Tag Archives: Taxation and Spending

Elections, Law and Politics

#105: Forced Philanthropy

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #105, on the subject of Forced Philanthropy.

Somewhere in the archives of Charles Schulz’ wonderful Peanuts comic strip is the one (shown below) in which Linus says, “When I get big, I want to be a great philanthropist!”  Charlie Brown observes, “You have to have a lot of money to be a great philanthropist…”.  After a moment of consideration, Linus clarifies, “I want to be a great philanthropist with someone else’s money!”

We laugh.  It is funny because it is absurd.  There is nothing particularly charitable about giving away money that belongs to someone else, regardless of who benefits.  It is completely absurd.

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Yet when politicians say it, for some reason no one laughs.

That’s probably because politicians have demonstrated that they are quite able to do exactly that:  They have the power to take money away from some people and use it to help others.  We have given them that power, and there is a degree to which we are pleased with the outcome, as programs like food stamps and medicaid have reduced poverty in this country to the point that very few Americans are really truly poor.  That is, the kind of poverty we see in Third World countries including India and parts of Africa just does not exist here; we have relatively isolated cases of people “falling through the cracks”, not cities packed with homeless people mobbing the streets and refugee camps bursting at the seams.  We could do more, and we are doing more, but what we have done has been accomplished in significant part because politicians have decided to be philanthropists with our money, and we have approved that.

Yet when Hillary Clinton starts talking about how she would use Donald Trump’s money claimed by the Estate Tax he wants to eliminate, it bothers us.  As Mitch Album (Detroit Free Press) says,

The whole image of the government rubbing its hands as you take your dying breath should creep you out.

We have seen it in Blackadder, as the wealthy nobleman is dying and the King and the Archbishop are drooling over who should get his estates.  Hurry up and die, Donald:  Hillary is already counting the share of your money she is going to give to the less fortunate.

Let’s be clear on this.  It’s one thing for us to agree, however reluctantly, that all of us who are scraping by will sacrifice a little money we could really use for something else, and let the government use it to help those who are not scraping by.  It is entirely different for all of us who have enough to be comfortable to decide to gang up on the few who have more than we do, take their money, and give it to the less fortunate.  The former is almost altruistic, and with bit of stretching can be made to appear as if it is our generosity helping the poor.  The latter is simply criminal–and however much we want to admire Robin Hood, we would have little sympathy for a modern criminal waylaying everyone driving expensive cars and giving the money to farmers who feel their tax burden is too high.

However, somehow politicians have persuaded us that it is a noble idea to rob from the rich and give to the poor, that in doing so they are being charitable.  Like Linus Van Pelt, though, they prove to be philanthropists with someone else’s money.  It is not admirable to take money from the rich and give it to the poor when it is not your money.

I don’t know what Donald Trump has done that counts as charity.  I’m told that Hillary Clinton and her husband own and operate a major charitable fund, and accept contributions from many very wealthy donors.  I gather, too, that they have both personally profited substantially from operating that fund.  She seems to have demonstrated a talent for taking money from other people and making it appear she is a philanthropist.  I suspect she has made more money on her philanthropic activities than she has contributed from her own independent income.

However that is, though, it does appear that she is ready to take money from anyone who has it.  I can only be grateful that I don’t have enough to catch anyone’s attention.

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Law and Politics

#2: Planned Parenthood and Fungible Resources

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #0002, on the subject of Planned Parenthood and Fungible Resources.

I’m remembering being a kid.  I’ve saved two dollars from my fifty cent weekly allowance, and now have permission to walk the couple miles down the busy road to the corner store.  I’m planning to spend my allowance on candy and comic books.  Candy is usually ten cents a bar, with gum and Lifesavers® a nickel; comic books are, if I remember aright, a quarter.  I have not decided how much I will spend on either candy or comic books, because I haven’t seen what they have, but I’ll probably split it down the middle, a dollar on each.

Hey, this may sound like fantasy to you, but that’s what it was like when I was a kid.  Also, New Jersey did not have a sales tax then, so I don’t have to worry about that in my calculations.  Only the next part never happened–but it might have.

So as I’m leaving my mother in a fit of generosity gives me an extra dollar–but she says I am not to spend any of it on candy.  So now I have three dollars, two of them my own to spend as I like and one that is specifically limited as “not candy”.

I look over the comic books and find four that I like, and that’s a dollar; so I spend my mother’s dollar on the comic books, and buy twenty candy bars with my two dollars.

Of course, I did not spend a dime of my mother’s dollar on candy; I spent it all on comic books.  However, because I had that dollar from her, I could get four comic books with her dollar and free up my own money to spend on candy.  The result is that I got the same number of comic books (half of the money with which I started would have bought those four books) and twice as much candy, because having my mother’s dollar for the comic books I did not have to spend my own money on them and I could get the candy.

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Planned Parenthood swears that it does not spend any Federal money on abortions.  I believe them.  They undoubtedly have strict accounting procedures that enable them to track where the Federal money goes, so they can account for it.  That money goes into services that are certainly valuable to men and women alike.  In fact, those services are so important that Planned Parenthood would probably make the effort to fund them by other means were there no Federal money to provide them.  Fortunately, mom gave them a dollar that they can spend on those other services, which frees up that much money that would have gone to those services to pay for abortions.

Certainly Planned Parenthood does not spend as much on abortions as it gets from the Federal government; for one thing, that would be obvious, and for another they have plenty of other services for which to pay.  It is undoubtedly true that the Federal money makes it possible for them to provide more of those services than otherwise, as well as divert other monies to abortions, and that without the Federal money they would still offer everything, including abortions, but that they will provide fewer services overall to fewer people.  Yet no matter how you argue it, it is still obviously the case that the Federal money makes it possible for Planned Parenthood to put more money into abortions, money which would have to go to other services if they did not have that Federal money to pay for those other services.  The administrators who are paid in part from Federal money are in part running the abortion services of the organization.  The buildings that are funded by Federal money are used in part to facilitate abortions.  Money that keeps Planned Parenthood operational is de facto money that supports its abortions programs.

The argument that no Federal money goes to abortion does not work.  The fact that Federal money pays for programs, services, facilities, and personnel that would otherwise be paid out of money that now pays for abortions means that abortions are being subsidized by that money.  We can argue–we are indeed still arguing–as to whether an abortion is a means of freeing a woman from the enslavement of an unwanted child or the murder of a child by its mother; we can argue whether we want tax money to pay for such things; we cannot argue that it does not enable them rather directly.

It really cannot rationally be said to be otherwise, as long as the one organization receives money from the Federal government and spends money on abortions.  I can argue that I used my mother’s dollar to buy the comic books and bought the candy with my own money, but obviously I would not have spent as much on candy if I did not have that dollar because I would have bought some of those comic books with my money.  Planned Parenthood can argue that the Federal money does not go to abortions, but just as obviously they spend more on abortions because they have the Federal money to pay for other programs that would otherwise come out of their regular budget.

The author has also written Was John Brown a Hero or a Villain?, Professor Robert Lipkin, the Concert Violinist, and Abortion, and the song Holocaust, addressing related issues of abortion, on this site.

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