Screw Charity
Hey Folks –
Oscar Wilde said:
“We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the
best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient,
and rebellious. They are quite right to be so.”
That may seem strange if perceived via the conventional wisdom, but Wilde’s wisdom was anything but conventional.
All our lives we have been led to look favorably upon “charity.” In my Catholic grade school we regularly were called upon to donate our nickels to “The Missions” to help the primitive foreigners around the world. So common was the “call” that I told friends the nuns had installed machinery in the hall to, without warning, grasp our ankles, turn us upside down, and shake the lunch money out of our pockets – harvesting salvation for the savages.
Even Mark Twain, a Protestant, and much older now than I, was not exempt:
“ ...the true statesman does not despise any wisdom howsoever lowly may be its origin: in my boyhood I had always saved pennies, and contributed buttons to the foreign missionary cause. The buttons would answer the ignorant savage as well as the coin, the coin would answer me better than buttons; all hands were happy, and nobody hurt.”
----------- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
The idea seemed to be that we, who were “blessed,” would all throw in our “widow’s mite” and help raise up those damned by fortune and/or the invisible hand of the market. It made us feel good; we were doing our part to make a better world (or at least supporting nuns, priests, and ministers in their efforts to get women of color to wear brassieres).
Of course there were philanthropists grander than we: Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Cecil Rhodes – the generous captains of industry. Such giants walk among us today helping the needy with their largess, continuing the selfless practice of their classic role models. So what’s Wilde talking about? Why should the poor be “ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious”? Why are they “quite right to be so”?
The answer is quite simple, actually, but growing up within the conventional Western wisdom, it is obscured and escapes us. It is this:
The reason there are poor people to whom the wealthy can grant charity is that the wealthy exploit poverty and the impoverished in order to become wealthy. They are so successful at this that they are able to grant a bit out of their surplus (after all, how much can they spend on themselves and their loved ones?) to those they have exploited. And just as with my 5th grade self, they can feel good about helping make a better world – except that it is a world they have played a major part in degrading.
So, it should be clear what Wilde is talking about. People reject “charity.” People want to make their own way in the world; and when the hand that keeps them down offers a bone to “help them out” of a situation the “philanthropist” has himself created, an honorable person should be “ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious,” and is “quite right to be so.”
At the same time, charity is not entirely compatible with democracy. The wealthy work overtime – largely through the Republican party right now – to argue against a governmental role in serving the people. The line is that government screws everything up, that everyone should take care of themselves, and anything needing extra attention can be handled by charity.
Why is this undemocratic? Well, instead of the people determining who is assisted, a small group of the privileged decide for themselves and their private interests – one dollar, one vote – and they get a tax break for deciding how the rest of their countrymen will fare. You can bet that anyone not particularly helpful to the elite agenda won’t be visited by the Wealth Fairy.
There’s more I could say, but I’ll save it for a later commentary. Except that, as you can see from the article below, a lot of the charity we might think is dispensed to the poor actually is showered by the rich on themselves (and it comes off their taxes)!!
- Uke Man
Needy get the least of charitable donations
Thursday, October 4, 2007 3:58 AM
By ROBERT REICH
This year's charitable donations are expected to total more than $200 billion -- a record. But a big portion of this impressive sum -- especially from the wealthy, who have the most to donate -- is going to culture palaces: operas, art museums, symphonies and theaters, where the wealthy spend much of their leisure time.
It's also being donated to the universities they attended and expect their children to attend, perhaps with the added inducement of knowing that these schools often practice a kind of affirmative action for "legacies."
I'm all in favor of supporting the arts and our universities, but let's face it: These aren't really charitable contributions. They're often investments in the lifestyles the wealthy already enjoy and want their children to have, too. They're also investments in prestige, especially if they result in the family name being engraved on the new wing of an art museum or symphony hall.
It's their business how they donate their money, of course. But not entirely. Charitable donations to just about any not-for-profit organization are deductible from income taxes.
This year, for instance, the U.S. Treasury will be receiving about $40 billion less than it would if the tax code didn't allow for charitable deductions. That's about the same amount the government now spends on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which is what remains of welfare. Like all tax deductions, this gap has to be filled by other tax revenues or by spending cuts, or else it just adds to the deficit.
I see why a contribution to, say, the Salvation Army should be eligible for a charitable deduction. It helps the poor. But why, exactly, should a contribution to the already extraordinarily wealthy Guggenheim Museum or to Harvard University, which already has an endowment of more than $30 billion?
Awhile ago, New York's Lincoln Center had a gala supported by the charitable contributions of hedge-fund industry leaders, some of whom take home $1 billion a year. I might be missing something, but this doesn't strike me as charity. Poor New Yorkers rarely attend concerts at Lincoln Center.
It turns out that only an estimated 10 percent of all charitable deductions are directed at the poor. So here's a modest proposal. At a time when the number of needy continues to rise, when government doesn't have the money to do what's necessary for them and when America's very rich are richer than ever, we should revise the tax code to focus the charitable deduction on real charities.
If the donation goes to an institution or agency set up to help the poor, the donor gets a full deduction.
If the donation goes somewhere else -- to an art palace, a university, a symphony or any other nonprofit -- the donor gets to deduct only half of the contribution.
Robert Reich, author of Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life, was secretary of Labor under President Clinton. He wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.
