and 15M people from log(17k) to log(19k). (Actually, some of the 30M will be on higher incomes and lose less utility, and some of the 15M will be on lower incomes and gain more utility.) So each of the comfortable people loses 0.0096 units of utility and each of the poor people gains 0.111 units. Since 0.111 is much more than twice 0.0096, this is a big win overall. Of course we also need to count X's loss 100x more -- but that's completely swamped by the millions of other people affected. But for the "personal" change where X alone makes the sacrifice: he goes from log(105k) to log(104k), losing 0.0096 units ... but remember that he counts himself 100x more, so he actually loses 0.96 units. That's much more than the 0.057 units his $1k could provide to a poor person.(Not 0.111 -- remember that the plan was to redistribute two lots of $1k/year to each poor person, but there's only one X.) A society all of whose comfortably-off people think as X does would choose to make that change, making the poor richer and the rich poorer for an overall benefit; all of them would agree with this despite caring 100x more about themselves than about each other person, because there are so many other people. But a single X would not choose to make the donation on his own. No inconsistency or insincerity required. (Well, maybe there's a little inconsistency, to the following extent: someone whose values are exactly as I described would in fact support more redistribution than the proposal above. Note that this goes in exactly the wrong direction to help your argument.) The numbers above are not cherry-picked for anything other than plausibility and simplicity of calculation, and in particular I picked them all before doing any actual utility calculations. Most people are not exactly "weighted utilitarians" like X, but I think X's weighted utilitarianism is a reasonable -- though of course imperfect -- approximation to many people's moral values. Logarithmic dependence of utility on money is a very standard assumption, with a pedigree going back to the 18th century and widespread usage continuing to the present day.
akgerber 9y ago
You can call it 'wealth redistribution' or you can call it 'an acknowledgement that things like the state enforcement of the artifice of private property in urban areas results in humans being unable to build themselves homes'.
- mediaman 9y ago
  I'm trying to make sure I understand your comment: are you suggesting urban areas are better without the concept of private property, because if there is no private property then humans can "build themselves homes"?
  - RodericDay 9y ago
    he's suggesting that you can turn it from an angry "the poor take from the rich", into an enlightened "the rich know that it's best to appease everyone in the long run".

mythrwy 9y ago

I agree. Additionally I believe organizations are better when they serve a prime directive. I always shake my head in disgust when I see companies like Chick-Fil-A or Hobby Lobby trying to promote religion, or the myriad of Silicon Valley companies trying to promote some progressive social agenda, or even fireman in uniform out on the side of the road collecting money for something. It's not that I disagree with helping people but I think it's best done if fireman are putting out fires and Amazon is delivering goods and Chick-Fil-A is making sandwiches to the best of their ability and at the best price point rather than posturing about Jesus. The organizations for helping the helpless should be charities, churches, and since we can't depend on these (and many have ulterior motives), indeed mostly government itself. We don't need puff PR moves. We need efficiency. And dependable results that scale to society at large.

jerf 9y ago
"The organizations for helping the helpless should be charities, churches, and since we can't depend on these (and many have ulterior motives), indeed mostly government itself." Your cynicism is nearly, but not quite, complete. Government has ulterior motives too. Most simply of the "buying votes" form; anyone dependent on the government isn't going to vote for less of it. But there are more subtle forms of it too. There is almost nobody who is altruistic, but can pass a "no other motives except pure altruism" test. If you think you can name someone, I'm sure someone else will be sure to pop up and explain their ignoble motives.
- andrewmu 9y ago
  I won't say governments are perfect, but at least buying votes values each individual equally (in theory, there's various issues of how democracy is actually implemented).
- mythrwy 9y ago
  A valid point. Agents of government also indeed have motive. I probably am a cynic (or a realist as I prefer to consider) but it's less the ulterior motive of churches and charities and more the lack of dependability and ability to scale. I see it to be a function of government to care for the disabled or less fortunate if for no other reason than to avoid the associated social problems. Others might not agree. Government traditionally doesn't do the most efficient job at things, and this one they are doing particularly poorly at, but to be fair it is a hard problem with lots of factors.

Shivetya 9y ago

Sorry but fair share is a crap phrase and completely brushes over the two facts. 1) No business pays any tax, ever. They are collectors of tax only. The embed their taxes and fees in the products and services they sell which means the consumer is the payer. So at most they are guilty of collecting and not turning over taxes. The tricks you bemoan exist because politicians and countries of the EU can still bargain to better support their own people and do so. 2) Considering the level of taxation in Europe, if you think that services are inadequate you need to ask your officials just what have they been spending it on? How are few hundred million or another billion really go to fix it without spending discipline. As for philanthropy, welcome to the US. It has always been a social quirk of the US for people and companies to step in. Its what they do. Its a social agreement built on history. It should be celebrated, not demonized.

piaste 9y ago
> So at most they are guilty of collecting and not turning over taxes. "At most"? Do you believe that collecting others' taxes and keeping them for your own profit is somehow better than tax dodging?
smeyer 9y ago
>The embed their taxes and fees in the products and services they sell which means the consumer is the payer. This is only true in some cases, but what actually determines whether the business pays the taxes out of profits or passes it along to consumers are the elasticity of demand and elasticity of supply. In an extreme example, think of a monopoly with large profit margins facing extremely elastic demand; it will have no choice but to pay the bulk of the tax out of profits. I didn't review these links carefully, but it looks like you can learn more at [0], [1], and [2] if you're interested. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence [1] https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microeconomics/elasticity-tutorial/price-elasticity-tutorial/a/elasticity-and-tax-incidence https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microec... [2] https://www.boundless.com/economics/textbooks/boundless-economics-textbook/taxes-and-public-finance-16/progressive-proportional-and-regressive-taxes-86/tax-incidence-and-elasticity-328-12425/ https://www.boundless.com/economics/textbooks/boundless-econ...

burkaman 9y ago

> Those kinds of services shouldn't depend on the generosity of the rich and powerful Ok, but they do, so this is a good thing. It's like you're saying that the signing of a peace treaty is a bad thing because we shouldn't have wars in the first place.

