6 ms·

The right way to fund national needs is taxation. If the process is depending on charitable funding, the funds should be put into a safe harbour so this kind of

by ggm 1y ago

The right way to fund national needs is taxation. If the process is depending on charitable funding, the funds should be put into a safe harbour so this kind of "yea... nah" outcome can't happen.

nofriend 1y ago
The reason for the cessation in funding is because of recent political changes. Incidentally those recent political changes also led to a cessation in government charitable donations. I don't think we can claim that either is strictly more reliable than the other. I'm surprised at how readily people will support government intervention while bearing in mind which government would currently be implementing said intervention.
- ggm 1y ago
  Yea.. I should have qualified my words "in the world as we used to understand it" or something.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > reason for the cessation in funding is because of recent political changes The reason is Zuckerberg and Chan have no backbone. These are individuals who command the resources of small nations. Yet their insecurities win out every time, rendering them powerless to take a stand on anything and instead wander to the beats of others’ drums.
  - lasc4r 1y ago
    Or more plausibly they never cared and it was just PR all along.
    - soulofmischief 1y ago
      Zuckerberg will never outrun his "they 'trust me'. dumb fucks" chat log. He's a terrible person.
      - BLKNSLVR 1y ago
        He doesn't seem to be trying very hard to outrun it either. Facebook is a toxic dump of human unintelligensia and Mark/FB/Meta only ever seem to resist any attempts to disinfect even small pockets.
      - bee_rider 1y ago
        He has hundreds of billions of dollars. I think he could go do whatever he wants.
        soulofmischief 1y ago
        Sure, but like some other founders he's doing little to morally redeem himself for his sizeable role in the normalization of engineering addiction while simultaneously creating a massive surveillance firm in the name of ad-tech. Every bit of lip service about connecting people is overshadowed by "they 'trust me'. dumb fucks".
        foogazi 1y ago
        Apparently he could not raise math scores at the school So what does money have to do with doing what you want ?
      - deadbabe 1y ago
        Why is that a terrible statement? Aren’t you in fact dumb if you just trust some rando’s website on the interent with all the details of your personal life? It’s not even wrong.
        soulofmischief 1y ago
        Honesty doesn't absolve ill intent.
      - mindslight 1y ago
        Many of us did stupid anti-social shit when we were young, especially with computers. The mood of that chat felt like plenty of chats I had with friends, grandstanding and boasting. The sad part is that he hasn't grown as he's gotten older.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > more plausibly they never cared and it was just PR all along That’s still capitulation. When it’s fashionable, they’re one way. When it’s not, they’re the other. It’s not savvy, it’s cowardice.
      - quartesixte 1y ago
        A thought just struck me, but I wonder if the difference between the Billionaires of Today and the Monopolists of Yesteryear is that the wealth and power of the Billionaires are tied up in publicly exposed assets (stocks, etc) as well as networked wealth. Make the wrong political move, and people tank your stock into oblivion. But what are you going to do to Carnegie? Not have steel? Rockerfeller says something antithetical to Elite Beliefs? Good luck getting oil.
        korse 1y ago
        This is relatively well known. Monopolists had very real wealth with a high floor value and controlled large portions of the supply chains needed to build big things that lasted. The Silicon Valley 'elite' of today has wealth predicated on theoretical value calculations of things the world isn't even convinced it needs. Monumental difference, and it significantly changes how these guys operate and what legacy they leave.
      - Nevermark 1y ago
        Or the school was just a cynical tool for generating good PR, where “good” means good for Zuck as he sees it in any moment. Did anyone really think Zuck cares about people? After all the past and ongoing ethical issues with his companies? He is consistently looking out for himself. There is no capitulation.
    - dmix 1y ago
      Or they looked at the results and weren't seeing much progress vs their science investments, which also coincided with these billionaire social projects becoming politically unpopular. For ex, from the article re the school: > But former leaders of the school who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private information said Chan had grown distant in recent years as the school’s academic performance faltered. > In 2017, a Harvard study funded by CZI found that by 2015 the growth rate of student achievement in English had significantly improved — but that there had been no significant change for math. > the school met stumbling blocks. Two principals left in its early years, which three former school leaders said made it difficult to establish stability for students. NYTimes said the refocusing on science investment vs social happened slowly over 5yrs and they haven't invested in any social ones in a few years. So this change has been in the works for a while...
