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Comment by iamfbpt | Hacker News Reader

We all almost do through taxes. He goes further and donates 50% more from the remaining money.

> We all almost do through taxes. He goes further and donates 50% more from the remaining money.

This is an odd argument. Are you saying that paying taxes is some form of altruism? The story is about a guy who donates money with no tangible benefit to himself. We all get benefits and services from the government. It debatable whether the value we receive is equal to the amount we pay in taxes, but the value is certainly not zero.

US entitlement spending is about 66% of the federal budget. Unless you're on disability, medicare, social security, or some other entitlement program that's money you're receiving no direct benefits from.

I dunno, I think the government employees (federal and, because much of the federal entitlement spending is joint state/federal programs like Medicaid) and contractors paid to work directly in the administration of those programs (or, in the case of companies running Medicare Advantage plans, working in for-profit businesses directly subsidized by the entitlement spending) are receiving at least as direct a benefit from those programs as the program recipients are, and often, per person, a much larger benefit, as well.

Government employees and administration are overhead.

> Government employees and administration are overhead.

The only way you get close to the claimed 66% number is if you are including all spending, including overhead, of the programs identified.

Exactly what I meant. I'm not saying there isn't any nobleness in his actions. Merely pointing out that we are all giving half or close to half the money we are producing and most of which we receive no benefit from.

He's probably taking the tax deductions for the donations, so it's not the same as donating an additional 50% "from the remaining money" (as some of it comes out of what would have been taxes). I didn't see it explicitly one way or the other in the article, though, so he could be donating 50% while still paying taxes on the full 100%.

This is a rounding error. Altruistic foreign aid (i.e., development aid) is a miniscule fraction of government spending in all countries. Norway tops the list with 1.07% of national income, and the US gives 0.19%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_governments_by_develop...

Even if you count "non-altruistic" foreign aid (i.e., aid given to a recipient government by a donor government who also benefits, e.g. military aid), this barely budges the numbers. The US goes up to about 0.3%.

Throwing in private aid, like Wage's, makes the US look comparable to Europe because the US gives more money privately than Europe. But this is still within a factor of 2.

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