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The Superior Generosity of America's Top 1 Percent

so you are saying that giving to religious charities don't count? actually that study found that conservatives gave more to secular charities as well

I thought religious giving helped the poor.
They sure do around here.
 
the onus is on the irs to show that the compensation was excessive
and that the excess compensation was intentionally configured to be excessive
and that those who participated in the establishment of that "excessive" compensation did so as a willful act

You realize that you've said that you would advise people to deliberately pay out excessive compensation, right?

Most responsible advisers don't just recommend that their clients do something that could be considered a violation of IRS regulations without having a basic understanding of what those regulations cover and without conducting a careful evaluation of the costs and benefits of those recommendations.

Nothing you've said so far indicates that you give much thought to these issues - you've just made a set of claims about what people can and can't do.

we can see from the substantial compensation paid to the senior employees of financial institutions which benefited from bailouts, courtesy of the American taxpayer, that such determinations are very rarely effected

Since TARP wasn't subject to the regulations of 501c3, I can't fathom how you thought this response made sense.
 
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This thread is funny because the OP thinks that private charities do a lot to help those in need. Most of the money they take in goes first to pay their own salaries (which are often quite high for those at the top), and then boost the size and advertising capabilities of the charity (that is, the brand name), in order to pull in more revenue next time. There's perhaps 15% left over to actually go to whatever it is the charity is supporting. Most private charities are money making scams. So it's not really surprising that wealthy people give their money here, to like minded individuals, and take advantage of the tax write-off. There is no generosity in taking advantage of a system, especially one that's designed for you specifically to abuse it.

If we actually wanted to solve issues like homelessness, starvation, medical care, or problems in education, we'd directly fund programs to solve these issues, rather than go through middle men who take extremely generous portions of the money for themselves.

Venture philanthropy is far more successful than social engineering.

Venture philanthropy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And by the way, you cannot solve the above issues; you can merely develop pragmatic alternatives and effective institutions to deal with such issues.
 
How are we supposed to take anything as trustworthy from a biased source? It violates the very definition of trustworthy when a source with stated goals, political aims, political opinions, and who backs certain politicians releases a "study." Why? Because no groups with stated goals is going to release any findings through its own resources, which go against its stated policy goals, that is the very definition of counter-productive.

For example take a look at their congressional ratings, it even says at the bottom what the Party average is. For Republicans in the 2007 House we get 86% average, for Dems a 5%.
http://www.atr.org/userfiles/110Congress_1stSession_Ratings.pdf

Just look at their homepage as well.
Americans for Tax Reform

I'm sorry but its impossible to accept what they are saying as truth because they have other goals besides truth telling and I'm sure they've got far too much time and money invested into their work to not be tempted to stench the truth or lie assuming they even feel temptation, meaning they'd rather not.
 
I thought religious giving helped the poor.
They sure do around here.

You and turtledude are misinterpreting my post. I simply said that political lean like liberal vs conservative does not result in a statistically significant difference in charitable contributions, when one controls for an individuals religous affilations (relgious vs non-religious). This leads me to believe the true cause for the "charity gap" is due to ones religous affiliations instead of ones political lean. I said nothing about what specific charities an individual contributes towards.
 
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Just a point, is it more likely likely that the rich give 42% of charity, or they're more likely to file tax deductions for it?
In a study that wwas posted on here about charity, liberals, on average, earn 6% more the conservatives, so it's more than likely these are liberals giving to charity anyway.

Oh, Spud my boy. Nothing at to do in kangaroo land today, eh?

Well, whatever the likelyhood is, they don't. Here's the major difference between liberals and conservatives. Liberals think it's the governement's job to take money from people and give it away "as they see fit". Taxpayers have no choice in the matter. Conservatives have the old fashioned notion that we should have the right to decide how much and to which charity we give money. It's also a documented fact that conservatives give more to charities than liberals do because liberals don't think it's their job to give to charity. As I said, they think it's the government's job to just take, take take. The government thinks it's all their money anyway, which is why Obama made the ridiculous statement that he would have to borrow the money he didn't get from a tax hike. Really? If you don't get the raise you want, are you going to go out and take out a loan for the rest? Obama said he would. :confused:
 
How are we supposed to take anything as trustworthy from a biased source? It violates the very definition of trustworthy when a source with stated goals, political aims, political opinions, and who backs certain politicians releases a "study." Why? Because no groups with stated goals is going to release any findings through its own resources, which go against its stated policy goals, that is the very definition of counter-productive.