  - rayiner 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - mindslight 1y ago
      Blindly following a hollow con artist who makes every indication that his plans will be bad for you, yet because he speaks the right emotional intonations to your hind brain you rationalize that it will somehow be good for you. Yup, that certainly sounds like religion!
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - rayiner 1y ago
        The hind brian is deeply attuned to physical reality. Religion comes from the forebrain which thinks the human animal can be transcended.
        mindslight 1y ago
        Man, you're just primed to respond to anything with rationalization, huh? What your implied narrative is missing is that being attuned to "physical reality" means being quite misaligned with our modern technological world, and that incentives diverge when those forebrains and hindbrains are in different skulls.
        rayiner 1y ago
        It’s not “rationalization,” your point just makes no sense. I agree Trump appeals to the lizard brain—that’s the brain that’s in touch with physical reality. The folks who have magical ideas about all sorts of “human rights” are the religious ones. That’s the opposite of lizard brain.
        mindslight 1y ago
        It's rationalization because you've taken the analysis just far enough to feel edgily insightful, and then framed the hanging thoughts in feel-good terms (eg "physical reality"). I don't actually disagree about the factual things you've said! Traditional religions, cultlike religions, progressivism, and Trumpism are all "forebrain" attempts steering the behavior of the "lizard brain". These goals often help the individual self interest of the forebrains espousing them. But modulo this, they can still be societally constructive (for instance it's hard to deny the progress that Christianity historically brought to western society), and sometimes they can be societally destructive. Trumpism, with its rejection of most of what makes our society successful (eg its rejection of being bound by intellectual reason, and your welcoming embrace of returning to the "lizard brain" behavior based on "physical reality"), is quite destructive.
  - eastbound 1y ago
    There is a sociologic experiment to do with “The revolution eats its children”. For as long as I’ve seen Bill Gates donate to all causes that would please the most leftist proponents, the only reaction I’ve seen was indifference/hate. It’s a sociological reality: Nothing pleases a mob. On one side, leftist characters always end up in a situation where they were not left enough, which, in revolutionary environments, justifies their termination. In France when the left was elected the president was described as “a capitalist, simping for billionaires”. On the other side, if you are rich and perform acts promoted by leftism, such as donating your entire salary, increasing your employees by 30% a year, or like Bill Gates, donating your entire wealth for the world’s hunger and health before your death, your actions are construed as malevolent, probably there’s a “get rich” scheme behind it for Bill Gates, or probably “you had to treat your employees bad if you had to increase their salary.” For a good person, there is no winning. But we have countless counterexamples of bad people liked by the same population. A lot, lot, lot of people reach this conclusion by their 40ies. After all, it’s not “spine” that people should have, but just mutual love, including some from the bottom to the top. And perhaps it explains the current trends.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - karmakurtisaani 1y ago
    > The reason is Zuckerberg and Chan have no backbone. More likely, the wealthier you are the more tied you are to the system. The US government could make it very difficult for Zuck to conduct his business, which would tank his wealth. This is in particularly true when there's a pseudo-dictator in power.
    - gatlin 1y ago
      So, in other words, he has no backbone.
      - amy214 1y ago
        >So, in other words, he has no backbone. Pretty fair if you take Eli Musk as a counterexample. Eli stood with the government and the whole left groaned that he sold out. Then he backed off due to his principles and the whole right groaned that he's not a team player, also the left still hates him too for some reason. Basically, in this hyper-polarized political environment, apparently all sides agree that they don't like Eli Musk, ironically the power commander of the Twitter propaganda network node.
- lasc4r 1y ago
  >I don't think we can claim that either is strictly more reliable than the other In the article it was schools that were defunded. Does the government have a history of consistently funding schools?
  - martijnvds 1y ago
    Sadly, yes.
- make3 1y ago
  the difference is that one is from elected officials (however flawed, clearly, there is some measure of representing the people's interests in theory at least), and the other is just an individual's decision, not even pretense of representing the people's opinion
