The Season of Giving

Before we get too far removed from the Christmas season and the time of year for giving, and before we get too close to the April 15 tax payment deadline, when our stinginess may set in, let's take a look at this issue of the rich people who say they think they should be paying more in taxes.

Now we are talking about those folk with real money; lots of it.  The ones that show up on TV programs and talk about all their ideas and all the good they do.  These are the really, really rich (RRR) people and some of them have been speaking out about what they want other really, really rich people to do. You see their definition of giving is a bit different than the giving that many of us do. We might help a family in need or get some groceries to the food bank or walk a couple of miles in the local fund raiser. But the truly rich, the RRR, have a special form of giving. It’s actually giving right back to themselves and it’s called a “foundation.” You see if the rich set up a foundation and give their money to the foundation they don’t have to give that money to the feds or to the state. They do have to make sure that their relatives and RRR friends will be around to oversee the distribution of the money and they do have to make sure it is spent according to the rules but, and here is the part they tend not to talk about, they don’t have to send it or spend it in Washington DC. It doesn’t go for all the spending programs and the extension of unemployment benefits or the bailouts that saved their Wall Street firms or the military adventures or even all those millions of really nice people who work for the government. Nope, all they have to do is make sure that it gets spent on some approved charitable form of activity.

So, as well all know, the US government is running low on funds these days. Having to borrow, borrow, borrow and in the meantime the RRR are writing checks to their foundations and those foundations are building schools in Asia or fighting disease in Africa or constructing water wheels in central America or whatever they do. And, of course, the rest of us are paying the extended unemployment benefits and the bailouts and the military/industrial complex and so forth. Does that seem fair?

Of course not. Here is what we propose during this time of giving to make things fairer. There is a website at http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/  and this is a fun place to go. It’s all about the debt of the country. You can go one place and see, to the penny, exactly how much we owe today and you can go to another place and see how much we owed on your birth date or when you met your spouse. You can go to another place and buy some debt. But there is one place where we didn’t know if you knew you could go. There is a link to go to a place where you can just send them some money and they will use it to pay down the debt. Just click here: https://www.pay.gov/paygov/forms/formInstance.html?agencyFormId=23779454  You get to fill out a form (of course) and they will tell you how to do it.  Use your credit card if you like.

So, during this season of giving and with all the hullabaloo coming from the RRR; we, at TheFundamentals, had this really, really great idea (RRGI). Why don’t we just redirect all that money going to the RRR foundations to the above website and pay down some of the debt? You know, kind of like a moratorium on foundation contributions for a few years or so. After all, a lot of the RRR made the money in the good old US of A and we know they like to blab about all the good they are doing so let’s do some good right here at home. Let’s pay down some US debt instead of the water wheels in Bangladesh and the micro breweries in Sudan and the public toilets in Guatemala. Let’s pay some of our bills here at home.

Remember, folks, charity begins at home. It’s a fundamental!