For example take a look at their congressional ratings, it even says at the bottom what the Party average is. For Republicans in the 2007 House we get 86% average, for Dems a 5%.
http://www.atr.org/userfiles/110Congress_1stSession_Ratings.pdf

Just look at their homepage as well.
Americans for Tax Reform

I'm sorry but its impossible to accept what they are saying as truth because they have other goals besides truth telling and I'm sure they've got far too much time and money invested into their work to not be tempted to stench the truth or lie assuming they even feel temptation, meaning they'd rather not.

Actually, the study was done by the University of Indiana.
 
How are we supposed to take anything as trustworthy from a biased source? It violates the very definition of trustworthy when a source with stated goals, political aims, political opinions, and who backs certain politicians releases a "study." Why? Because no groups with stated goals is going to release any findings through its own resources, which go against its stated policy goals, that is the very definition of counter-productive.

For example take a look at their congressional ratings, it even says at the bottom what the Party average is. For Republicans in the 2007 House we get 86% average, for Dems a 5%.
http://www.atr.org/userfiles/110Congress_1stSession_Ratings.pdf

Just look at their homepage as well.
Americans for Tax Reform

I'm sorry but its impossible to accept what they are saying as truth because they have other goals besides truth telling and I'm sure they've got far too much time and money invested into their work to not be tempted to stench the truth or lie assuming they even feel temptation, meaning they'd rather not.

Grover Norquist is about as whackjob as they come. He should be on the Top Ten list of enemies of the American People.
 
Actually, the study was done by the University of Indiana.

Thats interesting, I didn't see that on the OP's link and its stopped working as far as I can tell. I'm genuinely curious about where it came from.
 
Thats interesting, I didn't see that on the OP's link and its stopped working as far as I can tell. I'm genuinely curious about where it came from.


I tried too and it was a dead link.
 
To understand wealthy Americans’ “virtue in sharing,” consider The 2010 Bank of America Merrill Lynch Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy. Conducted by Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy and released November 9, this fascinating document (recommended by the National Taxpayers Union’s Andrew Moylan) finds rich people doing what Senator Sanders asked.

This survey included 801 respondents who made at least $200,000 and/or enjoyed at least $1 million in net worth, excluding housing. The average respondent was worth $10.7 million.

Among these multi-millionaires, 98.2 percent contributed to charity, versus just 64.6 percent of the general population. The wealthy typically gave away about 8 percent of their incomes in 2009. This figure has slipped as the economy has slid. In 2007’s survey, the rich donated between 9.3 percent and 16.1 percent of income.

In 2009, 26.8 percent of Americans volunteered with charitable organizations. However, 78.7 percent of wealthy people volunteered — nearly triple the national figure. The average rich respondent volunteered 307 hours. Rather than merely write checks, the average wealthy American last year gave to charity the equivalent of 38 eight-hour shifts.

The Center on Philanthropy’s researchers valued each hour of voluntarism at $20.85. So, the average rich American’s 307 volunteer hours equaled $6,400.95.

“High net worth households play an important role in the philanthropic landscape,” the Bank of America study concluded. “They give between 65 and 70 percent of all individual giving and between 49 and 53 percent of giving from all sources, which includes giving from corporations, foundations, and both living and deceased individuals.”

...Nonetheless, some remain utterly unimpressed with America’s wealthy. According to Cape Cod cops and fire investigators, on November 24, an arsonist torched a $500,000 house under construction in Sandwich, Mass. On December 2, an arson attempt almost destroyed a Marston’s Mills home. At both crime scenes, someone graffitied “F— the rich.”

On December 14, Clay Duke opened fire on a Panama City, Fla., school board meeting before fatally shooting himself. His online “last testament,” linked to left-wing websites, including WikiLeaks and mediamatters.org, and echoed today’s anti-rich themes.

