such that charitable donations for domestic causes are not needed.
Okay, I'll bite. Under your system,, what would your criteria be for the "approved causes"? Who is going to be the ongoing arbitrator of the list of "approved causes"?
I mean that’s kinda the point of taxes. People should have housing, food, water, and healthcare. If we did taxes right, those elements would already be covered and drastically reduce the current lift of charities. Most charities now focus on those elements and if we taxed appropriately and spent with good intentions we could cover the 90th percentile of charity needs without going in depth on edge cases. There will end up being edge cases such that charities probably won’t ever be unnecessary but don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress. Watching go fund me campaigns for healthcare is so goddamn dystopian.
I mean that’s kinda the point of taxes. People should have housing, food, water, and healthcare.
Agreed.
If we did taxes right, those elements would already be covered
Agreed.
and drastically reduce the current lift of charities.
Disagreed. This last statement is incomplete.
You're using the word "charities" but from the context of your entire post you're talking about baseline level 1 of Maslow's hierarchy. I'd hazard to say most charities (as a raw number of organizations, not their size) are outside of level 1 Maslow's hierarchy. Just some examples:
Free Software Foundation (Advocates of GNU software)
Michael J. Fox Foundation (Research into developing innovative treatments of Parkinson's disease)
Project Linus (Makes handmade blankets to children 0-18 in the United States who are seriously ill, traumatized, or otherwise in need)
None of these organizations would fit that Maslow's level 1, but the proposal in this thread is to hand over funding these organizations via taxes. The list of worthy charities is not only miles long, but also can be very subjective. Are you proposing that ONLY BASIC NEEDS should be considered charities worthy of funding without being taxed?
So I disagree on the medical research example as that should be included in public research funding. Your example of the FSF is spot on as an area of expansion. For the examples like Project Linus, I assume smaller charities like that make up less than 10% of charity totals combined which would fall into the example of “lets focus on the main 90%”. If the share of charities that are not covered by Maslows L1 is smaller than like 80ish percent then the approach would need to be changed. I have no idea how to search for that data. I would think that the items listed would cover 90ish percent of I could be way off though and am curious is there is a way to find that out.
Honestly, second hand items are a great way to reduce waste and provide things to people that don't necessarily need or want them brand new, especially those in a lower income bracket. But I'll agree that it's disgusting that people are forced to rely on charity because our government fails so miserably at providing a base level of living for our most desperate citizens.
tax it all and force the government to actually support people in need.
Charitable donations include more than food banks. Do you think the government would fund the Electronic Frontier Foundation? Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Border? Do you think Planned Parenthood has a snowballs chance in hell get funding support from the government?
I don’t necessarily agree. But the current form needs to go no matter what.
Donating your spring cleaning clutter to goodwill, or when you move and downsize, or when you clean out the attic, etc. should be deductible for lower income people. But instead, you have to donate so much that you’re essentially never going to hit it unless you’re explicitly going out of your way to get a tax break.
And people over a certain income should be able to get a tax break for charitable donations, but limited to a certain amount and perhaps at a lower percentage than those at a lower income level.
Charities help people. Not all, sure. But many of them are vital for certain people. Making the majority of donors just stop (and that’s where this would go) would be a terrible idea.
Donating your spring cleaning clutter to goodwill, or when you move and downsize, or when you clean out the attic, etc. should be deductible for lower income people. But instead, you have to donate so much that you’re essentially never going to hit it unless you’re explicitly going out of your way to get a tax break.
For better or worse, this is the result of how Trump structured the temporary tax breaks for us ordinary folks. Don't worry though, under Trump corporations got their huge tax breaks locked in permanently. Us ordinary folks lose this next year in 2025 when the Standard Deduction gets effectively cut in half. At that point it will be worthy it again for us little folks to chase charitable deductions because we'll have to itemize if we don't want to take a bath on annual income taxes.
Or, and hear me out, we don't incentivise charitable donations through tax breaks? They are just a way for the government to collect less in taxes so private organizations can decide who is worthy of assistance.
so private organizations can decide who is worthy of assistance.
