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Comment by chc | Hacker News Reader

No. Most staunch opponents of wealth redistribution oppose it on principle, not practical terms. You can tell them in very concrete terms that their tax dollars will benefit them more than it would hurt them and their reply will be, "Well, then you should let me distribute my money that way instead of taking it and doing it yourself."

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> Well, then you should let me distribute my money that way instead of taking it and doing it yourself."

And AFAICT, the US tax code is at least half decent about recognizing charitable giving -- that is, letting people distribute their money that way or other ways -- as a legitimate offset to a personal tax burden.

Possible it could be better.

It looks to me like we don't see a lot of personal stipend style charitable giving, though.

(There's a significant presumption in the phrase "my money", but that conversation usually goes about as well as threading the proverbial camel through the eye of a needle, probably for much the same reasons.)

>>> Most staunch opponents of wealth redistribution oppose it on principle, not practical terms.

Actually, most people don't like it because they've seen how the government "redistributes" their money and most of the time it's wasted.

This is why religious institutions tend to get so much in donations. People trust their church more than their government.

Define wasted. Was it burned? Unless you are talking about military expenditures, which have some of the lowest economic multipliers, it paid someone's salary, who in turn went and participated in the economy. Was it ideally spent? No, but read some Edward Denning: you can spend more money ensuring that only the right people get money or you can just wrote checks and accept statistical levels of error.

Uh, just Google: "Wasteful Government Spending" and you'll find a few gems like this:

http://www.policymic.com/articles/48003/14-ridiculous-ways-t...

"Gitmo detainees also have a soccer field funded by American taxpayers. Don't worry, it only cost $750,000 to build."

"The federal government pays pensions of deceased employees, costing $120 million. According to the Huffington Post: "One man, whose father died in 1971, continued to receive payments until 2008 when he himself died, costing the government $515,000, according to the report."

"According to Senator Coburn's 2012 "Wastebook," in 2009, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) implemented a plan "to improve the economic competitiveness of Morocco" costing $27 million"

"$516,000 of your money was spent to make a video game providing taxpayers with the opportunity to relive prom."

Arguably, still not actually wasted. Went back into the money supply, bought goods and services, contributed to the economy.

Seriously, unless you have truly minimal savings rate like the dirt poor, when you pay taxes you are doing one of two things: building infrastructure or boosting the economy. Surely your taxes COULD be better spent, some government expenditures have higher economic multipliers than others, but wasted? You don't understand economics.

>" Most staunch opponents of wealth redistribution oppose it on principle, not practical terms."

Please provide a citation for this claim, I have not seen any evidence either way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_as_theft

The post to which I replied said "[m]ost staunch opponents", not 'some opponents'; I would like to know where the 'most' comes from.

So... what's your point? You seem to be making a semantic argument, to what end?

Sometimes there's not a germane statistic and you might just have to go off of your own lived experience.

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