We could also just tax the income used to make the donations at similar levels to prior top brackets and not depend on philanthropy as a means to fund public institutions or social safety nets.
Currently we incentivize private individual donations, and that lets a lot of things happen quickly and without the requirement of soliciting the permission of a bottlenecked council for anything to happen.
If you want to use your money to support some private crusade that’s fine, but why must we support anything anyone thinks as a worthy cause? It’s in effect a blank check without meaningful oversight. Their are for example homeopathy charities whose donations are tax deductible.
- Universal healthcare - Free education - Funding homeless assistance programs - Employment insurance - UBI
(granted these last 2 are pretty much just redistributing money)
The question is whether you want the few billionaires to decide where to spend the money, or everyone (that is, people who haven't been disenfranchised).
AND THEN arguably given the polarization of the US today, I can understand that anyone feels frisky in raising the taxes to found the other side's ideas (being republicans not wanting to fund healthcare or democrats not wanting to fund a wall)
In fact if the government recognized honest taxpayers as if they were forward thinking "philanthropic donors" (replete with award dinners for the million dollar donors) - perhaps there'd be more excitement for April 15th - and such people would not be so quick to figure out ways to avoid paying taxes.
Fun thought video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTAE5m3ZO2E