Or private individuals, too, right? Taxes are supposed to be a check/measure on commerce. Are you saying you want to change that an lump in non-commercial operations in that too? Wouldn't the result be that the only organizations in operation after that policy change would be private-moneymaking businesses? That sounds like a race to a cyberpunk dystopian future.
I want the government to collect taxes that will be more likely to be distributed fairly to everyone instead of non-profits deciding who is worthy.
We wouldn't need cancer charities if the government actually took care of healthcare. We wouldn't need to donate to food banks if the government collected taxes that could be distributed to food banks with a lower overhead than non-profits.
Charities are the stop gap for defunding the government, but are also private gatekeepers that also increase public disintereat in the government by letting them focus on only what impacts them or someone they know directly.
Chairities could still exiat, but instead of being tax deductions they would get the leftovers after taxes are collected to fund public services. Why should the government lose out on the 20%+ tax bracket funds from wealthy people who just want to shuffle their money between each other's charities that pay their boards and employees hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to collect donations and distribute them when the government is already set up to do that?
When a rich jackoff donates a million dollars to save 200k+ on taxes, that is taxes the government could have collected instead.
We wouldn’t need cancer charities if the government actually took care of healthcare.
This must be why Europe doesn't have cancer, right? Hang on, they do have cancer still even with funding of public healthcare. Cancer charities fund more than just treatment. Millions of dollars of cancer research is generated through charitable donations.
Charities are the stop gap for defunding the government, but are also private gatekeepers that also increase public disintereat in the government by letting them focus on only what impacts them or someone they know directly.
That is an incredibly myopic view of charities. So you Dad died of some rate form of Parkinson's and you want to donate to fight the disease and help others? That'll be 33% tax on your donations to the government, thanks.
Chairities could still exiat, but instead of being tax deductions they would get the leftovers after taxes are collected to fund public services.
You think the current government would fund Planned Parenthood with tax money? How about drug treatment programs? Have you seen who is in government and these are the exact programs they're cutting leaving charity to fill the gap.
When a rich jackoff donates a million dollars to save 200k+ on taxes, that is taxes the government could have collected instead.
The people with the level of wealth you're talking about aren't paying high levels of income tax anyway that you're looking to tax. Yes, charitable donations is one way they get around it, but its not the only one. Taxing charitable donations wouldn't recover the money in taxes, it would just make those rich people horde assets and get loans on their assets to live on tax free.
This must be why Europe doesn’t have cancer, right? Hang on, they do have cancer still even with funding of public healthcare. Cancer charities fund more than just treatment. Millions of dollars of cancer research is generated through charitable donations.
No, that is why the governments takes care of people with cancer.
I didn't bother to read the rest with such a disingenuous opening.
I didn’t bother to read the rest with such a disingenuous opening.
Well, thats very on brand for you, I suppose. You took one piece of one point of mine and built your prior post around it instead of responding to the whole post with a more complete argument. Enjoy your bubble, I guess. There's nothing in there to challenge your position. I suppose that must be very comfortable for you.
You've got your statements sewn up tight with your blinders on ignoring lots of good work that charities do because that doesn't support your narrative.
No, you responded by putting words in my mouth and then I clarified. You followed up with blatantly miscontruing what I said in the clarification, which is consistent with your first post.
Go ahead and get the last word in. I'm sure you will make something up and proclaim you won.
No, you responded by putting words in my mouth and then I clarified. You followed up with blatantly miscontruing what I said in the clarification, which is consistent with your first post.
Your clarification was equally suspect or incomplete. I tried to expand your incomplete definition to point out that not only to charitable organizations exist that perform work outside the basics of the first level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and that government should not be the only arbiter of which causes should receive funding which is what you're proposing. You ignore that and refocused on basic healthcare treatment, which is just a fraction of what charitable donations go to, yes beyond just cancer treatment, which was your argument.
Go ahead and get the last word in. I’m sure you will make something up and proclaim you won.
How do you know I didn't already do what you're accusing me of? You stop reading posts the first moment when you find something upsetting to you.
Eh I think incentivizing charitable contribution is a net benefit for society, but the deductions really should taper off after a (low) certain point to disallow people to use it to avoid paying their fair share. And it should be flat out illegal for a billionaire to set up a charitable foundation, donate a shitton of money to themselves, and pay next to nothing in income/CG taxes.