- DrScientist 1y ago
  Governments have a degree of democratic accountability - the current US government could be kicked out or not in 4 years depending on the will of the people. Billionaires paying very little tax are forever ( certainly more than a lifetime as the wealth is handed down over generations ).
VirusNewbie 1y ago
Is there evidence that this is the right way? Because it seems to be far less efficient than other ways if funding charitable causes directly by a significant margin.
- analog31 1y ago
  Likewise, is there evidence for this? Maybe our most "effective" altruism is in fact to pay taxes in a liberal democracy after all. Painting with a very broad brush, the US is the most charitable country in the world, yet we lag behind many other countries according to various measures of human welfare.
  - ggm 1y ago
    US "charity" to the UN became highly qualified as a function of both political distance from the UN goals, and regrettable lapses in probity inside the UN, the kind of problem which crops up anywhere and everywhere. Time and place meant they collided, and the US stopped funding the UN because of <reasons> and instead let the charity sector pick up the burden, which meant right wing christian fundamentalism entered the room. It is little wonder that islamic countries became suspicious of e.g. vaccination drives, made only worse by US polital operatives exploiting the polio vaccination runs to track down Bin Laden. The US was the most charitable nation in the world but it's not a given.
  - edanm 1y ago
    > Likewise, is there evidence for this? Maybe our most "effective" altruism is in fact to pay taxes in a liberal democracy after all. I think this depends quite a bit on what you're trying to achieve. Hard to measure effectiveness otherwise. E.g. if you care about global human welfare (and setting aside longtermist ideas), the most effective use of a marginal dollar is to donate money to people in poorer countries (via various methods). One of the main reasons is that the richer countries have a much more robust social welfare system already via taxation.
- ggm 1y ago
  Charity is essentially voluntary. So, in terms of persistence to need, it's highly variable. Some problems demand commitment which charities cannot commit to. Charity incurs oversight burdens. The UK has a long story about failures in charity, the charity commissioner has had to intercede many times. It would be wrong to assume there are no oversight costs, the thing is that to the charity they may look like externalities. They have to be borne, the state bears the cost. Charities also usually cannot intercede politically to fix the situation demanding their charitable work. So, charities are excluded from lobbying in some ways, where governments reflect the will of the people and are subject to both good and band consequences. Charities are abused. Churches for instance. Why do churches qualify for charitable status, when they (in most economies where they are or have been) are established entities with massive landholdings and wealth? In the end, it's a matter of philosophy. Without being patronising, I tend to think right wing people who believe in personal responsibility and low taxes favour charity because it gives them discretion, to give or not, as a function of how they feel about the recipient, and left wing people who believe in the state as a construct reflecting popular will believe in state functions to implement the burdens individuals cannot manage for themselves. I say that because my very good friends who donate highly tend to be right wing and tend to make moralising statements about diabetes being a function of a lack of personal self control and so do not fund interventions to prevent diabetes in the working poor because "they lack self control" and also chose not to fund womens reproductive rights on similar grounds "chastity is its own reward" -Bill and Melinda Gates were exceptional in ignoring the fundamentalist christian lobby which came into the room in the Reagan "just say no" years, and funded contraception and abortion in Africa regardless.
downrightmike 1y ago
Their social funding was just creative accounting that moved money so it couldn't be taxed, but still gave them full control and then never did deliver anything.
bickfordb 1y ago
That or reform charitable giving so that it truly is an arm's length transaction. No preferential tax treatment for payments to charities one controls.
jimbob45 1y ago
The article heavily implies that it was a “yeah…nah” thing but does very little investigative work that could corroborate their anonymous witnesses. For all we know, there was a school shooting or a spate of suicides in which case I think everyone here would agree with closing it. Also I’m not from the area but how are disadvantaged youth coming from Palo Alto at all? Isn’t it one of the highest CoL areas in the nation? Also isn’t it pretty crime-free and well-maintained? How disadvantaged can you be if that’s where you live?
- Paradigm2020 1y ago