Mithaldu 9y ago
No, this is a peace treaty for a single block in one city, out of an entire country that is still at war. It's nice that a handful of people are being helped, but they are utterly dwarved by the amounts of people in the same situation who won't ever receive help, not because it's impossible (other countries do it fine) but because the country refuses to recognize the needs of all of its citizens.

Ajedi32 9y ago

My take on this is exactly the opposite. I much prefer companies and individuals voluntarily using their resources to help those in need vs the government forcibly extracting those resources in order to do the same.

accountyaccount 9y ago
Then you're always at the will of corporate whims rather than general human decency.
- jaredklewis 9y ago
  Because modern governments are the epitome of human decency? I'm as cynical as about corporations as the next guy , but what makes you so rosy eyed about the government? Is it because governments invade foreign countries and subjugate their people? That they incarcerate millions of their own people for abusing the wrong kind of drug? That they surveil all of our communications? For sure private philanthropy is not perfect, but neither are government programs.
  - losteric 9y ago
    Are you being serious? That's the most absurd argument I have ever heard. "The government" is not an entity, it's a collection of separate organizations run by democratically elected officials. Military and law enforcement agencies have no relation to domestic programs. Furthermore, it could be argued that your examples actually demonstrate the effectiveness of government programs... I oppose surveillance and warfare, but citizens keep voting those politicians into office, and those programs are achieving their results with astoundingly undesirable effectiveness. I suspect our domestic problems would be resolved overnight if they had similar funding levels.
  - accountyaccount 9y ago
    Government behavior isn't immediately tied to profit (bear with me). Profit's tied to government (in the US especially), but there's at least a single degree of separation (maybe less so recently). Our democracy still has the theoretical power to change it. When it's corporate it's entirely inflexible, directly tied to profit (and the economy), and there's little to no requirement for transparency. It's all the downsides of government, with an included layer of obscurity... and also some more downsides. I think our current administration makes this pretty clear. If left to corporate interests major assets like Planned Parenthood, National Parks, and The National Endowment for the Arts would likely not exist at all (that's just the tip of the iceberg). Corporate funded initiatives can be completely ejected on a whim when profits are down. With the federal government you can't just remove these things without some level of checks & balances...

AdamN 9y ago

Amazon has to lower tax bills wherever possible - it's their fiduciary duty. Nonetheless, the governments can and should be far more aggressive about this. And Seattle, Oregon, and the US at large should be doing this work for homeless families ... not Amazon. Nonetheless, Amazon lives in the world as it is and it's doing what it can do. The space is an unalloyed good for those people and Amazon deserves a ton of credit.

Justsignedup 9y ago

Err... Social rights won't help women fleeing abuse. This helps those. This will always be needed.

v64 9y ago
My interpretation is that, if this is something that will always be needed, it should be the responsibility of the government beholden to the taxpayers and voters, not at the whims of a corporation whose motivation or dedication may change quickly depending on circumstances.
- pchristensen 9y ago
  The government has whims too, and while they may not change as frequently, they can change much more dramatically.
  - v64 9y ago
    Agreed, but we have a system in place for lobbying the government via our elected representatives. It's not always effective, and it has its problems, but it exists and it works for many cases. If Amazon changes their mind on this, there's no recourse.
Symbiote 9y ago
In the UK, people fleeing domestic abuse hive high priority to housing, should they not be able to afford the rent otherwise. See https://www.womensaid.org.uk/the-survivors-handbook/money-issues/ https://www.womensaid.org.uk/the-survivors-handbook/money-is... and other pages in the section.

pnathan 9y ago

Didn't read the article. FWIW, local churches of Seattle had a rotation going to host Mary's Place. It was sort of a hassle; you needed people who volunteered for the night to monitor the situation, some food and drink served for dinner & breakfast (if I remember correctly). Only a few people volunteered and burnout was high. I too am really uncomfortable with a local duke offering some of his property to help, knowing that if it becomes troublesome, he'll just pull out. US homelessness is extremely difficult to deal with; in large part of the principle of federated states being semi-independant. In order to manage this at an acceptable level, it becomes a purely national coordinated effort. Otherwise one city/state or the other starts to become the place homeless are routed to by the local governments who don't have resources or interest in helping them. Of course, part of the subtext is that the US deinstitutionalized the mentally ill in the late 70s (for several reasons, including the gross violations of human rights and a general distrust in institutions). So on the street you have drug addicts, runaways, the mentally ill, criminals, people who had too little money to pay rent, travellers (rainbow folk and the like), #vanlifers, and people who broke up with their partner. It's an unpleasant combination that the US is unable to solve without significant multiparty negotiation or federal override.

dashoffset 9y ago

Do you have a real world example of a politician that was elected recently without support of the rich?

fpierfed 9y ago

I agree. Also, we should not forget that there is a significant difference between rights and charity. Rights, once won, are hard to revoke. Charity can be taken away at any time.