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How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

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Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#141

Post by macintux »

koolba wrote: post #9
PrimeMcFly wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US people have been brainwashed to think reasonable taxation is 'socialism' - something they need to have a religious objection to even if they don't know what it is.

There’s no such thing as “reasonable taxation” because it’s a subjective concept. It’s no better than saying “ the rich are not paying their fair share ”. Say you’re settling the tab for big dinner at a restaurant, if your rich friend pays for the steak he ordered, is that his fair share? If there’s 100 of you and he pays for 1/100 of the check, is that his fair share? What if he pays for half the tab, is that enough…

I think the people making the most money have benefited enormously from government largesse. Tax me more, please!

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#142

Post by thfuran »

brigadier132 wrote: post #119
camgunz wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government is the people. Time and time again people vote for services even if it means higher taxes (especially on the rich and on corporations). This is because some things don't really work if they're only funded by individuals. For example, none of the infrastructure investments in the IRA, the Medicare block grants in the ACA, etc. Do you have good examples to the contrary, like not one-offs but large, compl…

> The government is the people The government is the majority. > Time and time again people vote for services even if it means higher taxes (especially on the rich and on corporations). This is because some things don't really work if they're only funded by individuals. Uh, I have a simpler explanation. People vote for things that are good for themselves and come up with contrived arguments for why that's moral. > To…

>> Do you have good examples to the contrary, like not one-offs but large, complex societies working via voluntary contribution alone?

>Have I advocated for this?

So, you are advocating for the collapse of society? You don't want a society that's functional without taxes but also don't want taxes?

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#143

Post by mycologos »

mistermann wrote: post #110
mycologos wrote: post #29

I know, I know, "bounties" are a fraught concept. Some people find "snitching" odious. But this is a tantalizing use case. All the author of this piece got out of their legwork was another article, but it also yielded some money for the federal government: > Two days after I emailed Finwall in April inquiring about the Xie Foundation’s purchase of the house, the foundation filed records with the California attorney g…

I believe that for the most part, those who call the shots in law enforcement prefer that people involved are subordinate to them such that important exceptions can be made when necessary. Getting amateurs involved screws things up, though it would substantially improve fighting crime.

Bounty hunters would still be subordinate to law enforcement in this hypothetical scheme, because a bounty submission still has to get approved by somebody inside the appropriate regulatory body. If a corrupt regulatory body wants to protect certain individuals for certain reasons, they can still do that in this system.

Note also that the scheme I'm imagining doesn't give bounty hunters any special powers; we're not deputizing people to kick in doors. For example, my understanding of TFA is that the journalist built their cases through public information. The only exception was using their journalist credentials to get access to a "museum" -- but in that case, simply being repeatedly denied seems like sufficient evidence that it's not a museum open to the public, so being a journalist wasn't necessary to the case anyway.

It's more plausible to me that a regulatory agency might be too proud to use this kind of help. I have no special knowledge of the IRS, maybe they're in that category.

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#144

Post by 00ff »

dpflan wrote: post #131

Wealth is transfer from one part of the economic system to another, and extreme wealth is basically hoarding; why is it so difficult to reach a point of diminishing returns of wealth and then give it back in some way that is more impactful than arbitrary philanthropy? One cannot simply say government is inefficient because it is pretty clear that this current system is inefficient in distributing wealth and raising t…

Philanthropy is a lot less arbitrary than the vast machinery of misaligned incentives we name government.

Like it or not, your tax dollars fund Guantanamo Bay, Trump's family separation/kids in cages, and every other odious federal program. (My state deploys my taxes to terrorize immigrants. Lovely.)

Your philanthropic dollars only fund projects you actually endorse.

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#145

Post by s1artibartfast »

refurb wrote: post #11
throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #2

As a side note: One of the primary reasons of how the rich get richer and how public services (our society) degrade is, that we stopped taxing them. For decades now. Imho, its a shift of the represented interests in policies. We should stop pondering enshitification or greedflation an start seeing it as a systemic issue, that we can observe everywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Commodification#In_Marxist_th...

One of the primary reasons of how the rich get richer and how public services (our society) degrade is, that we stopped taxing them. Taxes as a percentage of GDP are pretty steady over time. We aren't really taxing less. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S

The story is pretty different if you include state and local taxes.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/37/Fe...