  On your first part I'd do exactly the opposite so please don't speak for me... Given the fact that the number 1 cause in the USA for "unnatural" deaths of school age individuals is now shootings (not cars like in other developed countries) I feel like the expression "when the game gets tough the tough get going should apply. Personally I feel like it's the bil(mil)lionaires new "game" of getting the credit but not doing the commitment. On the second part {speculation} Because maybe not so rich people lived there before the area became so expensive or moved there for job opportunity + safe place to raise kids ? If you do a quick Google / chatgpt you'll see that the cost of living compared to median income is extremely bad... So not the worst place but certainly not the best...
protocolture 1y ago
>The right way to fund national needs is taxation. What is a "National Need".
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  Education is one.
  - protocolture 1y ago
    So Education isn't a state need or a personal need? Why is Education a National Need?
    - Hasnep 1y ago
      Things can be both. Just because access to clean water is a national need doesn't mean I personally can stop drinking water.
      - protocolture 1y ago
        Right but if I am hungry I dont ask central federal bureaucrats to organise to collect tax in order distribute food to my door. Great Big National plans are often the least efficient method of organisation, short of maybe asking the UN to get involved. Why is it a National Need?
    - RestlessMind 1y ago
      Because some children might have the bad luck of being born to dumb parents who do not value education. Ensuring that those children should not suffer and every member of the society grows into a well-educated adult who can contribute back is certainly a national need.
      - protocolture 1y ago
        That really doesnt answer the question. Like I dont really care about the moral justification, education is important. But Important =/= National. What is a national need? And why is education specifically a national need?
msgodel 1y ago
I think what you meant is the right way to turn people into serious enemies.
asveikau 1y ago
In the 1950s, we taxed income over $400,000 at somewhere around 90%. Anything you made less than that was taxed much less, but every dollar above $400,000 the government took most of it, which effectively put a cap on wages. Won't be popular on HN, I think we need to move closer to that again. Maybe not that extreme, but that's the proper direction. We can then use that income to tackle big problems. We also need to tax interest, capital gains, dividends etc. at the same rate as wages.
- gedy 1y ago
  > We also need to tax interest, capital gains, dividends etc. at the same rate as wages. How about we first bring back pensions and 30 year jobs before we try and fix that?
  - fake-name 1y ago
    Maybe we can't do your idea without the quoted idea.
  - HaZeust 1y ago
    At that point why not just go to state-controlled capitalism? That way of life was MUCH closer to competing socio-economic theories to capitalism - than capitalism itself. I saw Sanders' Rogan podcast, I heard his plea - it doesn't work well in today's system. One of the best things about the freedom of moving from job to job and not relying on pensions or 30-year contracts is that it enables and empowers everyday workers to have the innate, untenable, inalienable "check and balance" on the labor market to choose who they give labor to at any given time - and picket them as well. For the average person: You SHOULD be able to move jobs at any time, you SHOULD be able to not feel pressure of unrealized benefits of a pension 30 years down the road when you do, your housing SHOULD NOT be directly based on your employer ("company towns"), and normalizing systemic status-quo changes that makes it hard to decide/change who cuts your checks is NOT a step in the right direction. Sanders was right when he said folks in managerial positions - and above - need to care more about their workers, but the businesses that drive the labor market banded together - perhaps unknowingly through a status quo "collective conscious" - to make MOST of your pickings in MOST same-tier jobs look very much alike. There are many ways to fix that in practice across other nations today, like sectoral bargaining; where union experts in a given trade collectively bargain for what SHOULD be an effective minimum wage or minimum benefits package within that trade - instead of the government doing it for them. There's also works councils in Germany that have a similar effect.
penguin_booze 1y ago
You're telling me the t[r]ickle down irrigation doesn't work? Oh naw! Whuvuda thunk this would happen?!
amy214 1y ago
>The right way to fund national needs is taxation. No absolutes. Sometimes this is true, sometimes not. It feels great, amazing, to give back, to change someone's life with your money. It can feel even better for some people, to give back, to change someone's life, with your NEIGHBOR's money. So you can get people whose existence is to enforce that their neighbor, Peter, shall pay their other neighbor, Paul, and have Paul give them a solid pat on the back for doing them a solid. Peter is unhappy about it. Thusly is the cornerstone of politics. Sometimes this thinking makes sense, sometimes not, usually not in the extremes, of which such people exist.

