Rutger Bregman, Winnie Byanyima, Ken Goldman at Davos 2019

Taxes, Taxes, Taxes

"Even more significantly, every person in the United States de facto funds rich people’s charity. The indirect government subsidy of income tax deductions for charitable contributions is substantial, amounting to $52 billion in foregone government revenue in 2022, nearly all of it to the tax benefit of wealthy individuals. That is nearly twice the amount that US federal and state governments spent in the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program that year.

The US tax code’s definition of charity is so broad that this subsidy is available for donations to college sports programs, political think tanks, and elite private schools where wealthy donors attended and/or their children attend. In fact, less than one-third of the money US individuals donate to nonprofits is focused on the needs of the economically disadvantaged. As Rob Reich, Stanford political science professor and author of Just Giving: Why Philanthropy is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better, concludes, “We should stop kidding ourselves that charity and philanthropy do much to help the poor.”

Meanwhile, government entitlement programs like SNAP, Medicaid, and Social Security, even without meeting all basic needs, are credited with lifting forty-five million people out of poverty annually. Before the Social Security monthly benefit was expanded in the 1960s, more than one in every three US seniors lived in poverty. Expansion reduced the senior poverty rate to 10 percent. The child tax credit expansion in response to the COVID pandemic cut child poverty nearly in half.

By contrast, even well-meaning charitable efforts come up well short."

https://jacobin.com/2026/02/charity-inequality-poverty-economic-rights/

#USA #Charity #Philantrophy #Donations #Inequality #Poverty #Medicaid #PublicHealth #Healthcare