Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 265 posts

Re: Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

#161

Post by throw__away7391 »

sokoloff wrote: post #154
throw__away7391 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the charity's perspective, yeah. From my perspective, knowing that of that $100 coming out of my pocket, only a fraction is going to what I am donating towards, and pretty inefficiently at that, and at the expense of some government programs if I write it off, that's not so interesting to me. For what it's worth I also tend to avoid products that seem to spend a lot on advertising.

It's likely less expensive on the government angle that you might think. Take a thought experiment where from your $100 donation, $90 goes to wages of highly-paid fund-raising or executive staff and only $10 goes to charitable "actual work". Suppose that your combined marginal tax rate is 40%. If you instead kept that $100 to spend on yourself, you would give the government $40 and you could spend $60. In the case yo…

Meh, at the end of the day it is wasted effort. In my experience fund-raising staff were the most talented/educated people I worked with, they could be doing something better with their time and I could be doing something better with my money. You're right that the government is the biggest loser here, and by extension anyone who pays taxes or uses government services. The ability to write-off donations against taxes is a major distortion. There's a lot of fuzzy dealing, politics, and influence peddling going on with charities that I think we'd be better off as a society without.

Re: Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

#162

Post by gruez »

sokoloff wrote: post #121
cycomanic wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually a very good point. Tax deductions in contrast to direct payments typically favor high income individuals over poorer people. At the same time for the government to get the greatest impact of your policy, which typically means influencing the behavior of the maximum amount of people. Again this would point to targeting the poor&middle class.

One of the largest* tax deductions comes from the paying of people’s wages for jobs. That’s a tax deduction where the economic benefit of the overall transaction goes much more to the wage recipient than to the entity taking the deduction. It seems unreasonable for employers to not be able to deduct that amount and for the government to somehow pay them a fraction of what it costs to employ people. * - I suspect it’s…

> One of the largest* tax deductions comes from the paying of people’s wages for jobs. That’s a tax deduction where the economic benefit of the overall transaction goes much more to the wage recipient than to the entity taking the deduction.

To be fair it's not wages that are benefited specifically here, it's business expenses in general. If anything, wages are treated worse than other expenses (eg. buying a printer), because they're subject to payroll taxes. As for why expenses are deductible in the first place, that's done for a good reason as well. If you don't do that, you end up taxing x% for each step in the value chain, which would give huge tax benefits to conglomerates (which own the entire value chain) compared to small businesses.

Re: Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

#163

Post by nicoburns »

sokoloff wrote: post #147
mschuster91 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A government-funded institution has no one with a stake in its long-term success. Of course it has: pissed-off voters . Mismanaged government-funded institutions such as DMVs or social security systems are a regular troublemaker for politicians.

Is this feedback process the explanation for why those previously underperforming and frequently complained about government departments have now been fixed?

It seems to be mostly cultural inertia. People accept that the government department is underperforming because they expect government departments to be underperforming. Which they expect because that has generally been true in their experience. Which is the case because nobody demands better.

It's a vicious circle, but not an inevitable one. There are plenty of examples of well-functioning government departments, and in some countries there is no significant difference between the performance of publicly run institutions and their private counterparts (although there is of course plenty of variance within both of those groups).

Re: Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

#165

Post by gruez »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #131

Another only mildly disguised attack on democracy. > If you’re used to thinking that our democratic system is in bad shape, that can sound jarring. But she’s working in the tradition of what philosophers call “ideal theory”; the aim is to sketch out what a good system would be, assuming that everyone fully complied with its rules. I'm used to thinking that democracy is in poor shape because rich and powerful people p…

>this author seems to take as a fairly key element of their argument that people getting stupid rich and then doing government type stuff without democratic oversight is good [...]

Which part is bad? The "government type stuff" or the "without democratic oversight"? I agree that billionaires fielding their own armies/police forces would be pretty bad, but what's wrong with funding homeless shelters or schools? If I decide to volunteer at a soup kitchen, am I also "doing government type stuff without democratic oversight"?

Re: Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

#166

Post by concordDance »

barry-cotter wrote: post #153
concordDance wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get 2, 3 and 4. A bit unsure how the logic works for the others? Mountain climbing could cause damage to the mountain I suppose...

