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Fantastic. I wonder if all these very public proclamations are going to shift people's attitude towards taxes? Most people think of the government as wasteful,

Fantastic. I wonder if all these very public proclamations are going to shift people's attitude towards taxes? Most people think of the government as wasteful, inefficient, incompetent, and corrupt to more or less degrees, and I know I'd prefer to see money allocated by smart people like Gates, Buffet, Zuckerberg than by politicians who need to keep constituents happy and win votes. I committed a while back to giving 10% of my income to charity henceforth, probably for my whole life. I know I've felt much better when I raised money for St. Jude's or Grand Ormond Street children's hospitals than when I wrote a check to the IRS to fund the latest special interest-fueled debacle. There's a "the evil rich are against us" narrative in movies and stories a lot, but I wonder if the perception will start to change when all the good from these endeavors is realized. I think it's quite likely that smart people allocating resources intelligently will do 10x, 20x, 50x more good with the money than a politician possibly could.

DevX101 16y ago
I don't like estate taxes. Governments are typically terrible financial stewards and bad examples of financial responsibility. Give the government one billion and it will find a way to spend two. But I also don't like the idea of a permanent aristocratic class where generation after generation are born into opulence because your great grandfather created a great company. The movement towards philanthropy is a great alternative as long there are clearly defined and applied metrics of success. Gates Foundation does a good job at this. If you claim you're going to change the world, but you can't prove it, you won't get funding again.
- sshumaker 16y ago
  I'd argue one of the points of estate taxes (which are heavily favored by Buffet, Gates, et. al) is to encourage you to will your fortunes to philanthropy - so it doesn't end up in the hands of the government.
  - DevX101 16y ago
    Great point! High estate taxes gives an incentive to the wealthy not to pay estate taxes. The original intent of my argument was that I don't like the idea of handing over half your estate to the government. I suppose the proponents of the high estate tax wanted avoidance of the tax via philanthropy as an intended side effect. Thanks, I never looked at it that way.
  - jacoblyles 16y ago
    Or buy expensive life insurance policies.
  - ramanujan 16y ago
    The biggest lobbies for increased estate taxes are life insurance companies: http://blogs.forbes.com/hanisarji/2010/12/01/life-insurance-industry-is-spending-millions-lobbying-for-the-estate-tax-afbfs-latest-issue-brief/ http://blogs.forbes.com/hanisarji/2010/12/01/life-insurance-... “The estate tax is a cash cow for the life insurance industry – and the industry’s lobbyists guard it zealously...[o]nly three industries – pharmaceuticals, electric utilities, and oil and gas – spent more over the same period.”
    - waterlesscloud 16y ago
      Of which Buffet owns several. Which may or may not play a role in his support.
      - jakarta 16y ago
        I don't think it does. The life insurance contribution to Berkshire Hathaway results is quite small. The bulk of the income is from reinsurance and P/C activities.
      - jbooth 16y ago
        How many billions has this guy given away again? I'd wager that he doesn't really care about an extra few million in insurance company profits.
    - 16y ago
- bertil 16y ago
  > Governments are typically terrible financial stewards Well, no: many governments are far more responsible than most individuals. That's not true in counties were everyone criticize the government as strongly as you do in the United States, but in countries where government positions are prestigious, the most talented people work there. As recently demonstrated, financial incentives are no where as efficient as job safety and support for creative tasks, this is why a system that promote civic dedication has tremendous impact.
  - quadhome 16y ago
    What's a country where government positions are prestigious for reasons other than they're an opportunity to participate in bribery and corruption? (Switzerland?)
    - Benjo 16y ago
      From what I understand, the government of Singapore keeps corruption low just by paying their officials a lot. The president makes about $3 million. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Singapore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Singapore It may just be an anecdote but it seems like a reasonable system to me. EDIT: had the wrong dollar amount.
      - cellshade 16y ago
        That wikipedia page says about 3 million, not 300 million.
        Benjo 16y ago
        My mistake: fixed.
      - dualogy 16y ago