by ggm 1y ago

The right way to fund national needs is taxation. If the process is depending on charitable funding, the funds should be put into a safe harbour so this kind of "yea... nah" outcome can't happen.

nofriend 1y ago

The reason for the cessation in funding is because of recent political changes. Incidentally those recent political changes also led to a cessation in government charitable donations. I don't think we can claim that either is strictly more reliable than the other. I'm surprised at how readily people will support government intervention while bearing in mind which government would currently be implementing said intervention.

ggm 1y ago
Yea.. I should have qualified my words "in the world as we used to understand it" or something.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> reason for the cessation in funding is because of recent political changes The reason is Zuckerberg and Chan have no backbone. These are individuals who command the resources of small nations. Yet their insecurities win out every time, rendering them powerless to take a stand on anything and instead wander to the beats of others’ drums.
- lasc4r 1y ago
  Or more plausibly they never cared and it was just PR all along.
  - soulofmischief 1y ago
    Zuckerberg will never outrun his "they 'trust me'. dumb fucks" chat log. He's a terrible person.
    - BLKNSLVR 1y ago
      He doesn't seem to be trying very hard to outrun it either. Facebook is a toxic dump of human unintelligensia and Mark/FB/Meta only ever seem to resist any attempts to disinfect even small pockets.
    - bee_rider 1y ago
      He has hundreds of billions of dollars. I think he could go do whatever he wants.
      - soulofmischief 1y ago
        Sure, but like some other founders he's doing little to morally redeem himself for his sizeable role in the normalization of engineering addiction while simultaneously creating a massive surveillance firm in the name of ad-tech. Every bit of lip service about connecting people is overshadowed by "they 'trust me'. dumb fucks".
      - foogazi 1y ago
        Apparently he could not raise math scores at the school So what does money have to do with doing what you want ?
    - deadbabe 1y ago
      Why is that a terrible statement? Aren’t you in fact dumb if you just trust some rando’s website on the interent with all the details of your personal life? It’s not even wrong.
      - soulofmischief 1y ago
        Honesty doesn't absolve ill intent.
    - mindslight 1y ago
      Many of us did stupid anti-social shit when we were young, especially with computers. The mood of that chat felt like plenty of chats I had with friends, grandstanding and boasting. The sad part is that he hasn't grown as he's gotten older.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > more plausibly they never cared and it was just PR all along That’s still capitulation. When it’s fashionable, they’re one way. When it’s not, they’re the other. It’s not savvy, it’s cowardice.
    - quartesixte 1y ago
      A thought just struck me, but I wonder if the difference between the Billionaires of Today and the Monopolists of Yesteryear is that the wealth and power of the Billionaires are tied up in publicly exposed assets (stocks, etc) as well as networked wealth. Make the wrong political move, and people tank your stock into oblivion. But what are you going to do to Carnegie? Not have steel? Rockerfeller says something antithetical to Elite Beliefs? Good luck getting oil.
      - korse 1y ago
        This is relatively well known. Monopolists had very real wealth with a high floor value and controlled large portions of the supply chains needed to build big things that lasted. The Silicon Valley 'elite' of today has wealth predicated on theoretical value calculations of things the world isn't even convinced it needs. Monumental difference, and it significantly changes how these guys operate and what legacy they leave.
    - Nevermark 1y ago
      Or the school was just a cynical tool for generating good PR, where “good” means good for Zuck as he sees it in any moment. Did anyone really think Zuck cares about people? After all the past and ongoing ethical issues with his companies? He is consistently looking out for himself. There is no capitulation.
  - dmix 1y ago
    Or they looked at the results and weren't seeing much progress vs their science investments, which also coincided with these billionaire social projects becoming politically unpopular. For ex, from the article re the school: > But former leaders of the school who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private information said Chan had grown distant in recent years as the school’s academic performance faltered. > In 2017, a Harvard study funded by CZI found that by 2015 the growth rate of student achievement in English had significantly improved — but that there had been no significant change for math. > the school met stumbling blocks. Two principals left in its early years, which three former school leaders said made it difficult to establish stability for students. NYTimes said the refocusing on science investment vs social happened slowly over 5yrs and they haven't invested in any social ones in a few years. So this change has been in the works for a while...