Taught Master’s and second entry degrees like MDs and JDs are bad for different reasons. The first enable credentialism, which should be discouraged which tax does. Second entry degrees are just bad. Make people spend seven/eight years of their life in college instead of the three/five/six that’s common outside the US and wannabe colonies like Canada or South Korea. Mountain climbing results in dead people and large…

"Bad" isn't enough, needs to be external to the participants (hence the term externality).

As you point out, there are externalities here of sorts. Government healthcare is often considered bad by libertarians as it seemingly gives the government the right to control people's lives (e.g. oblige they do exercise or not eat red meat or not have unprotected anal sex or whatever) in the name of reducing the costs on the healthcare system.

That said, if an opt-out was allowed to be used by the mountain climber or couch potato or go karter or bare backer that states the government has no obligation to help in the event of a bad outcome caused by their activities then the "externalility" disappears.

This is noteably NOT the case with the more classic examples of externalities such as pollution. Doesn't matter how many waivers the polluter signs, other people still get lung cancer.

Re: Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

#167

Post by kodah »

gruez wrote: post #165
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #131

Another only mildly disguised attack on democracy. > If you’re used to thinking that our democratic system is in bad shape, that can sound jarring. But she’s working in the tradition of what philosophers call “ideal theory”; the aim is to sketch out what a good system would be, assuming that everyone fully complied with its rules. I'm used to thinking that democracy is in poor shape because rich and powerful people p…

>this author seems to take as a fairly key element of their argument that people getting stupid rich and then doing government type stuff without democratic oversight is good [...] Which part is bad? The "government type stuff" or the "without democratic oversight"? I agree that billionaires fielding their own armies/police forces would be pretty bad, but what's wrong with funding homeless shelters or schools? If I d…

Most of the time people don't do stuff just to be nice, it's because they want something. When our needs/desires are met as well, we feel good. Philanthropers, especially of the political nature, are trying to shape society and if leading examples are anything to go by they're influencing society to be more dependent on them and see it as okay.

That's what I took away from OP.

Re: Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

#168

Post by sokoloff »

gruez wrote: post #162
sokoloff wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the largest* tax deductions comes from the paying of people’s wages for jobs. That’s a tax deduction where the economic benefit of the overall transaction goes much more to the wage recipient than to the entity taking the deduction. It seems unreasonable for employers to not be able to deduct that amount and for the government to somehow pay them a fraction of what it costs to employ people. * - I suspect it’s…

> One of the largest* tax deductions comes from the paying of people’s wages for jobs. That’s a tax deduction where the economic benefit of the overall transaction goes much more to the wage recipient than to the entity taking the deduction. To be fair it's not wages that are benefited specifically here, it's business expenses in general. If anything, wages are treated worse than other expenses (eg. buying a printer)…

I totally get that; I was pointing out that people often think "I arrange my finances properly and use deductions correctly/as-intended and all these other assholes are taking advantage of tax loopholes. (Things I use are proper deductions; things others use are disgusting loopholes.)"

Re: Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

#169

Post by sokoloff »

Matl wrote: post #156
sokoloff wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this feedback process the explanation for why those previously underperforming and frequently complained about government departments have now been fixed?

> Is this feedback process the explanation for why those previously underperforming and frequently complained about government departments have now been fixed? Perhaps the constant demonizing of public services by private interests, (who btw often rely on government contracts to function), and certain politicians bought by these interests could be a contributing factor in why not? But let me hear about how private he…

I think that's a lot of the issue: many people (including myself) are in fact happy with their private healthcare and broadband service.

(I have Comcast, so it's not like I've even got the "best", but I'd way rather deal with Comcast or Blue Cross than any government agency...)

Re: Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

#170

Post by dredmorbius »

For an excellent exploration of many of the contradictions and dark sides of philanthropy, I strongly recommend the podcast Tiny Spark, by Amy Costello.

I've submitted a few episodes to HN in the past (with little pick-up). The issue of donor-induced bias and misdirection is a frequent one.

Unfortunately, both the podcast and its host, Amy Costello, seem to have gone dark as of this past December. I've written the organisation, the NonProfit Quarterly, several times, and made inquiries elsewhere, but have received no word on what's going on.

The back-catalogue remains available and excellent however.

https://nonprofitquarterly.org/tiny-spark/

https://nitter.kavin.rocks/tinyspark_org

https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/108335472990676476

Post reply on HN