Salon.com > Wealth

Major charitable gifts dropped by 30 percent last year

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 19:45:00 +0000

Britain's conservative Prime Minister David Cameron couches his current austerity government policy in the rhetoric of "The Big Society." The idea is that as the government hacks away at the welfare state, notions of civic society will be invoked to replace Britain's benefits safety net. Volunteerism and charitable giving will patch up the gaping wounds left by budget cuts, or so the proponents of Cameron's Big Society would suggest.

Tomes can and have been filled about the problems underpinning Cameron's Big Society. One issue among many is that the charitable giving of the very wealthy is an inconsistent resource. As new findings by the Chronicle of Philanthropy show, major charitable gifts in the U.S. dropped by 30 percent in 2012:

The largest gifts announced by American philanthropists in 2012 totaled nearly $5.1 billion, but $3 billion of that was from Warren Buffett’s promise in August to give stock valued at $1 billion to each of three foundations run by his children.

Without Mr. Buffett’s pledges, the biggest gifts announced in 2012 would have totaled only $2 billion — far less than 2011’s $2.6 billion.

Rich people: Raise my death taxes!

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:25:00 +0000

While other critical tax issues have been largely overshadowed by the looming expiration of the Bush income tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans, Congress is also debating what to do about another massive giveaway to the rich implemented under George W. Bush -- a dramatic cut, followed by the complete elimination of the estate tax, which conservatives derisively refer to as the “death tax.”

In 2001, Bush signed a law that gradually lowered the estate tax rate until 2010, at which point it was completely repealed. Congress extended the tax temporarily at the end of year (leaving people who died that year off the hook) and set the rate like this: The first $5 million of wealth go completely untaxed, while wealth above that line is taxed at just 35 percent. That temporary patch will expire at the end of the year, and if Congress does not act, rates revert to the much higher Clinton levels: An exemption on just the first $1 million and a 55 percent tax on all income above that.

Obama’s humblebrag: How to tell everyone you’re rich

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 17:04:00 +0000

Mitt Romney was never able to find the right way to talk about his money, but Barack Obama is happy to tell you that he's rich, again and again. That is, if he's asking for higher marginal taxes on the rich, whose ranks Obama first joined with book-related earnings and then with his $400,000 White House salary.

Obama said it again this week: "What the country needs … is an acknowledgment that folks like me can afford to pay a little bit higher rate," he told Bloomberg News. He's been saying it at least since April 2011, when he was pushing the "Buffett rule": "I don't need another tax cut," he said. "Warren Buffett doesn't need another tax cut."

Median wealth of U.S. households lowest since 1969

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 15:45:00 +0000

New research from NYU economics professor Edward Wolff, flagged by Think Progress, found that the median wealth of American households plummeted over the years 2007 to 2010, and by 2010 was at its lowest level since 1969. Meanwhile, the late 2000's saw a high rise inequality: while the median wealth fell, the top 1 percent increased their wealth by 71 percent between 2007 and 2010 (a statistic almost ready-made for an Occupy Wall Street banner).

Wolff argues that while "the debt of the middle class exploded from 1983 to 2007, already creating a very fragile middle class in the United States... their position deteriorated even more over the 'Great Recession.'" His research also detailed how the household wealth of racial minorities and young people dropped to an even greater extent in the wake of the housing bubble's burst, when house prices collapsed: