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Buy Me a Chair: The wacky world of university endowments

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Re: Buy Me a Chair: The wacky world of university endowments

#81
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have really enjoyed your comments on this thread fsckboy. > The public likes the idea of philanthropy I think that may be because very rich donors can afford good PR. Also there are few politicians strong enough to say, "sure x spent 100m on postgrad study of his niche interest, but if the treasury had got it instead it could have spent it on teaching everyone's kids to read and write". I think a (real) cap on tax…

> sure x spent 100m on postgrad study of his niche interest, but if the treasury had got it instead it could have spent it on teaching everyone's kids to read and write. You and I both know that all that money would have gone to defense contactors and hospital administrators if the government had taxed it. On average, nonprofits provide substantially more public good per dollar than the government does.

This also doesn't have to be true. The same class who are hoarding the wealth are the same class lobbying the government about how to spend tax dollars.

Re: Buy Me a Chair: The wacky world of university endowments

#82

> as when someone donates large sums to endow professorships in niche topics Linking to > When Strings Are Attached, Quirky Gifts Can Limit Universities Going on to say that Princeton is being forced to run lots of greek courses due to dead guy paying for it. Well...duh...of course. Wasn't that the point of the donation? The donor obviously wanted to imagine Greek studies going on forever. I presume after some period…

but either can be good or bad, so choosing one over the other isn't better by default

No, but the default opinion seems to be that rich will spend it well and the government will waste it. This is plainly absurd. At least the people have a degree of democratic control over the government.
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