The non-profit I work for is currently involved in a capital campaign to raise $1.8 million to purchase a building for our operations. The Board of Directors has assembled a great group of VERY wealthy people in this community to help us raise the money (and hopefully make sizeable contributions themselves.)
So we have been meeting with these people to discuss our services and the campaign. What this means is that I have spent the last few weeks meeting with some of the most wealthy people in the Twin Cities area. I find this interesting because its not a crowd I spend time with. As you can imagine, most of them are Republicans – but very involved in charitable giving.
Today I met with a man who is probably one of the 20-25 most wealthy people in the state. As we were talking, he mentioned that he had gotten rather large tax cuts in the last few years and as a result he has increased his charitable giving by $300,000.00 per year.
I had very mixed feelings hearing this. First of all, its wonderful to hear that someone donates so much money to charitable causes. I don’t know how much he gives annually – but its recently been INCREASED by $300,000. I would imagine the total is more than half a million.
But my other reaction was that he was letting us know that his tax cuts totaled over $300,000!!! I don’t know about you, but as someone who is very comfortably middle class – if I got a tax cut, is so miniscule that I can’t tell the difference.
So if anyone ever tries to pretend that the tax cuts went to all Americans – thats bullshit!! I know this is nothing new to anyone who will read this. It was just rather jarring for me today to hear a specific example.
To finish the circle, this means that medicaid, student loans and child support programs will be cut so this man can have an extra $300,000. And the people that go without have to depend on his good graces to have a safety net for their basic needs.