“I was just born poor in a country where the Wealthy manipulate, use, abuse, and economically enslave 95% of the population,” Duke wrote. “Our Masters, the Wealthy, do as they like to us.”..

I'm still a bit confused on what the point of this topic was. While the rich may, or may not, give away more money and a higher percent of their income on average doesn't the fact that they have more to give away factor into the personal sacrifice of that donation. For example if I made 10 million dollars a yea and gave away 1 million, 10%, I still have a good chunk of change to live off and pay taxes with. If I made 10,000 dollars a year giving away 1,000, 10%, is a much harder thing for me to do and requires much more sacrifice.

Same thing with volunteer hours, a mutli-millionaire can afford more time away from work. So in a way he's donating time, just like one donates money, but it's easier due to their wealth. Now I'm just assuming in general that is the case, I'm sure there are some mutli-millionaires who have to constantly work due to the demand of their position but in general I'd imagine if some was sitting on millionaires of dollars they wouldn't tolerate a job which demanded so much out of them.

So while rich may be superior in their charity its hard to judge them on the same standard as the non super wealthy, and I say super wealth since the average responder to this study was worth 10.7 million dollars, because the sacrifice required to donate time or money are not as great.
 
In a study that wwas posted on here about charity, liberals, on average, earn 6% more the conservatives, so it's more than likely these are liberals giving to charity anyway.

actually that is precisely the opposite of what is most likely. those who disagree with the statement that the government has a responsibility to redistribute income in general give a 4x greater percent of their income to charity (3.5x greater if you discount religious giving).
 
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CP, I'm starting to wonder if you dont have some sort of issue with poor people. I've only encountered a handful of people in my life that I'd consider to be truly classist, who hate poor people because they're poor.

not at all. i've been poor. my problem is with those who are classist against the wealthy. is is morally no more defensible.
 
not at all. i've been poor.
Going to a bar mitzvah once does not make you Jewish.

my problem is with those who are classist against the wealthy. is is morally no more defensible.
So you compensate by being classist against the poor?
 
Going to a bar mitzvah once does not make you Jewish.


So you compensate by being classist against the poor?



That analogy fails
 
ok
explain why that is the case

You wouldn't understand it but for those who would

he was once poor. Going to a Jewish Ceremony doesn't make you jewish

Being poor once meant you were Poor
 
So wait. The hard working individuals who serve the market with ingenuity and sweat, who provide all the goodies we enjoy, our housing, our smartphones, our pillowtop mattresses...
These same individuals also bear the largest overall tax burden and pay for all the corrupt entitlement and welfare programs that are giant federal charities that also serve as vote-buying tools
These same individuals ALSO donate the most to charities AND volunteer their time to assist with charitable causes....

Let's see what the liberals and socialists (Hoplite is a socialist, I'm not exaggerating) have to say about this:

Digsbe: It's great that the rich give to charities, but it may likely not be for benevolent reasons.
Partisanhack: This would be a lot more impressive than it is if charity actually did anything.
Paschendale: If we actually wanted to solve issues like homelessness, starvation, medical care, or problems in education, we'd directly fund programs to solve these issues, rather than go through middle men who take extremely generous portions of the money for themselves.
Haymarket: Those who control most of the money then give more than those who do not have much money.
Hoplite
- CP, I'm starting to wonder if you dont have some sort of issue with poor people.
- Something that continues to puzzle is why financial charity is considered such an indication of virtue.

And the finale, such an appropriate cake topper for this pile of bull****.
Redress: Further, believe it or not, liberals actually applaud when people do good.
(Based on this thread, I'm going to have to say that's pretty funny.)
 
So wait. The hard working individuals who serve the market with ingenuity and sweat, who provide all the goodies we enjoy, our housing, our smartphones, our pillowtop mattresses...
These same individuals also bear the largest overall tax burden and pay for all the corrupt entitlement and welfare programs that are giant federal charities that also serve as vote-buying tools
These same individuals ALSO donate the most to charities AND volunteer their time to assist with charitable causes....

