Paying taxes doesn’t mean you care

Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden recently echoed the thoughts of many on the Left – that rich people need to pay more in taxes.  In many people's opinion, rich people need to give more because it is the moral and right thing to do; in Biden's opinion, it's patriotic.

Unfortunately, when it comes to voluntarily giving away their own cash, people who try to force others into "charity" rarely show such generosity.

Katherine Mangu-Ward of Reason Magazine writes:

When Biden released his tax returns last week, many jumped on his none-too-impressive record of charitable giving. Despite income somewhere in the $210,432 to $321,379 category during the last 10 years (rich!), the Bidens have given between $120 to $995 to charity annually, between 0.06 percent and 0.31 percent of their income. The average taxpayer bringing in more than $200,000 makes over $20,000 of charitable contributions, according to the IRS.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Biden's average yearly donation over the last decade was $380, or 0.2 percent of his income. The average American donated 10 times as much.

The results are not surprising, I may have mentioned it before but an economist found those who support redistribution schemes are less likely to give to charity than those who oppose redistribution.

Just in case you don't believe me, Ms. Ward continues:

Biden's miserly charitable giving jibes fairly exactly with the findings in Arthur Brooks' Who Really Cares? which reports that "those who say they strongly oppose redistribution by government to remedy income inequality give over 10 times more to charity than those who strongly support government intervention, with a difference of $1,627 annually versus $140 to all causes," a gap not explained away by discrepancies in religious giving.

I'd be interested to see psychological tests on left-wingers to better understand why they're genuinely so uncaring that they have to force everyone else into "caring" in their place.