        Germany had the same "strategy". I'm not sure pre-emptively bribing every official up-front really solves the "cost" issue to Joe Sixpack. Corruption might be more affordable in the end...
- sp332 16y ago
  > But I also don't like the idea of a permanent aristocratic class where generation after generation are born into opulence because your great grandfather created a great company. If you make a ridiculous amount of money, what's wrong with making sure that your family is financially secure for generations?
  - mattmiller 16y ago
    It cripples upward mobility for the rest of society. You could make an argument that upward mobility is one of Americas greatest strengths. It keeps people motivated and it allows the entire population the chance to contribute to advancement.
    - jacques_chester 16y ago
      > It cripples upward mobility for the rest of society How?
muhfuhkuh 16y ago
Sometimes it takes the government (or someone funded by them) to come up with novel solutions for the maladies that have plagued humanity. Norman Borlaug for famine, Jonas Salk for Polio, the research into Avian influenza and H1N1 pandemics, space exploration, etc. have all been either spearheaded, guided or financially encouraged by government agencies. These are areas which charities (and corporations, for that matter) have sometimes fallen short due to either lack of funding or the mission-critical nature of the moment. Either way, we must agree that it's tough to conclude that governments are completely incompetent and charities aren't, however apt the perception may be.
- ramanujan 16y ago
  > Sometimes it takes the government Hmmm. Not disagreeing that some things funded by government grants have been worthwhile, but almost every scientific discovery before the WW2 period was funded independently of the government -- including big ticket areas involving fundamental research like automobiles, railroads, and aviation.
  - nickpinkston 16y ago
    Well, most railroad expansion was due to a govt act giving tons of land rights and other highly valuable privileges to anyone laying track in the territories - the TransContinental railroad was laid this way. However, quite true on the rest.
    - nickpinkston 16y ago
      BTW: This sub-comment thread is a testament to how good HN still is at bringing together reasonable/thoughtful people - thanks guys.
    - jswinghammer 16y ago
      A private company did it the honest way and laid a more efficient track. The government paid per mile of track laid which you can imagine can go wrong all kinds of ways.
ZeroGravitas 16y ago
You should start (or locate) a charity that dedicates itself to decreasing government waste and donate the money to them. You'd probably get more bang for your buck, even if it didn't focus purely on the humanitarian side of government.
- lionhearted 16y ago
  > You should start (or locate) a charity that dedicates itself to decreasing government waste and donate the money to them. You'd probably get more bang for your buck, even if it didn't focus purely on the humanitarian side of government. I think it's a good goal, but a bad use of charitable funds due to the fact that politics has some unfortunately strong zero sum elements about it. I don't categorize any primarily political organizations as charity, even if I agree with their aims.
philwelch 16y ago
This is a strange question to me. I know there is probably some similarity in how governments and individuals allocate large amounts of money--for instance, federal spending to curtail HIV/AIDS in Africa compared to Gates' spending to curtail malaria--but the bulk of it doesn't overlap. Gates, Buffett, and Zuckerberg shouldn't hire my town's police force, and can't afford to hire my country's military or even maintain my country's highways. As long as things like that need to be done, someone needs to pay taxes. And Warren Buffett would be the first to tell you he and his fellow billionaires should be the one paying the taxes.
- dpatru 16y ago
  I don't see why the police, military, and highways need to be funded through government. To the extent that these services provide a benefit, there's no reason to think they couldn't be supplied in a free market.
  - nickpinkston 16y ago
    Not that I'm opposed to private security forces or weapons ownership, but remember BlackWater et al are "private military/police - also known as mercs who are fully motivated by money. Even our police have loyalties to each other and their town - however stupidly they may act, they know they're not easily for hire. Not sure...
  - philwelch 16y ago
