[wolverine876]

> But, if you donate $1.1 billion to an eligible charity (and claim to have gotten nothing in return), then the US government basically pretends that you never made that money, and your tax bill goes down by roughly your marginal tax rate times the size of the donation. There are limits and caveats, but in general, it's a pretty fair treatment.

I think it's highly unfair in that it shifts decisions on social spending from the democratically made decisions of the people to a few wealthy individuals.

[whack]

The US government gets $0.16B less that it can control in social spending. But in return, a regulated non-profit institution gets $1.1B more in its budget. That's a pretty good tradeoff for the social good.

For an alternative way of looking at things - almost any economist would tell you that it is wise to tax negative externalities and subsidize positive externalities. This is one of the most foundational insights from microeconomics. And charitable giving is the closest to an ideal positive externality that you will find. Person spends money to a cause because it makes him feel good to do so. That transaction ends up helping other 3rd parties as well. Textbook positive externality.

https://www.economicshelp.org/micro-economic-essays/marketfa...

[wolverine876]

> The US government gets $0.16B less that it can control in social spending. But in return, a regulated non-profit institution gets $1.1B more in its budget.

There's no reason to think the non-profit accomplishes anything or doesn't accomplish negative things. And there is an opportunity cost to the non-profit getting that money rather than, for example, schools.

[whack]

> There's no reason to think the non-profit accomplishes anything or doesn't accomplish negative things

You could say the exact same thing about how the federal government spends its money.

> And there is an opportunity cost to the non-profit getting that money rather than, for example, schools.

There's also an opportunity cost to the government getting that money, rather than, for example, educational non-profits.

Overall, do I think the federal government would do more good with the same amount of money? Probably. But would the federal government do more good with $0.16B, as opposed to the non-profit sector with $1.1B? I highly doubt it.

[hpkuarg]

> it shifts decisions on social spending from the democratically made decisions of the people to a few wealthy individuals.

To the degree that it's possible to amass wealth in this country without having to coerce people (a la crony capitalism), the money from those few wealthy individuals are a time-delayed, indirect sum of the democratically-made decisions of the people to spend their hard-earned dollars on the products and services those wealth individuals have offered.

Philosophically, it's not all that different from the people's will being indirectly expressed via their elected representatives in government.

[namdnay]

And therefore we should just make the richest person the president, because he’s been elected democratically by our spending! Genius