The Charitable-Giving Divide | Hacker News Reader

The Charitable-Giving Divide

nytimes.com

3 pointsrobg10 comments

Please don't alter the original title of an article (in this case "The Charitable-Giving Divide") to reflect your editorial opinion, especially when your new title is not supported by the content of the article. This article does not actually say that tax breaks for the rich don't help the poor, it says that rich people don't give as much to charity as poor people.

Personally I think it's true that giving tax breaks to the rich is not a great way to help the poor (i.e. the trickle down effect) but that's not what this article is talking about.

Bilking the rich through higher taxes does not help the poor either.

Sure it does.

If X is the cost of running the country, including schooling, roads, public transportation, etc, and the rich pay a higher portion of their income into X, the poor need pay a lower portion of their income into X in order to have the same level of access as if rich and poor paid the same portion of their income.

The article does reference tax cuts for the wealthy as a source of the problem.

"A generation of political decisions — regarding big business and labor, the deregulation of the financial industry and, yes, tax cuts for the wealthy — have brought our society to this sharply divided, socially and economically polarized place we now find ourselves."

Yes, it does say tax cuts are part of the problem but that's very different from a blanket statement that "tax cuts for the rich don't help the poor". More importantly, the article is mostly about how charitable giving is different for rich and poor. Hence the original title was perfect and the HN title was poor at best.

That was the subtitle the NY Times used. I thought it more descriptive of the contents than the one you cite.

I'm fairly young, so I ask this question to the more experienced in life. Isn't this always the case? The rich stay rich by keeping their money and the poor stay poor by never keeping their money. So what is the tone and point of this document exactly, to fix the rich or fix the poor? Or am I overdoing it by looking for a side in this? I'm not trying to be a troll or start a flamewar, but when I read these articles all that I can think of is, "so are we going to redistribute the wealth communism style, or teach people to build their OWN wealth?" Reasons why I can't be a politician or a leader in society, I don't want to be the one that determines whats fair for the people, and define whos the slacker and whos truly in need. Who the hell am I to judge? and who the hell are you to take away my hard earned paper? Thats just what goes through my mind, and I comment here to see if anybody can help me out with my thought process.

I wouldn't think too deeply about it, I read it more as an attempt at a wake-up call to all the right-wing supporters who insist that trickle-down economics works (even though it's never, ever worked). "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer" has been the mantra as long as mankind has existed on this planet.

Now I, for the very reasons you gave, will never support or suggest any sort of "wealth redistribution," it flies in the face of capitalism and has been proven to only breed discent and anger. What should happen is that the government stops treating the rich like special citizens. Warren Buffet has said before that he's paying fewer taxes now than he ever has in his life, and it's sick how the richest people in the country get the most help / special attention from the government, help none of them at all need.

The problem is that the GOP have a very long history of getting into power, then passing laws that help line their own pockets and protect their wealth from being "stolen" by the government (aka, themselves, it doesn't makes sense to me either). This view then leaves the other 90% of Americans as "well you should have tried harder, this is what you can do when you're rich!" while at the same time somehow convincing this 90% that the GOP in power is the best thing for them.

That's what I see when I read these kinds of articles.

"The problem is that the GOP have a very long history of getting into power, then passing laws that help line their own pockets and protect their wealth from being "stolen" by the government ..."

Clearly we should elect more Democrats! Oh, wait, they have a history of getting into power and then passing laws protecting unions and paying off organizations which help them steal votes.

In so far as trickle-down economics is concerned, it certainly worked better than the command-driven economy the Democrats and current administration are pushing us towards.

"The rich stay rich by keeping their money"

Maybe old-rich, but most rich people generally get richer by investing. I seems to remember a bible story talking about this (25:14-30). Take a look at the stories of the luxury taxes in the US and their affect on yacht builders (labor intensive, good paying jobs).

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