    You don't have a market without a government to protect property rights. You can't have competing entities protecting property rights, because the Marxist gang down the street is going to protect a different set of property rights than the capitalist gang up the street. Libertarians like to think of private property as some kind of moral essential, and it might be, but that's not enough to make anarcho-capitalism work. While we can probably all agree to outlaw murder, we can't, in fact, all agree on enforcing the same property rights. Plus, there needs to be a way to authoritatively register and adjudicate property claims, not a dozen competing protection rackets[1], each with its own inconsistent rules. [1] Even actual protection rackets try not to overlap in territory, for exactly this reason.
stretchwithme 16y ago
all the benefits delivered to mankind by the efforts of the innovators hasn't stopped the demonization of the rich. giving away what they've been paid to deliver those benefits probably won't either.
- adambyrtek 16y ago
  Probably because "rich" and "innovators" isn't really the same thing, and there was even less overlap in the past.
  - stretchwithme 16y ago
    well, I prefer people be demonized for their crimes, not for what they have.
    - redrobot5050 16y ago
      "Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and ten million can't buy enough to eat." --Will Rogers People demonize the wealthy because they see people acting selfishly and it creating, or at least ignoring, the basic injustices of the world. If I had fallen down, would you not ask me if I was okay? Would you not offer to help me up? Transforming Facebook from a website to a profitable business is a great business accomplishment. Transforming the wealth acquired in such an endeavor into educations, scholarships, and other decency-of-life improvements is simply a great accomplishment.
      - stretchwithme 16y ago
        fortunately, most wealth is invested in ventures that hire people. The economic disasters that impoverish so many are not caused by the rich who've worked to create their wealth but by those who mismanage economies and abuse others to benefit themselves and their friends. These thieves are rich to be sure, but a distinction should be made between the two groups.
- bertil 16y ago
Patient0 16y ago
Don't you mean "Great Ormond Street children's hospitals" ? You gave money to them but don't even remember their name properly?
- lionhearted 16y ago
  > Don't you mean "Great Ormond Street children's hospitals" ? Correct - I'm not a native Londoner and I've spent less than a year there across my life. I also organized two small charity events, and asked a friend of mine what the equivalent of St. Jude's is in London, and he said Great Ormond Street. > You gave money to them but don't even remember their name properly? Unnecessarily dickish comment. But yes, I swapped "Great" and "Grand" in my comment incorrectly, good catch there.
bertil 16y ago
Although some isolated initiative are great (Zuckerberg's pledge to education is presumably very much needed) most private charities are more expensive to manage and often counter-productive. Government redistribution can have in well-run countries handling cost around 3-5%; too many charities are closer to 15%. Government handles essential concerns, permanent efforts, infrastructure investment, etc. while many private charities browse around, try something but have little follow-through after the first media coverage. Governments can have a more global view of things, that can help isolate massively more efficient efforts, even when they aren't popular, like prevention, half-way homes. A majority of public money is spend on things with little isolated, visible impact, but the marginal impact can be much higher. A lot of local leaders in Africa have criticized the B&M Gates Foundation for being too disruptive for the good of beneficiaries. I won't diminish the impact of being associated to massively successful people, or simply having spectacularly talented people manage those funds, but please don't confuse the good feeling of being in control with actual marginal impact.
- rfrey 16y ago
  Government redistribution can have in well-run countries handling cost around 3-5%; too many charities are closer to 15%. The charity costs include publicity and fundraising drives. To make apples-to-apples comparison you'd have to include the cost of the IRS infrastructure and the cost to society of the entire tax collection and avoidance machine. Government handles essential concerns That this is not self-evident is, well, self-evident. Much criticism of government spending is around governments focussing on whatever lobby yells loudest, while charities are market driven: i.e. they fill actual needs that someone sees in the community. A lot of local leaders in Africa have criticized the B&M Gates Foundation for being too disruptive for the good of beneficiaries. A lot of local leaders in Africa do considerably less well under a privately allocated distribution than they do from government aid.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Yeah, given that a lot of Africa's "local leaders" are a major part of Africa's problems I'm disinclined to believe what they say.
