"In a democracy, taxes are better than charity."

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The Philanthropy Con

Charity fosters hierarchy, empowers the wealthy, and undermines democracy.

Vanessa Williamson

Winter 2019

Last September Jeff Bezos announced that he would devote a small portion of his vastly undertaxed wealth—$2 billion of a fortune well over $100 billion—to start schools where “the child will be the customer.” One could hardly ask for a more illustrative example of how elite philanthropy undermines public institutions, provides cover for extractive capitalism, and enshrines a neoliberal vision of the world in which even childhood is understood as a commodity. But this analysis does not go far enough, because it does not make the positive case. Leftists need to be comfortable saying it: In a democracy, taxes are better than charity.

In principle, this is easy enough. Taxes are the currency of democracy, the only resources in our economy that are supposed to be dedicated to the public good, as determined by a democratic process. Taxation can undermine oligarchy; it is no coincidence that top-heavy tax cuts have become the perpetual legislative priority of the right. And taxes raise money on an order charity cannot, lifting millions of Americans out of poverty.

Reality, of course, is a different matter. The U.S. tax system does not afflict the rich or aid the poor nearly to the extent that it should, and the kleptocratic Republican Party is dedicated to making this problem even worse. And so the problem of taxes is a deep problem of the left: how to defend a democratic principle when its practice fails us.

 

Don’t let mythologizing about the founding fool you: conservative anti-tax rhetoric in the United States is an anti-democratic rhetoric. While American colonists opposed taxation without representation, they accepted taxation with representation, at least in the northern colonies. This is not to say tax policy was the subject of apolitical consensus, or that rich merchants cheerily handed over the keys of government to the laboring classes; on the contrary, there were ferocious debates over the who, what, and how much of taxation, a debate often focused on protecting the propertied. But, as the historian Robin Einhorn has demonstrated, in northern colonies, local and state governments did develop an effective, consistent taxing capacity.

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