- rayiner 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - mindslight 1y ago
    Blindly following a hollow con artist who makes every indication that his plans will be bad for you, yet because he speaks the right emotional intonations to your hind brain you rationalize that it will somehow be good for you. Yup, that certainly sounds like religion!
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - rayiner 1y ago
      The hind brian is deeply attuned to physical reality. Religion comes from the forebrain which thinks the human animal can be transcended.
      - mindslight 1y ago
        Man, you're just primed to respond to anything with rationalization, huh? What your implied narrative is missing is that being attuned to "physical reality" means being quite misaligned with our modern technological world, and that incentives diverge when those forebrains and hindbrains are in different skulls.
        rayiner 1y ago
        It’s not “rationalization,” your point just makes no sense. I agree Trump appeals to the lizard brain—that’s the brain that’s in touch with physical reality. The folks who have magical ideas about all sorts of “human rights” are the religious ones. That’s the opposite of lizard brain.
        mindslight 1y ago
        It's rationalization because you've taken the analysis just far enough to feel edgily insightful, and then framed the hanging thoughts in feel-good terms (eg "physical reality"). I don't actually disagree about the factual things you've said! Traditional religions, cultlike religions, progressivism, and Trumpism are all "forebrain" attempts steering the behavior of the "lizard brain". These goals often help the individual self interest of the forebrains espousing them. But modulo this, they can still be societally constructive (for instance it's hard to deny the progress that Christianity historically brought to western society), and sometimes they can be societally destructive. Trumpism, with its rejection of most of what makes our society successful (eg its rejection of being bound by intellectual reason, and your welcoming embrace of returning to the "lizard brain" behavior based on "physical reality"), is quite destructive.
- eastbound 1y ago
  There is a sociologic experiment to do with “The revolution eats its children”. For as long as I’ve seen Bill Gates donate to all causes that would please the most leftist proponents, the only reaction I’ve seen was indifference/hate. It’s a sociological reality: Nothing pleases a mob. On one side, leftist characters always end up in a situation where they were not left enough, which, in revolutionary environments, justifies their termination. In France when the left was elected the president was described as “a capitalist, simping for billionaires”. On the other side, if you are rich and perform acts promoted by leftism, such as donating your entire salary, increasing your employees by 30% a year, or like Bill Gates, donating your entire wealth for the world’s hunger and health before your death, your actions are construed as malevolent, probably there’s a “get rich” scheme behind it for Bill Gates, or probably “you had to treat your employees bad if you had to increase their salary.” For a good person, there is no winning. But we have countless counterexamples of bad people liked by the same population. A lot, lot, lot of people reach this conclusion by their 40ies. After all, it’s not “spine” that people should have, but just mutual love, including some from the bottom to the top. And perhaps it explains the current trends.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- karmakurtisaani 1y ago
  > The reason is Zuckerberg and Chan have no backbone. More likely, the wealthier you are the more tied you are to the system. The US government could make it very difficult for Zuck to conduct his business, which would tank his wealth. This is in particularly true when there's a pseudo-dictator in power.
  - gatlin 1y ago
    So, in other words, he has no backbone.
    - amy214 1y ago
      >So, in other words, he has no backbone. Pretty fair if you take Eli Musk as a counterexample. Eli stood with the government and the whole left groaned that he sold out. Then he backed off due to his principles and the whole right groaned that he's not a team player, also the left still hates him too for some reason. Basically, in this hyper-polarized political environment, apparently all sides agree that they don't like Eli Musk, ironically the power commander of the Twitter propaganda network node.
lasc4r 1y ago
>I don't think we can claim that either is strictly more reliable than the other In the article it was schools that were defunded. Does the government have a history of consistently funding schools?
- martijnvds 1y ago
  Sadly, yes.
make3 1y ago
the difference is that one is from elected officials (however flawed, clearly, there is some measure of representing the people's interests in theory at least), and the other is just an individual's decision, not even pretense of representing the people's opinion
DrScientist 1y ago
Governments have a degree of democratic accountability - the current US government could be kicked out or not in 4 years depending on the will of the people. Billionaires paying very little tax are forever ( certainly more than a lifetime as the wealth is handed down over generations ).

