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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So what’s better for society?

Wealthy person A donates $50M to establish a school for underrepresented minorities to learn STEM, internships, etc OR paying $50M in estate taxes.

[b]You can’t possibly imagine the government will be more efficient with those funds. [/b]

I agree there should be some estate tax, but the problem with society isn’t the families with 10-100m, it’s the families with tens of billions of more.

I would argue it’s more efficient for the government to incentivize charitable giving more than they currently do from a tax/estate plan. Congress is inept, thanks to Trump, its only gotten worse. [/quote]

Yes, the government is more efficient with those funds. The government has a built in infrastructure to provide people with education, healthcare, and other social services. OF COURSE it is more efficient for the government to provide those services than for wealthy people to just build new services from scratch every time they want to put their names on something.

Even rich people get this, which is why they are much, much more likely to just give large lump sums to hospitals or schools or other services than to try to build something from scratch.

Plus, if it's taxes, it's something we all do together and thus everyone has equal access. When wealthy people create services, they inevitably feel like they own them even if it's charitable. If you don't understand this, you haven't worked in charitable giving. These rich people create foundations for charitable giving, and then meddle endlessly in these organizations that they have given money to, regardless of whether they have the skills or knowledge to know how the money would be best spent. It is not efficient at all.

Taxes are a much more efficient way to provide services than charitable giving. Charitable giving is just a way for the very wealthy to launder their reputations in order to continue to justify paying so little in taxes.[/quote]

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