You know what else is benefits society?
Paying taxes
Many of us think that we are better at selecting where our money should go than a government run by someone who wants to spend billions to change aircraft carrier design or millions on gold gilding existing brass monuments.
You know that people do both, right? For every $100 I donate to charity, I pay at most $24 less in taxes. I’m not redirecting $100 of my taxes away.
Non-profits also provide jobs and pay salaries, which get taxed. They are also subject to funding cuts at a whim. So I feel pretty good about how I donate.
Philanthropy is just spending money on what you want. Spending money on what you want, CS, is dumb.
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The Gates Foundation is a giant vanity/PR stunt
Your punctuation could be better.
Then you got that stupid billionaires’ pledge thing which is really just reflective of the failures of our ability to tax them.
Its interesting how people view this question…
I was surprised the posters thought it was about them
Guess everyone thinks they’re a richie rich
Philanthropy is dumb is a very general statement, it can apply to plenty of people even of modest means. If you say our complex financial and tax systems make philanthropy the source of meeting needs that other societies do through government, that’s a different statement. One can start a discussion about whether that is superior or not under various metrics with a more directed initial post.
Well, the part-quote xxx xxx xxx are temporarily embarrased millionaires does have some grounding in the US psyche.
I have no issue with charity.
But its no substitute for a government program.
Classic example is food stamps (Govt program) vs food pantries (charity).
The food pantries fill in the gaps that the food stamps don’t cover. It should not be the other way around.
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Do you posit that upper middle class folks aren’t capable of philanthropy? I may not be wealthy enough or socially positioned to be a philanthropist, but philanthropy has a specific definition and it’s far broader than however you intended to apply it here.
Do you hear yourself, my man? You come across as a jerk when you say things like this.
Look, let me be clear:
CS has a point here. I have lived in many countries, and the US is pretty unique when it comes to this sort of thing.
I don’t see the same attitude at all in Canadians, Australians, Brits, French, Italians, Spaniards etc
You can choose to agree to disagree.
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I think it’s a wild and offensive leap to assume that everyday people are incapable of being philanthropic, to extrapolate that people on here responding to the literal statement “philanthropy is dumb” means we poors are too stupid to understand that we are not the elite.
Your consistent manner of speaking down to your peers is what I take offense to.
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You really don’t understand that quote do you?
Notice how I specifically said part-quote and focused on the 2nd part?
Because in the US, that mentality is relative.
You do not have to be “poor” (your wording and not mine) to have that mentality.
Your response says a lot more about you than it does about what I actually stated.
You really don’t understand why people find you distasteful, do you? Because of comments like these.
I understand your quote just fine.
I also understand how you treat posters on here, relative to your own perceived status, and I am responding to you holistically and not in respect to this post alone. You talk down to people and it’s gross.
You seem to get triggered very easily by posters on here from time to time.
Feel free to ignore my posts if you have a problem with me.
Its a free country after all.
She really doesn’t get triggered easily.
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