VirusNewbie 1y ago

Is there evidence that this is the right way? Because it seems to be far less efficient than other ways if funding charitable causes directly by a significant margin.

analog31 1y ago
Likewise, is there evidence for this? Maybe our most "effective" altruism is in fact to pay taxes in a liberal democracy after all. Painting with a very broad brush, the US is the most charitable country in the world, yet we lag behind many other countries according to various measures of human welfare.
- ggm 1y ago
  US "charity" to the UN became highly qualified as a function of both political distance from the UN goals, and regrettable lapses in probity inside the UN, the kind of problem which crops up anywhere and everywhere. Time and place meant they collided, and the US stopped funding the UN because of <reasons> and instead let the charity sector pick up the burden, which meant right wing christian fundamentalism entered the room. It is little wonder that islamic countries became suspicious of e.g. vaccination drives, made only worse by US polital operatives exploiting the polio vaccination runs to track down Bin Laden. The US was the most charitable nation in the world but it's not a given.
- edanm 1y ago
  > Likewise, is there evidence for this? Maybe our most "effective" altruism is in fact to pay taxes in a liberal democracy after all. I think this depends quite a bit on what you're trying to achieve. Hard to measure effectiveness otherwise. E.g. if you care about global human welfare (and setting aside longtermist ideas), the most effective use of a marginal dollar is to donate money to people in poorer countries (via various methods). One of the main reasons is that the richer countries have a much more robust social welfare system already via taxation.
ggm 1y ago
Charity is essentially voluntary. So, in terms of persistence to need, it's highly variable. Some problems demand commitment which charities cannot commit to. Charity incurs oversight burdens. The UK has a long story about failures in charity, the charity commissioner has had to intercede many times. It would be wrong to assume there are no oversight costs, the thing is that to the charity they may look like externalities. They have to be borne, the state bears the cost. Charities also usually cannot intercede politically to fix the situation demanding their charitable work. So, charities are excluded from lobbying in some ways, where governments reflect the will of the people and are subject to both good and band consequences. Charities are abused. Churches for instance. Why do churches qualify for charitable status, when they (in most economies where they are or have been) are established entities with massive landholdings and wealth? In the end, it's a matter of philosophy. Without being patronising, I tend to think right wing people who believe in personal responsibility and low taxes favour charity because it gives them discretion, to give or not, as a function of how they feel about the recipient, and left wing people who believe in the state as a construct reflecting popular will believe in state functions to implement the burdens individuals cannot manage for themselves. I say that because my very good friends who donate highly tend to be right wing and tend to make moralising statements about diabetes being a function of a lack of personal self control and so do not fund interventions to prevent diabetes in the working poor because "they lack self control" and also chose not to fund womens reproductive rights on similar grounds "chastity is its own reward" -Bill and Melinda Gates were exceptional in ignoring the fundamentalist christian lobby which came into the room in the Reagan "just say no" years, and funded contraception and abortion in Africa regardless.

downrightmike 1y ago

Their social funding was just creative accounting that moved money so it couldn't be taxed, but still gave them full control and then never did deliver anything.

bickfordb 1y ago

That or reform charitable giving so that it truly is an arm's length transaction. No preferential tax treatment for payments to charities one controls.

jimbob45 1y ago

The article heavily implies that it was a “yeah…nah” thing but does very little investigative work that could corroborate their anonymous witnesses. For all we know, there was a school shooting or a spate of suicides in which case I think everyone here would agree with closing it. Also I’m not from the area but how are disadvantaged youth coming from Palo Alto at all? Isn’t it one of the highest CoL areas in the nation? Also isn’t it pretty crime-free and well-maintained? How disadvantaged can you be if that’s where you live?

