Thoughts on Charity
The idea of donating to charities and acts of philanthropy by the wealthy should make people more critical of our society than it currently does. I’m not criticizing the act of giving, because that’s is a beautiful gesture of compassion and should be actively encouraged. My issue with charitable donations is that they’re usually for very important causes that desperately need the money, but if these causes are collectively agreed upon to be so important, they should be better funded by our governments in the first place.
Governments continuously give tax breaks to wealthy corporations to incentivize business, but everyday workers are surrounded by charitable organizations that we are encouraged to support from our own pocket. Working class people should not feel obligated to provide charity, when corporations are allowed to make more profits at their expense. Corporations should be required to pay a social welfare tax that supports these charitable causes and governments should reallocate a greater proportion of public budgets to support them.
Another idea could be that governments provide a 100 percent tax refund for all charitable donations made by working class citizens, or as close to 100 as possible. I recognize that a 100 percent tax credit would never happen in reality, but it would be the closest thing to directly controlling government spending as individual citizens, because in that scenario we could force the government to reallocate their resources to causes that we judge as important. Any donation we make would be refunded completely, so we wouldn’t have lost a cent, but now your chosen charity gets funded. That situation is unlikely, but charitable donations should have a higher refundable percentage as a means to coerce the government into providing support.
A downside to this scenario in Canada is that, when you make a donation to a political party, you get a reasonable percentage of that donation refunded back as a tax credit each year. This means that the current government (whoever it may be) is helping to foot your bill by paying a proportion of your political donation from government funds. If you have enough financial wealth to afford to make more/greater political donations, that means that you can force the government to pay larger amounts directly into the pockets of the political party of your choice. Larger donations will lead to a larger tax credit, which means that the government is using more public money to support political parties, rather than public needs.
For example, let’s say you’re a large corporation that benefits from a right wing or conservative political party, if you can make a large donation to that party, you effectively force the existing government (whoever that may me) to pay for a portion of your donation, meaning that public funds are redirected toward reinforcing political strength, rather than public good. I recognize that these donations are only credited up to a given percentage — so the government isn’t financing the entire value of each donation, but it still means that people with capital are able to directly influence government spending whereas the most vulnerable people who don’t have the wealth up front (to wait for a refund) have less influence on political discourse.
I personally donate to the Green Party of Canada each year so that I can maintain membership status, which means that Canada’s current federal government (run by the Liberal party) takes less taxes from me to cover a proportion of my costs, at the expense of money that could be used to support public resources like getting clean drinking water to First Nations communities. The real kicker here is that I’m only donating anywhere from $25 to $50 per year because that’s all I can afford, but what about wealthier people who can afford to donate greater sums of money to organizations or political parties that could push policies that are detrimental to the most vulnerable members of our population.
Even at the current refund rate in Canada, I would guess that getting tax refunds for charitable donations isn’t exploited by working class people nearly as much as it should be, because they don’t have the financial freedom to wait for their refund. I assume that this process is regularly exploited by wealthy people and large corporations who are able to withstand the immediate financial loss of making a donation and not having to worry about paying rent or feeding their family in the near-term. Having large sums of capital available means that they can force the government to finance whatever initiatives these corporations or individuals deem worthy regardless of their societal value.
If governments refuse to commit more resources to lifting up the people at the bottom (medically, structurally, financially, or otherwise), then more and more people will continue to fall into the demographic that needs the most assistance, which will only make the financial cost of supporting the vulnerable more difficult for our society to bear. Therefore, the more effort we put into redistributing resources and wealth to the individuals most in need, and the quicker we can do so, the less expensive it will be for society in the long run.
