Remember those teabagging (cue the Beavis and Butthead laugh) events just 6 weeks ago? The claims that mean ol’ Uncle Sam (in conservative speak: "Comrade Barack") is taking all your money and giving it away to lazy, undeserving people? Hard to forget those tea parties really. After all, they have added a lot (of mockery) to our national discourse on tax policy. The argument that we heard time and time again is that social spending should be an individual choice, not something forced upon us by the Government. In other words, give me a lot more and I’ll throw a few extra bucks towards the poor.
Conservatives love to talk about charitable giving. It’s very important of them. Few of us can forget the manufactured outrage and hullabaloo that surrounded President Obama’s proposal to reduce the tax deduction on charitable donations. It was called by some to be the "War On Giving"
So we have two lines of thought here emerging from the Right about charity:
"If the Government doesn’t pay me to give to charity, I’m going to do it less!" How charitable of you. This idea has been debunked so many times: here and here that there isn’t much more to say about it. Despite Obama’s proposal not passing, any future whining about tax exemptions effect on charitable giving should be viewed with a grain of salt.
The other claim that the Right loves to make:
"The Government should take less of my money (eliminate or lower the Federal Income tax) so I can give more to the poor! (wink wink)"
Have the Conservatives, Neo-Cons and Libertarians alike, discovered the remedy to our poverty problem? Is it as simple as they make it seem? Cut taxes and the poor will do so much better? Well, like most conservative talking points, there isn’t much to substantiate their claims.
The claim that lower taxes will lead to more charitable giving may make some sense to you at first. I’m hardly rich, quite the opposite really. I live paycheck to paycheck like a lot (an increasing number) of Americans. I also like to give to what I deem to be good causes. So then it would follow that if I had more money to spend, I’d spend more on charitable giving. Like most Conservative arguments, the logic seems to be "This is what I’d do, thus it is what society at large would do". Except, facts don’t bear this out. There was the recent study which showed that the poor contribute more than twice that of the rich, relative to their income:
Then we have the reality that tax policy doesn’t affect charitable giving all that much. Take a look at this chart from Giving, USA
What you’ll notice, is that in the time period where the top marginal tax rate was slashed from 91% to 28% (1964-1986), charitable giving doesn’t seem to increase the way a Conservative would like you to believe. The Heritage Institute, a conservative think tank, argued this over a decade ago:
"Despite large variations in federal tax rates over the past two decades, donations as a percentage of personal income have remained constant. Although the top marginal income tax rate has ranged from 28 to 91 percent over the past two decades, the amount that individuals donate to nonprofit organizations has remained relatively constant: around 1.83 percent of personal income."
Ironically, the best way to increase charitable contributions is to build a strong economy (Notice that big spike in charitable giving under "Tax and Spend" Bill Clinton). Something that no Republican president has managed to do in the last 40 years. Of course this is where the hypocrisy sets it. Conservatives love to whine about taxes. Listening to these folks, you would think that 100% of your federal income tax is given away to the "undeserving" (their term, not mine). Well actually, here’s a pretty pie chart for Fiscal Year 2009:
It’s just the same ol’ starve-the-beat economics wrapped up in a shiny new teabag. You want lower taxes? Stop voting for idiots who rack up massive debts on illegal wars and deficit spending (in 2008 the interest alone on said debt was $451,154,049,950.63). Stop voting for idiots who give tax handouts to companies who ship jobs overseas, who bust unions, who destroy education and generally reduce the quality of life for the lower and middle classes. Learn to balance a budget. Stop promoting insane trade policies. Until then, stop claiming you will give more to charity if Uncle Sam wasn’t so mean and making you pay taxes. Come clean and admit that you think you shouldn’t have to help people who are less fortunate than you (after all, they "deserve it"). You’d still be selfish and greedy, but at least you’d be honest. After all, when you say "Give me more money so I can give more to the poor" what you really mean is:
(xposted at
GOPaint: Painting the right wing hypocrisy