Oscar Wilde said:
“We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the
best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient,
and rebellious. They are quite right to be so.”
That may seem strange if perceived via the conventional wisdom, but Wilde’s wisdom was anything but conventional.
All our lives we have been led to look favorably upon “charity.” In my Catholic grade school we regularly were called upon to donate our nickels to “The Missions” to help the primitive foreigners around the world. So common was the “call” that I told friends the nuns had installed machinery in the hall to, without warning, grasp our ankles, turn us upside down, and shake the lunch money out of our pockets – harvesting salvation for the savages.
Even Mark Twain, a Protestant, and much older now than I, was not exempt:
“ ...the true statesman does not despise any wisdom howsoever lowly may be its origin: in my boyhood I had always saved pennies, and contributed buttons to the foreign missionary cause. The buttons would answer the ignorant savage as well as the coin, the coin would answer me better than buttons; all hands were happy, and nobody hurt.”
----------- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
The idea seemed to be that we, who were “blessed,” would all throw in our “widow’s mite” and help raise up those damned by fortune and/or the invisible hand of the market. It made us feel good; we were doing our part to make a better world (or at least supporting nuns, priests, and ministers in their efforts to get women of color to wear brassieres).
Of course there were philanthropists grander than we: Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Cecil Rhodes – the generous captains of industry. Such giants walk among us today helping the needy with their largess, continuing the selfless practice of their classic role models. So what’s Wilde talking about? Why should the poor be “ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious”? Why are they “quite right to be so”?
The answer is quite simple, actually, but growing up within the conventional Western wisdom, it is obscured and escapes us. It is this:
The reason there are poor people to whom the wealthy can grant charity is that the wealthy exploit poverty and the impoverished in order to become wealthy. They are so successful at this that they are able to grant a bit out of their surplus (after all, how much can they spend on themselves and their loved ones?) to those they have exploited. And just as with my 5th grade self, they can feel good about helping make a better world – except that it is a world they have played a major part in degrading.
So, it should be clear what Wilde is talking about. People reject “charity.” People want to make their own way in the world; and when the hand that keeps them down offers a bone to “help them out” of a situation the “philanthropist” has himself created, an honorable person should be “ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious,” and is “quite right to be so.”
At the same time, charity is not entirely compatible with democracy. The wealthy work overtime – largely through the Republican party right now – to argue against a governmental role in serving the people. The line is that government screws everything up, that everyone should take care of themselves, and anything needing extra attention can be handled by charity.
Why is this undemocratic? Well, instead of the people determining who is assisted, a small group of the privileged decide for themselves and their private interests – one dollar, one vote – and they get a tax break for deciding how the rest of their countrymen will fare. You can bet that anyone not particularly helpful to the elite agenda won’t be visited by the Wealth Fairy.
There’s more I could say, but I’ll save it for a later commentary. Except that, as you can see from the article below, a lot of the charity we might think is dispensed to the poor actually is showered by the rich on themselves (and it comes off their taxes)!!
- Uke Man
Needy get the least of charitable donations
Thursday, October 4, 2007 3:58 AM
By ROBERT REICH
This year's charitable donations are expected to total more than $200 billion -- a record. But a big portion of this impressive sum -- especially from the wealthy, who have the most to donate -- is going to culture palaces: operas, art museums, symphonies and theaters, where the wealthy spend much of their leisure time.
It's also being donated to the universities they attended and expect their children to attend, perhaps with the added inducement of knowing that these schools often practice a kind of affirmative action for "legacies."
I'm all in favor of supporting the arts and our universities, but let's face it: These aren't really charitable contributions. They're often investments in the lifestyles the wealthy already enjoy and want their children to have, too. They're also investments in prestige, especially if they result in the family name being engraved on the new wing of an art museum or symphony hall.
It's their business how they donate their money, of course. But not entirely. Charitable donations to just about any not-for-profit organization are deductible from income taxes.
This year, for instance, the U.S. Treasury will be receiving about $40 billion less than it would if the tax code didn't allow for charitable deductions. That's about the same amount the government now spends on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which is what remains of welfare. Like all tax deductions, this gap has to be filled by other tax revenues or by spending cuts, or else it just adds to the deficit.
I see why a contribution to, say, the Salvation Army should be eligible for a charitable deduction. It helps the poor. But why, exactly, should a contribution to the already extraordinarily wealthy Guggenheim Museum or to Harvard University, which already has an endowment of more than $30 billion?
Awhile ago, New York's Lincoln Center had a gala supported by the charitable contributions of hedge-fund industry leaders, some of whom take home $1 billion a year. I might be missing something, but this doesn't strike me as charity. Poor New Yorkers rarely attend concerts at Lincoln Center.
It turns out that only an estimated 10 percent of all charitable deductions are directed at the poor. So here's a modest proposal. At a time when the number of needy continues to rise, when government doesn't have the money to do what's necessary for them and when America's very rich are richer than ever, we should revise the tax code to focus the charitable deduction on real charities.
If the donation goes to an institution or agency set up to help the poor, the donor gets a full deduction.
If the donation goes somewhere else -- to an art palace, a university, a symphony or any other nonprofit -- the donor gets to deduct only half of the contribution.
Robert Reich, author of Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life, was secretary of Labor under President Clinton. He wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.
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