(Except for a Recent Surge in Funding for the Arts)
According to a Pew study, between 2009 and 2011 the wealthiest 7% got wealthier by a big 28% and the rest of us got poorer by 4%. Oh, dear. That was during the time Obama had the presidency and the Democrats had both the House and Senate. How could that be? Oh and another shock. Charitable giving by the wealthiest 7% of Americans declined and is only slightly recovered.
The good news according to The Nonprofit Quarterly, is that giving for the arts has risen. In other words, Mrs. Frumpyfeller's favorite opera company, The Bedford-Stuyvesant Companie' de Opera, is in danger of closing so Mrs. F orders Mr. F to give them something since she simply cannot live without seeing "Carmen" again this fall, performed in the ornate Lititia Frumpyfeller Auditorium de' Opera. And Mrs. Von Stuffypompous is concerned that there won't be enough paintings of tastefully naked people in the Stuffypompous Gallery over at the Uppity Museum of Fine Art so she pushes through a nice fat grant for the museum from their tax write-off foundation. The Uppity gives Mrs. Von Stuffypompous their Humanitarian of the Year Award.
The left is really struggling to understand why, that when they jacked up the taxes on the wealthiest among us, the wealthiest among us stopped giving to charities in nearly direct proportion to the additional tax bite they endured under the Obama soak-the-rich policy. Weren't they just supposed to just accept becoming poorer in the name of redistribution of wealth and keep on giving just as much? That's what pundits like Rick Cohen over at Nonprofit Quarterly were assuring us when he was singing the praises of jacking up taxes on the rich for humanitarian reasons.
Turns out, the rich weren't prepared to take a pay cut after all. "Shame on them!" cries NPQ. I mean, the filthy rich should at least be grateful that the administration left all their favorite tax loopholes in place. They did, after all, keep getting richer under this Democrat administration, despite all the "soak the rich" rhetoric.
© 2014 by Tom King
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