On 4/6/2010 5:43 AM, wrote:
On Apr 6, 1:28 am, wrote:


Your problem is that your beliefs just don't comport with reality.


Hawke

And neither do your beliefs. Try to explain what Bill Gates does. He
is directing money to combating malaria. This will be much more
beneficial that having the government spend the money.

Or take a look at the Howard Hughes medical research center.

Or then there are all the libraries, Andrew Carnegie.

The list is endless. Smart people making lots of money and then
spending the money in ways smarter than the government.

Dan



That's nice but it doesn't mean anything because the actual amount of
money spent by philanthropists to do good is a pittance compared to what
the government does. I'm all for people that have made lots of money
using it to do some good. But I know the facts. Which happen to be that
as a group the wealthy are cheapskates when it comes to giving to the
needy. That is why the government has to do it. The amount given by the
rich just ain't all that much. That's not my belief. That's what the
facts say. Just like the facts say the U.S. government only gives about
1% of GNP in foreign aid. Everyone thinks we're so generous but as a
percentage of what we have we're far behind other countries.

Hawke

On Apr 6, 6:41*pm, Hawke wrote:

That's nice but it doesn't mean anything because the actual amount of
money spent by philanthropists to do good is a pittance compared to what
the government does. I'm all for people that have made lots of money
using it to do some good. But I know the facts. Which happen to be that
as a group the wealthy are cheapskates when it comes to giving to the
needy. That is why the government has to do it. The amount given by the
rich just ain't all that much. That's not my belief. That's what the
facts say. Just like the facts say the U.S. government only gives about
1% of GNP in foreign aid. Everyone thinks we're so generous but as a
percentage of what we have we're far behind other countries.

Hawke

But your " Facts " are wrong. The money spent by philanthropists does
much more good per dollar than the government aid does. Bill Gates
has done more to reduce malaria in a few years than the U.S.
Government has done is the last 100 years.

Dan

On 4/7/2010 4:55 AM, wrote:
On Apr 6, 6:41 pm, wrote:

That's nice but it doesn't mean anything because the actual amount of
money spent by philanthropists to do good is a pittance compared to what
the government does. I'm all for people that have made lots of money
using it to do some good. But I know the facts. Which happen to be that
as a group the wealthy are cheapskates when it comes to giving to the
needy. That is why the government has to do it. The amount given by the
rich just ain't all that much. That's not my belief. That's what the
facts say. Just like the facts say the U.S. government only gives about
1% of GNP in foreign aid. Everyone thinks we're so generous but as a
percentage of what we have we're far behind other countries.

Hawke

But your " Facts " are wrong. The money spent by philanthropists does
much more good per dollar than the government aid does. Bill Gates
has done more to reduce malaria in a few years than the U.S.
Government has done is the last 100 years.

Dan


The fact that Bill Gates has done a lot to eliminate malaria really has
nothing to do with the good our government has done compared to what
private philanthropists have done. The fact is that "charitable" giving
by private individuals is only a drop in the bucket compared to what the
government has done. For and example take the building of the Panama
Canal. That was done by the government. It did more for business and
commerce than anything any private interests had done by far. It's the
same story everywhere you look. The amount of money contributed by
Americans for the relief of victims of Katrina was nothing compared to
what the government spent. Same with Haiti. Private is nothing compared
to the government's contribution. That is just the way it is.

Hawke

On Apr 9, 12:56*am, Hawke wrote:
The fact is that "charitable" giving
by private individuals is only a drop in the bucket compared to what the
government has done.
Hawke

Any cites for the " Fact "? The government has spent lots of money,
but you need to look at the actual benefits.

Increasing the taxes on high income individuals will not significantly
increase the amount of money the government has to spend. Not enough
high income individuals. But it will significantly reduce the amount
of charity being done.

Dan

On Fri, 9 Apr 2010 09:54:33 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:
snip
Increasing the taxes on high income individuals will not significantly
increase the amount of money the government has to spend. Not enough
high income individuals.
snip
==========
Several parallel items of interest:

(1) Historically, in the U.S. at least, one dollar of additional
governmental revenue has resulted in an additional 1.10$ to 1.25$
of additional governmental expenditures, depending on the
specific jurisdiction and time period. In no case was any
governmental debt reduced, let alone retired. This is not to say
that the efforts/programs were "bad," just expensive and funded
with "phantom" or "borrowed" money. Thus any attempt to tax our
way out of the deficit, even with the imposition of the European
style VAT on top of the income tax, is doomed to failure unless
Draconian laws with individual criminal and civil penalties are
in place and vigorously enforced to prevent additional spending.
Even then, this is a very long shot. For example see the "Gann
Amendment" in California and how it worked and was quickly
subverted when it was determined to be working.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Califor...ition_13_(1978)
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2871


(2) There are possibly more important socio-cultural reasons for
preventing the accumulation of excessive amounts of wealth by a
few people, other governmental revenue. For example, excessive
wealth concentration is a highly predictive if not causal factor
in economic crashes in the United States. Additionally, the
people with excessive wealth tend to have a totally different set
of social/cultural/ethical values than do the majority middle
class. This has been know for at least a century. See Veblem's
work _Theory of the Leisure Class_.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorstein_Veblen
download pdf copy at
http://www.archive.org/details/theor...urec00vebliala

In and of itself this is not a problem, but the ultra wealthy
start to believe "their s**t don't stink," they are exempt from
the laws, customs, and mores that the rest of us abide by, and
they have been granted a monopoly to rule through divine right,
i.e. if god didn't intend for me to rule he wouldn't have made me
so rich, and their values, perceptions, etc. are then to be
imposed on the majority.

REMEMBER -- IF ELECTIONS CHANGED ANYTHING THEY WOULD BE
ILLEGAL!!!


Unka George (George McDuffee)
...............................
The past is a foreign country;
they do things differently there.
L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author.
The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

On 4/9/2010 9:54 AM, wrote:
On Apr 9, 12:56 am, wrote:
The fact is that "charitable" giving
by private individuals is only a drop in the bucket compared to what the
government has done.
Hawke

Any cites for the " Fact "? The government has spent lots of money,
but you need to look at the actual benefits.

Increasing the taxes on high income individuals will not significantly
increase the amount of money the government has to spend. Not enough
high income individuals. But it will significantly reduce the amount
of charity being done.

Dan



If the income and wealth disparity that has come about in the last 20
years wasn't so high you wouldn't need to depend on the rich for their
charity. Back in the old days when the middle class owned much of the
country's wealth they were the group that provided for the
underprivileged. Now that most people are not longer well off
financially the only group with money left to share is the wealthy. When
you don't have enough to pay your monthly bills you don't help anyone
else either. The inequitable distribution of wealth needs to be
corrected. Then you can go back to the middle class for money. As for
now, they're broke. Which you can tell from the decline in consumer
spending. But the rich are still rich.

I think the book the Rich and the Superich has the figures on how much
wealthy individuals contribute to charity. Like I said it's not that
much. As a matter of fact as a percentage of wealth the ordinary
citizens contribute more in charity than the rich do.

Hawke