nickpinkston 16y ago
Agreed - who hear has found how generous other founders are of their time, connections, etc.? Ever try to get a favor from ever a local politician? If you do, you get far less for far more - in my experience...
Benjo 16y ago
Not sure how this should shift people's attitudes towards taxes. Do we increase them to encourage charitable giving or decrease them so the rich have more to give? At some level this type of thinking lets government off the hook. Philanthropy by the ultra rich is not a solution to government waste and won't solve the fundamental problems in the US government.
ohyes 16y ago
Good for you giving away a significant portion of income. Firstly, "I know I'd prefer to see money allocated by smart people like Gates, Buffet, Zuckerberg than by politicians who need to keep constituents happy and win votes." I feel like you are treating these conditions as being mutually exclusive, and they do not need to be. I want money allocated by intelligent people who need to keep constituents happy. And I want them to have smart constituents, so that they are actually held accountable making bad allocations. This is because I want a large number of problems to be taken care of expediently. Secondly, Rich != Smart. I don't see how it is that being rich makes Gates, Buffet, Zuckerberg better at allocating resources. Sure, they have some business savvy, but there is a certain amount of luck involved as well (as with any statistical out-lier). This doesn't account for others who made their money through inheritance, and are dumb (really dumb). The point is not that 'the evil rich are against us,' the point is that they benefit exponentially from government protections compared to a normal person and should provide funds accordingly. I don't see how any of these people would be able to hold onto (or even establish) their wealth without the protections (and utilities, and services) afforded by the government (and if they were, it would simply be some sort of Monarchy). (ex. The rich don't just benefit from their own use of public roads, they benefit from their employees and customers use as well. How do the rich obtain intelligent, educated labor without required public education? How do they plan to hold onto wealth as they accumulate it without the enforcement of various property laws?) Charity is good, don't give me wrong. But the rich are hardly victims of the government.
- MikeCapone 16y ago
  > The point is not that 'the evil rich are against us,' the point is that they benefit exponentially from government protections compared to a normal person and should provide funds accordingly. I think most people would agree with this, but let's remember that taxes are pretty much always based on percentages, which mean that they do scale. 30% of a billion isn't the same as 30% of 50k. I think this seems to be too often forgotten in the "the wealthy don't pay more taxes than me!" argument.
- jimmyk 16y ago
  >(ex. The rich don't just benefit from their own use of public roads, they benefit from their employees and customers use as well. How do the rich obtain intelligent, educated labor without required public education? How do they plan to hold onto wealth as they accumulate it without the enforcement of various property laws?) I think this argument is flawed for a couple of reasons. One: that someone offers me something that benefits me does not and should not legally compel me to compensate them in return. Take open source software as an example. It has enabled many companies to make money, but they cannot be compelled to compensate the author. And yet that seems to be the argument. The government does things that benefit people, so they should be compelled to pay the government in return. Well, sorry, I appreciate what you've done but I didn't ask you to do it or make you do it so I'll donate to you if I feel like it, not if you feel like it. Two: all of the benefits you've listed are individual things which individually cost money. Yes, the rich benefit from their employees being able to drive to work. But they pay their employees and their employees in turn pay taxes and fees on gas and other driving related things to pay for the roads. They benefit from an educated workforce and a police force, but those things are paid for through property taxes and other things. The system is made up of a variety of specific things. To lump them all together and say "You couldn't have accumulated your wealth without the system, so you owe the system a whole bunch of your wealth" seems to me to be somewhat dishonest. Sure, they benefit from the system, but specific parts of the system have costs, and I don't think the government's inability to figure out what those costs are and how to collect them justifies just taking a whole bunch of money from the people who look like they benefit from it and can afford it.