Let's see what the liberals and socialists (Hoplite is a socialist, I'm not exaggerating) have to say about this:

Digsbe: It's great that the rich give to charities, but it may likely not be for benevolent reasons.
Partisanhack: This would be a lot more impressive than it is if charity actually did anything.
Paschendale: If we actually wanted to solve issues like homelessness, starvation, medical care, or problems in education, we'd directly fund programs to solve these issues, rather than go through middle men who take extremely generous portions of the money for themselves.
Haymarket: Those who control most of the money then give more than those who do not have much money.
Hoplite
- CP, I'm starting to wonder if you dont have some sort of issue with poor people.
- Something that continues to puzzle is why financial charity is considered such an indication of virtue.

And the finale, such an appropriate cake topper for this pile of bull****.
Redress: Further, believe it or not, liberals actually applaud when people do good.
(Based on this thread, I'm going to have to say that's pretty funny.)

and your point is ...?????

You simply lumped a whole raft of comments together and then called them a pile of BS. You did not refute a single comment or indicated what you think ... sorry - what you believe is wrong with any one of them. You are still down there with Turtle before the same altar worshipping the same gods for much the same reasons. We get it already... you believe, you believe , you believe. You need a freakin X files poster already.
 
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and your point is ...?????
How did you miss it? Wait, nevermind.

It goes something like this:

Liberals - the wealthy are greedy, exploitative, corrupt, and selfish
Response - that's demonizing, please stop, it's not a reasoned argument
Liberals - the wealthy are greedy, exploitative, corrupt, and selfish
Response - yet taking our hard earned income is NOT selfish? It's unethical, it's theft!
Liberals - we don't want it for ourselves, so no, not selfish
Response - but you do want it for yourself...so you can give it to people you think need it...that's the same GD thing!
Liberals - the wealthy are greedy, exploitative, corrupt, and selfish

Response - look, statistically these greedy bastards not only fund the needy the most, but they also volunteer the most, and give to charity the most, and create most of the jobs, and drive the economy forward, and fund your insurance, and so on.
-->Liberals - charity is selfish, volunteering is selfish, funding the bulk of welfare activity is selfish

Then like a bolt of lighting we get:
Redress - believe it or not, liberals actually applaud when people do good...

I think it speaks for itself, honestly.
 
How did you miss it? Wait, nevermind.

It goes something like this:

Liberals - the wealthy are greedy, exploitative, corrupt, and selfish
Response - that's demonizing, please stop, it's not a reasoned argument
Liberals - the wealthy are greedy, exploitative, corrupt, and selfish
Response - yet taking our hard earned income is NOT selfish? It's unethical, it's theft!
Liberals - we don't want it for ourselves, so no, not selfish
Response - but you do want it for yourself...so you can give it to people you think need it...that's the same GD thing!
Liberals - the wealthy are greedy, exploitative, corrupt, and selfish

Response - look, statistically these greedy bastards not only fund the needy the most, but they also volunteer the most, and give to charity the most, and create most of the jobs, and drive the economy forward, and fund your insurance, and so on.
-->Liberals - charity is selfish, volunteering is selfish, funding the bulk of welfare activity is selfish

Then like a bolt of lighting we get:
Redress - believe it or not, liberals actually applaud when people do good...

I think it speaks for itself, honestly.

Liberals: can you back up what you say with authoritative evidence and something a bit more than your simple belief system.
Conservative; uh... er.. well ... you trying to take away my right to believe what I want to believe in?
 
and your point is ...?????

You simply lumped a whole raft of comments together and then called them a pile of BS. You did not refute a single comment or indicated what you think ... sorry - what you believe is wrong with any one of them. You are still down there with Turtle before the same altar worshipping the same gods for much the same reasons. We get it already... you believe, you believe , you believe. You need a freakin X files poster already.

I don't worship any gods. ITs you who bends and kisses the ring of big government
 
I don't worship any gods. ITs you who bends and kisses the ring of big government

Your god is MAMMON. Always has been. The libertarian and conservative trappings are just lipstick on the pig.
 
Your god is MAMMON. Always has been. The libertarian and conservative trappings are just lipstick on the pig.

wrong -its you who covets the wealth of others. I merely want to be left alone and pay for what I use. You want others to pay your share so you can take credit for being "generous"
 
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