Paradigm2020 1y ago
On your first part I'd do exactly the opposite so please don't speak for me... Given the fact that the number 1 cause in the USA for "unnatural" deaths of school age individuals is now shootings (not cars like in other developed countries) I feel like the expression "when the game gets tough the tough get going should apply. Personally I feel like it's the bil(mil)lionaires new "game" of getting the credit but not doing the commitment. On the second part {speculation} Because maybe not so rich people lived there before the area became so expensive or moved there for job opportunity + safe place to raise kids ? If you do a quick Google / chatgpt you'll see that the cost of living compared to median income is extremely bad... So not the worst place but certainly not the best...

protocolture 1y ago

>The right way to fund national needs is taxation. What is a "National Need".

JKCalhoun 1y ago
Education is one.
- protocolture 1y ago
  So Education isn't a state need or a personal need? Why is Education a National Need?
  - Hasnep 1y ago
    Things can be both. Just because access to clean water is a national need doesn't mean I personally can stop drinking water.
    - protocolture 1y ago
      Right but if I am hungry I dont ask central federal bureaucrats to organise to collect tax in order distribute food to my door. Great Big National plans are often the least efficient method of organisation, short of maybe asking the UN to get involved. Why is it a National Need?
  - RestlessMind 1y ago
    Because some children might have the bad luck of being born to dumb parents who do not value education. Ensuring that those children should not suffer and every member of the society grows into a well-educated adult who can contribute back is certainly a national need.
    - protocolture 1y ago
      That really doesnt answer the question. Like I dont really care about the moral justification, education is important. But Important =/= National. What is a national need? And why is education specifically a national need?

msgodel 1y ago

I think what you meant is the right way to turn people into serious enemies.

asveikau 1y ago

In the 1950s, we taxed income over $400,000 at somewhere around 90%. Anything you made less than that was taxed much less, but every dollar above $400,000 the government took most of it, which effectively put a cap on wages. Won't be popular on HN, I think we need to move closer to that again. Maybe not that extreme, but that's the proper direction. We can then use that income to tackle big problems. We also need to tax interest, capital gains, dividends etc. at the same rate as wages.

gedy 1y ago
> We also need to tax interest, capital gains, dividends etc. at the same rate as wages. How about we first bring back pensions and 30 year jobs before we try and fix that?
- fake-name 1y ago
  Maybe we can't do your idea without the quoted idea.
- HaZeust 1y ago
  At that point why not just go to state-controlled capitalism? That way of life was MUCH closer to competing socio-economic theories to capitalism - than capitalism itself. I saw Sanders' Rogan podcast, I heard his plea - it doesn't work well in today's system. One of the best things about the freedom of moving from job to job and not relying on pensions or 30-year contracts is that it enables and empowers everyday workers to have the innate, untenable, inalienable "check and balance" on the labor market to choose who they give labor to at any given time - and picket them as well. For the average person: You SHOULD be able to move jobs at any time, you SHOULD be able to not feel pressure of unrealized benefits of a pension 30 years down the road when you do, your housing SHOULD NOT be directly based on your employer ("company towns"), and normalizing systemic status-quo changes that makes it hard to decide/change who cuts your checks is NOT a step in the right direction. Sanders was right when he said folks in managerial positions - and above - need to care more about their workers, but the businesses that drive the labor market banded together - perhaps unknowingly through a status quo "collective conscious" - to make MOST of your pickings in MOST same-tier jobs look very much alike. There are many ways to fix that in practice across other nations today, like sectoral bargaining; where union experts in a given trade collectively bargain for what SHOULD be an effective minimum wage or minimum benefits package within that trade - instead of the government doing it for them. There's also works councils in Germany that have a similar effect.

penguin_booze 1y ago

You're telling me the t[r]ickle down irrigation doesn't work? Oh naw! Whuvuda thunk this would happen?!

amy214 1y ago

>The right way to fund national needs is taxation. No absolutes. Sometimes this is true, sometimes not. It feels great, amazing, to give back, to change someone's life with your money. It can feel even better for some people, to give back, to change someone's life, with your NEIGHBOR's money. So you can get people whose existence is to enforce that their neighbor, Peter, shall pay their other neighbor, Paul, and have Paul give them a solid pat on the back for doing them a solid. Peter is unhappy about it. Thusly is the cornerstone of politics. Sometimes this thinking makes sense, sometimes not, usually not in the extremes, of which such people exist.