To me, it just looks like the natural consequence of the NFP space being the last stop on the chain of tax avoidance tools used by the moderately to very rich to avoid insane tax levels. (refresher: Trust(s)-> custom large whole life policies -> whole life policies fund new trusts and new life insurance for the next generation -> remnants of old trusts that can't be evacuated tax efficiently are donated to family controlled charity that funds family controlled not for profits).In a setup like that, the NFP becomes just another bucket of tax privileged cash to use to further your interests by way of cushy appointments to staff/board positions or, rarely, charitable work that furthers some economic goal of the family. In that setup what you see as graft is the real value and what you see as charity is the cost paid in lieu of taxes on the pot of money. The actual graft is unfortunately the behaviour enabled at charities that actually take average person cash through fundraising.
It means high enough above their perceived benefit from said taxes to strongly incentivize tax avoidance and lobbying to create loopholes. For example, the top marg*nal tax rate in my province is 49% and it is insane to me because the program choice of the levels of governments does not align with program choices i would make with that money and all the spending is conservatively inflated 15 to 20% above the cost i would be able to get if i was said programs. I am getting potholes, mediocre schools and mediocre healthcare for the cost of first class all those things.
Thats my suspicion. I'll never understand how this ends up disconnected in peoples minds that the society you live in is the one that let you thrive, and you have to contribute back to it to keep the ecosystem healthy, no different than anything else
It's more that you are utterly disconnected because you associate spending more with contributing back, when spending more on failure incentivizes failure. You seem to think I don't want to contribute back when my complaint is I'm contributing a ton and seeing poor results for that contribution. My desire is for the ecosystem to be healthy and for my country and the world to thrive and throwing money in non stop and seeing it wasted is not healthy or sustainable.
Here's a refresher: What you spend is your measure of failure. What you get is your measure of success. What I get is not a whole lot (and yes I value and want to see social goods like great healthcare, education, transportation, etc, because those things are good for me and good for my business) and what I spend is at atrocity levels, which makes this a situation that incentivizes me to lobby and otherwise legally manage those expenses.
This is literally what all people are doing. Some of us do it consciously, some of us are ignorant. Selfishness drives all your decisions and choices, however each of us have preference sets at least partially driven by our evolution so you see people preferring things that are not immediately rational in a risk neutral way all the time because that preference probably out performed the rational choice enough that the genetics that drive the base of that preference became highly prevalent.
I personally hate to see homelessness in society, especially child homelessness,and I personally give to charities that I think are efficiently working to end that. It's not obviously rational in the same way my preference for everyone to have access to high quality health care, high quality education, high quality transport is. It still breaks my heart when I see government spending money on "affordable housing" that is actually still just overpriced housing that is subsidized, instead of doing cost effective and intelligent things to the policy they control that is causing a massive chunk of the housing price bubble.(i.e. the cost of just interest on the loans to go from owning the land to occupancy are approaching 100k a door in many places in Canada, why are you spending 30 million to build 25 door of "affordable housing"? spend 30 million getting the permitttime to weeks from years so that interest costs per door are a tiny fraction of what they are and incentivize massive more supply pushing all housing costs down for way more benefit for everyone. Once you stop the stupid you are directly responsible for then consider building affordable housing for the fraction of need that is left.
