Professors to rich: Donate your tax cuts

A few professors have set up a website for rich folks, GiveItBackForJobs.org. They’d like the people who will benefit most from the extension of the Bush tax cuts to invest what they’ve saved in their communities through charitable donations.

Here’s more from MSNBC.com and the Associated Press:

“Extending the tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans is frankly unconscionable,” Yale Law School professor Daniel Markovits said Wednesday. With the website’s help, “donors can pledge their money to support the kinds of programs that will help families, create jobs, and set the country moving toward a just prosperity,” the professors said in announcing the initiative.

Markovits, Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker, and Cornell law professor Robert Hockett started the campaign. Hacker is co-author of “Winner Take All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.”

The three recommend giving to groups such as Habitat for Humanity, Children’s Aid Society and Salvation Army that they say promote fairness, economic growth and a strong middle class. They say the contributions could replicate good government policy and, in effect, draft the government as a funding partner when the donation is tax deductible.

Read the entire article, by John Christoffersen, here.

Good effort, guys. I’d like to be hopeful for you, but this is America where greed rules and politics bend with the wind.

Rhiannon “Rhi” Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing’s CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.

This article appears in Dec 28, 2010 – Jan 3, 2011.