DevX101 16y ago

I don't like estate taxes. Governments are typically terrible financial stewards and bad examples of financial responsibility. Give the government one billion and it will find a way to spend two. But I also don't like the idea of a permanent aristocratic class where generation after generation are born into opulence because your great grandfather created a great company. The movement towards philanthropy is a great alternative as long there are clearly defined and applied metrics of success. Gates Foundation does a good job at this. If you claim you're going to change the world, but you can't prove it, you won't get funding again.

sshumaker 16y ago
I'd argue one of the points of estate taxes (which are heavily favored by Buffet, Gates, et. al) is to encourage you to will your fortunes to philanthropy - so it doesn't end up in the hands of the government.
- DevX101 16y ago
  Great point! High estate taxes gives an incentive to the wealthy not to pay estate taxes. The original intent of my argument was that I don't like the idea of handing over half your estate to the government. I suppose the proponents of the high estate tax wanted avoidance of the tax via philanthropy as an intended side effect. Thanks, I never looked at it that way.
- jacoblyles 16y ago
  Or buy expensive life insurance policies.
- ramanujan 16y ago
  The biggest lobbies for increased estate taxes are life insurance companies: http://blogs.forbes.com/hanisarji/2010/12/01/life-insurance-industry-is-spending-millions-lobbying-for-the-estate-tax-afbfs-latest-issue-brief/ http://blogs.forbes.com/hanisarji/2010/12/01/life-insurance-... “The estate tax is a cash cow for the life insurance industry – and the industry’s lobbyists guard it zealously...[o]nly three industries – pharmaceuticals, electric utilities, and oil and gas – spent more over the same period.”
  - waterlesscloud 16y ago
    Of which Buffet owns several. Which may or may not play a role in his support.
    - jakarta 16y ago
      I don't think it does. The life insurance contribution to Berkshire Hathaway results is quite small. The bulk of the income is from reinsurance and P/C activities.
    - jbooth 16y ago
      How many billions has this guy given away again? I'd wager that he doesn't really care about an extra few million in insurance company profits.
  - 16y ago
bertil 16y ago
> Governments are typically terrible financial stewards Well, no: many governments are far more responsible than most individuals. That's not true in counties were everyone criticize the government as strongly as you do in the United States, but in countries where government positions are prestigious, the most talented people work there. As recently demonstrated, financial incentives are no where as efficient as job safety and support for creative tasks, this is why a system that promote civic dedication has tremendous impact.
- quadhome 16y ago
  What's a country where government positions are prestigious for reasons other than they're an opportunity to participate in bribery and corruption? (Switzerland?)
  - Benjo 16y ago
    From what I understand, the government of Singapore keeps corruption low just by paying their officials a lot. The president makes about $3 million. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Singapore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Singapore It may just be an anecdote but it seems like a reasonable system to me. EDIT: had the wrong dollar amount.
    - cellshade 16y ago
      That wikipedia page says about 3 million, not 300 million.
      - Benjo 16y ago
        My mistake: fixed.
    - dualogy 16y ago
      Germany had the same "strategy". I'm not sure pre-emptively bribing every official up-front really solves the "cost" issue to Joe Sixpack. Corruption might be more affordable in the end...
sp332 16y ago
> But I also don't like the idea of a permanent aristocratic class where generation after generation are born into opulence because your great grandfather created a great company. If you make a ridiculous amount of money, what's wrong with making sure that your family is financially secure for generations?
- mattmiller 16y ago
  It cripples upward mobility for the rest of society. You could make an argument that upward mobility is one of Americas greatest strengths. It keeps people motivated and it allows the entire population the chance to contribute to advancement.
  - jacques_chester 16y ago
    > It cripples upward mobility for the rest of society How?

muhfuhkuh 16y ago

Sometimes it takes the government (or someone funded by them) to come up with novel solutions for the maladies that have plagued humanity. Norman Borlaug for famine, Jonas Salk for Polio, the research into Avian influenza and H1N1 pandemics, space exploration, etc. have all been either spearheaded, guided or financially encouraged by government agencies. These are areas which charities (and corporations, for that matter) have sometimes fallen short due to either lack of funding or the mission-critical nature of the moment. Either way, we must agree that it's tough to conclude that governments are completely incompetent and charities aren't, however apt the perception may be.

ramanujan 16y ago
> Sometimes it takes the government Hmmm. Not disagreeing that some things funded by government grants have been worthwhile, but almost every scientific discovery before the WW2 period was funded independently of the government -- including big ticket areas involving fundamental research like automobiles, railroads, and aviation.
- nickpinkston 16y ago
  Well, most railroad expansion was due to a govt act giving tons of land rights and other highly valuable privileges to anyone laying track in the territories - the TransContinental railroad was laid this way. However, quite true on the rest.
  - nickpinkston 16y ago
    BTW: This sub-comment thread is a testament to how good HN still is at bringing together reasonable/thoughtful people - thanks guys.
  - jswinghammer 16y ago
    A private company did it the honest way and laid a more efficient track. The government paid per mile of track laid which you can imagine can go wrong all kinds of ways.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago

You should start (or locate) a charity that dedicates itself to decreasing government waste and donate the money to them. You'd probably get more bang for your buck, even if it didn't focus purely on the humanitarian side of government.

lionhearted 16y ago
> You should start (or locate) a charity that dedicates itself to decreasing government waste and donate the money to them. You'd probably get more bang for your buck, even if it didn't focus purely on the humanitarian side of government. I think it's a good goal, but a bad use of charitable funds due to the fact that politics has some unfortunately strong zero sum elements about it. I don't categorize any primarily political organizations as charity, even if I agree with their aims.

