What is Felix correct about?

That JP wants to build up some good will in the community? I’ll grant you that I guess.

That we the little people were entitled to the treasury’s share of his $100,000,000 gift and so really we not he donated 35,000,000 of that amount and he donated only 65,000,000? If that helps you sleep nights sure… believe that.

Unlike Steve Jobs or Thomas Edison, JP didn’t invent something that will benefit a generation of people around the world. What he did do was to spot the largest imbalance of risk that has ever existed and show it to the world with his investors money.

If you have any question as to if that was the “right thing” or a “good thing” look at Japan 1990 – 2012. Valuations got so far out of line that their market fell 75% over a 22 year period and has yet to recover. I’ll repeat for effect. 75% market drop no recovery 22 years from peak. When you envy JP, his money, and his gifting tell yourself that he helped you avoid that fate.

Remember also that Felix sort of belittled Mr.Facebooks mega-donation to Newark Public schools. It seems the rich can do little to appease the masses anymore. Dangerous times!

You’re kinda right that “it’s not “our money” until it hits the treasury’s account”, but the thing you’re perhaps willfully missing is that if it weren’t for the tax deduction(s) embedded in the tax code, that money would have gone into the treasury. For that reason, the revenue losses to the U.S. Treasury is the same thing, from a budgetary point of view, as a taxpayer subsidy.

Felix is entirely correct on this one.

The most charitable view one may conjure about that kind of “philanthropy” would be to call it “tax-exempt gardening and yard improvement”.

I wish I could that for the surroundings of my own little shack out there in the boondocks. But for some reasons, one of them having to do with not being a well-connected billionaire, I don’t think the IRS would take a very kind view of the whole deal…

b) Even if he somehow earned billions of dollars there, he would have to pay high taxes on that income. My rough estimate is his wealth would be 1/10th of his current wealth. It takes money to earn lots of it.

c) So during the period that Mr.Paulson made all his wealth in the largest customer base in the world (only by financial gambling that is), average American was struggling to make his ends meet.

d) This day would never have come had it not been anti tax lobbyists take over Washington with their GOP friends.

Since a central plank of the modern Republican party is that fiscal deficits and the U.S. Government debt will ruin this country, and Paulson is vocally supporting Romney, then tax deductions for contributions that do not appear to be desperately needed is, according to his/their own policy, a terrible allocation of funds by Paulson. Has he not been listening to enough Pete Peterson? Why does Paulson hate America?

That is the better story here.

The Harvard Endowment.

Because obviously if you want to find the most needy Americans, those terribly under-privileged Harvard students are it.

…yuck!

For starters it’s not “our money” until it hits the treasury’s account. We (through our elected representatives) decide how to spend our money. JP get’s to decide how to spend his money. The “you didn’t give that” argument is pretty weak in my view.

Unlike some of his even wealthier billionaire brethren, JP actually IS a poster child for conspicuous consumption. I bet he has spent an average of 2-5 Million per year on his lavish lifestyle. (In that figure we can’t count spending on real estate just the implied annual rental value… you can consume a steak dinner after all… but you can only consume a luxury penthouse for the time you live in it.)

Still though… while the 50 – 100 million Paulsen might be able to spend on himself during his life might seem obscene to many… it’s still not even 1/100th of his current wealth estimated to be around 10 billion.

Lots of smart people are upset to see people make massive sums but really what offends them is that they don’t get to dictate how those resources are invested in life and disposed of upon the death of the billionaires.

Ask yourself Felix… are we really bettor allocators of capital then they for the 90 – 99% of the wealth they will NEVER spend.