[white-flame]

That puts the decision on where to put public good will and non-profitable money sinks solely into the machine of government bureaucracy, which I don't think would be very effective.

Currently we incentivize private individual donations, and that lets a lot of things happen quickly and without the requirement of soliciting the permission of a bottlenecked council for anything to happen.

[Retric]

Government is often significantly more effective at spending money for charitable works than private charities due to all the overhead involved in running charities. Further, as a private individual I dislike that my tax money is used to in part fund charities that I strongly disagree with.

If you want to use your money to support some private crusade that’s fine, but why must we support anything anyone thinks as a worthy cause? It’s in effect a blank check without meaningful oversight. Their are for example homeopathy charities whose donations are tax deductible.

[charles_f]

Isn't budget a part of elections platform, and so democracy? Because certainly when it comes to giving money to people bureaucracy becomes a factor, but then rather than redistributing money, things that you could spend tax money on:

- Universal healthcare - Free education - Funding homeless assistance programs - Employment insurance - UBI

(granted these last 2 are pretty much just redistributing money)

The question is whether you want the few billionaires to decide where to spend the money, or everyone (that is, people who haven't been disenfranchised).

AND THEN arguably given the polarization of the US today, I can understand that anyone feels frisky in raising the taxes to found the other side's ideas (being republicans not wanting to fund healthcare or democrats not wanting to fund a wall)