The Midnight Hour

I suppose it should go without saying that being educated in law does not mean you have a grasp of right and wrong. Today the New York Times published an Op-Ed piece by Boston College Law professor Ray Madoff. Mr. Madoff uses the example of Leona Helmsley, who recently willed $8 billion to her dog, to make the case for revising law on tax-deductible donations to charity. What I find so alarming, and despicable to be quite honest, is his line of reasoning that every untaxed dollar donated to charity actually constitutes a payment from the government to that charity. Mr. Madoff assumes that the government owns your money and you are only entitled to what the government allows you to keep. Here’s a jewel of a quote:

“If this were only a matter of Leona Helmsley wasting her own money, no one would need to care. But she is wasting ours too.”

Apparently Ms. Helmsley’s money really belongs to all of us. Therefore it should be collected into the community pool and redistributed as the government sees fit.

“What will we get for our $3.6 billion? An eternal monument to Leona Helmsley’s generosity toward dogs.”

Our $3.6 billion. Not the $3.6 billion in lost revenue, but our rightfully confiscated earned money. Disgusting.

To make this crystal clear, examine this scenario:

I earn $1000 this month.

Next month I die and will the $1000 to my favorite charity.

Mr. Madoff would claim that because this donation avoided an estate tax of 45% (to arbitrarily use the same percentage as the article) that the government actually paid $450 to the charity and I actually paid $550. This is not the same as the government making a payment to the charity! Why? Because you can only pay with money that you own. Mr. Madoff’s reasoning assumes that the government owns its rightful percentage of your productivty (or estate in this case) from the moment you produce it.

Where does the tax and spend crowd find their moral claim to the possession, labor, and productivity of others? I am not entitled to my neighbor’s possessions simply because they exist. I am not entitled to my neighbor’s possessions even if he possesses much more than me. These claims amount to nothing less than servitude.