philwelch 16y ago

This is a strange question to me. I know there is probably some similarity in how governments and individuals allocate large amounts of money--for instance, federal spending to curtail HIV/AIDS in Africa compared to Gates' spending to curtail malaria--but the bulk of it doesn't overlap. Gates, Buffett, and Zuckerberg shouldn't hire my town's police force, and can't afford to hire my country's military or even maintain my country's highways. As long as things like that need to be done, someone needs to pay taxes. And Warren Buffett would be the first to tell you he and his fellow billionaires should be the one paying the taxes.

dpatru 16y ago
I don't see why the police, military, and highways need to be funded through government. To the extent that these services provide a benefit, there's no reason to think they couldn't be supplied in a free market.
- nickpinkston 16y ago
  Not that I'm opposed to private security forces or weapons ownership, but remember BlackWater et al are "private military/police - also known as mercs who are fully motivated by money. Even our police have loyalties to each other and their town - however stupidly they may act, they know they're not easily for hire. Not sure...
- philwelch 16y ago
  You don't have a market without a government to protect property rights. You can't have competing entities protecting property rights, because the Marxist gang down the street is going to protect a different set of property rights than the capitalist gang up the street. Libertarians like to think of private property as some kind of moral essential, and it might be, but that's not enough to make anarcho-capitalism work. While we can probably all agree to outlaw murder, we can't, in fact, all agree on enforcing the same property rights. Plus, there needs to be a way to authoritatively register and adjudicate property claims, not a dozen competing protection rackets[1], each with its own inconsistent rules. [1] Even actual protection rackets try not to overlap in territory, for exactly this reason.

stretchwithme 16y ago

all the benefits delivered to mankind by the efforts of the innovators hasn't stopped the demonization of the rich. giving away what they've been paid to deliver those benefits probably won't either.

adambyrtek 16y ago
Probably because "rich" and "innovators" isn't really the same thing, and there was even less overlap in the past.
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  well, I prefer people be demonized for their crimes, not for what they have.
  - redrobot5050 16y ago
    "Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and ten million can't buy enough to eat." --Will Rogers People demonize the wealthy because they see people acting selfishly and it creating, or at least ignoring, the basic injustices of the world. If I had fallen down, would you not ask me if I was okay? Would you not offer to help me up? Transforming Facebook from a website to a profitable business is a great business accomplishment. Transforming the wealth acquired in such an endeavor into educations, scholarships, and other decency-of-life improvements is simply a great accomplishment.
    - stretchwithme 16y ago
      fortunately, most wealth is invested in ventures that hire people. The economic disasters that impoverish so many are not caused by the rich who've worked to create their wealth but by those who mismanage economies and abuse others to benefit themselves and their friends. These thieves are rich to be sure, but a distinction should be made between the two groups.
bertil 16y ago

Patient0 16y ago

Don't you mean "Great Ormond Street children's hospitals" ? You gave money to them but don't even remember their name properly?

lionhearted 16y ago
> Don't you mean "Great Ormond Street children's hospitals" ? Correct - I'm not a native Londoner and I've spent less than a year there across my life. I also organized two small charity events, and asked a friend of mine what the equivalent of St. Jude's is in London, and he said Great Ormond Street. > You gave money to them but don't even remember their name properly? Unnecessarily dickish comment. But yes, I swapped "Great" and "Grand" in my comment incorrectly, good catch there.

bertil 16y ago

Although some isolated initiative are great (Zuckerberg's pledge to education is presumably very much needed) most private charities are more expensive to manage and often counter-productive. Government redistribution can have in well-run countries handling cost around 3-5%; too many charities are closer to 15%. Government handles essential concerns, permanent efforts, infrastructure investment, etc. while many private charities browse around, try something but have little follow-through after the first media coverage. Governments can have a more global view of things, that can help isolate massively more efficient efforts, even when they aren't popular, like prevention, half-way homes. A majority of public money is spend on things with little isolated, visible impact, but the marginal impact can be much higher. A lot of local leaders in Africa have criticized the B&M Gates Foundation for being too disruptive for the good of beneficiaries. I won't diminish the impact of being associated to massively successful people, or simply having spectacularly talented people manage those funds, but please don't confuse the good feeling of being in control with actual marginal impact.