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#146

Post by drewcoo »

brigadier132 wrote: post #43
dools wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger problem is a fear of public spending because of perceived incompetence. The stigma comes from a time when only governments had run big bureaucratic systems. Now we can see there is little difference between public and private bureaucracies except for a lack of oversight on the latter. Still the stigma remains and all public spending is filtered through a profit making entity.

Can you actually give examples of competent public spending? The military is considered one of the competent parts of the US government and the amount of waste is staggering. On any given night 4000 people are sleeping on San Francisco's streets and the government can't solve that with a $636 million a year budget? The US spends more per student than any other nation and somehow we have worse educational outcomes?

> Can you actually give examples of competent public spending?

That question, without an agreed-upon definition of "competent," has built-in Schrödinger goalposts. Is it competent? Is it not? Is it the superposition of both?

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#147

Post by rpgbr »

dools wrote: post #10
throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #2

As a side note: One of the primary reasons of how the rich get richer and how public services (our society) degrade is, that we stopped taxing them. For decades now. Imho, its a shift of the represented interests in policies. We should stop pondering enshitification or greedflation an start seeing it as a systemic issue, that we can observe everywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Commodification#In_Marxist_th...

The bigger problem is a fear of public spending because of perceived incompetence. The stigma comes from a time when only governments had run big bureaucratic systems. Now we can see there is little difference between public and private bureaucracies except for a lack of oversight on the latter. Still the stigma remains and all public spending is filtered through a profit making entity.

This stigma, not by coincidence, is reinforced by economic elites. It’s part of their playbook, and they are pretty convincing for a lot of people.

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#148

Post by mistermann »

pravus wrote: post #19
throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m not sure that extra money would actually mean anything In an ideal democracy it would. Its yet again misrepresented interests. And as an extend to my side note: The decades long shift of interest representation went from the public to the private sphere. The distrust in goverment may be justified, but its no counter argument, because the means of democratic participation is the only viable tool we have left. FU…

> Democracies cannot fail, only the people in it do. I think this is false if only because the premise of Democracy is so poorly defined. What are we voting on? Why? Who is "we"? Am I allowed to call a vote to strip you of your property? Am I allowed to call a vote to tell you what to eat? Am I allowed to call a vote to tell what to do or where to go? Why or why not? We have laws today that do all of these things. Wh…

Is it not bizarre how the word "Democracy" throws the mind into chaos?

I wonder if this is purely organic, because you see clearly delusional claims about it everywhere online nowadays.

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#149

Post by s1artibartfast »

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #5
throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #2

As a side note: One of the primary reasons of how the rich get richer and how public services (our society) degrade is, that we stopped taxing them. For decades now. Imho, its a shift of the represented interests in policies. We should stop pondering enshitification or greedflation an start seeing it as a systemic issue, that we can observe everywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Commodification#In_Marxist_th...

In the US people have been brainwashed to think reasonable taxation is 'socialism' - something they need to have a religious objection to even if they don't know what it is.

In the US, taxes are more that 40% of the entire country's GDP.

What do you think a reasonable level would be?

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#150

Post by dpflan »

00ff wrote: post #144
dpflan wrote: post #131

Wealth is transfer from one part of the economic system to another, and extreme wealth is basically hoarding; why is it so difficult to reach a point of diminishing returns of wealth and then give it back in some way that is more impactful than arbitrary philanthropy? One cannot simply say government is inefficient because it is pretty clear that this current system is inefficient in distributing wealth and raising t…

Philanthropy is a lot less arbitrary than the vast machinery of misaligned incentives we name government. Like it or not, your tax dollars fund Guantanamo Bay, Trump's family separation/kids in cages, and every other odious federal program. (My state deploys my taxes to terrorize immigrants. Lovely.) Your philanthropic dollars only fund projects you actually endorse.

Yes, and tax dollars are also used for beneficial things. Please list those too. Philanthropy can be used to fund suffering-inducing things, so indeed, this is multi-faceted. The point is not that philanthropy can or cannot be useful, the point is that money hoarded is extremely inefficient and wasteful of the usefulness and utility of money (because there are certainly diminishing returns to its utility) -- in a system afforded by the government itself. Life is fleeting, thus so is your experience of your wealth.
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