rfrey 16y ago
Government redistribution can have in well-run countries handling cost around 3-5%; too many charities are closer to 15%. The charity costs include publicity and fundraising drives. To make apples-to-apples comparison you'd have to include the cost of the IRS infrastructure and the cost to society of the entire tax collection and avoidance machine. Government handles essential concerns That this is not self-evident is, well, self-evident. Much criticism of government spending is around governments focussing on whatever lobby yells loudest, while charities are market driven: i.e. they fill actual needs that someone sees in the community. A lot of local leaders in Africa have criticized the B&M Gates Foundation for being too disruptive for the good of beneficiaries. A lot of local leaders in Africa do considerably less well under a privately allocated distribution than they do from government aid.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Yeah, given that a lot of Africa's "local leaders" are a major part of Africa's problems I'm disinclined to believe what they say.

nickpinkston 16y ago

Agreed - who hear has found how generous other founders are of their time, connections, etc.? Ever try to get a favor from ever a local politician? If you do, you get far less for far more - in my experience...

Benjo 16y ago

Not sure how this should shift people's attitudes towards taxes. Do we increase them to encourage charitable giving or decrease them so the rich have more to give? At some level this type of thinking lets government off the hook. Philanthropy by the ultra rich is not a solution to government waste and won't solve the fundamental problems in the US government.

ohyes 16y ago

Good for you giving away a significant portion of income. Firstly, "I know I'd prefer to see money allocated by smart people like Gates, Buffet, Zuckerberg than by politicians who need to keep constituents happy and win votes." I feel like you are treating these conditions as being mutually exclusive, and they do not need to be. I want money allocated by intelligent people who need to keep constituents happy. And I want them to have smart constituents, so that they are actually held accountable making bad allocations. This is because I want a large number of problems to be taken care of expediently. Secondly, Rich != Smart. I don't see how it is that being rich makes Gates, Buffet, Zuckerberg better at allocating resources. Sure, they have some business savvy, but there is a certain amount of luck involved as well (as with any statistical out-lier). This doesn't account for others who made their money through inheritance, and are dumb (really dumb). The point is not that 'the evil rich are against us,' the point is that they benefit exponentially from government protections compared to a normal person and should provide funds accordingly. I don't see how any of these people would be able to hold onto (or even establish) their wealth without the protections (and utilities, and services) afforded by the government (and if they were, it would simply be some sort of Monarchy). (ex. The rich don't just benefit from their own use of public roads, they benefit from their employees and customers use as well. How do the rich obtain intelligent, educated labor without required public education? How do they plan to hold onto wealth as they accumulate it without the enforcement of various property laws?) Charity is good, don't give me wrong. But the rich are hardly victims of the government.

MikeCapone 16y ago
> The point is not that 'the evil rich are against us,' the point is that they benefit exponentially from government protections compared to a normal person and should provide funds accordingly. I think most people would agree with this, but let's remember that taxes are pretty much always based on percentages, which mean that they do scale. 30% of a billion isn't the same as 30% of 50k. I think this seems to be too often forgotten in the "the wealthy don't pay more taxes than me!" argument.
jimmyk 16y ago
>(ex. The rich don't just benefit from their own use of public roads, they benefit from their employees and customers use as well. How do the rich obtain intelligent, educated labor without required public education? How do they plan to hold onto wealth as they accumulate it without the enforcement of various property laws?) I think this argument is flawed for a couple of reasons. One: that someone offers me something that benefits me does not and should not legally compel me to compensate them in return. Take open source software as an example. It has enabled many companies to make money, but they cannot be compelled to compensate the author. And yet that seems to be the argument. The government does things that benefit people, so they should be compelled to pay the government in return. Well, sorry, I appreciate what you've done but I didn't ask you to do it or make you do it so I'll donate to you if I feel like it, not if you feel like it. Two: all of the benefits you've listed are individual things which individually cost money. Yes, the rich benefit from their employees being able to drive to work. But they pay their employees and their employees in turn pay taxes and fees on gas and other driving related things to pay for the roads. They benefit from an educated workforce and a police force, but those things are paid for through property taxes and other things. The system is made up of a variety of specific things. To lump them all together and say "You couldn't have accumulated your wealth without the system, so you owe the system a whole bunch of your wealth" seems to me to be somewhat dishonest. Sure, they benefit from the system, but specific parts of the system have costs, and I don't think the government's inability to figure out what those costs are and how to collect them justifies just taking a whole bunch of money from the people who look like they benefit from it and can afford it.