{"id":6651,"date":"2010-08-18T15:57:05","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T19:57:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=6651"},"modified":"2010-08-18T15:58:59","modified_gmt":"2010-08-18T19:58:59","slug":"german-tycoon-calls-u-s-tax-deductions-for-charity-unacceptable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/6651\/german-tycoon-calls-u-s-tax-deductions-for-charity-unacceptable\/","title":{"rendered":"German Tycoon Calls U.S. Tax Deductions for Charity &#8220;Unacceptable&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to German shipping tycoon Peter Kramer, &#8220;the state&#8221; should control private charitable donations and &#8220;determine what is good for the people,&#8221; not the individuals making those charitable donations.\u00a0 In an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/international\/germany\/0,1518,710972,00.html\" target=\"_blank\">interview<\/a> with <em>Der Spiegel<\/em>, regarding the Warren Buffett\/Bill Gates <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/id\/37729812\/?Buffett_And_Gates_Issue_Challenge_to_Fellow_Billionaires_to_Pledge_Half_their_Fortunes\" target=\"_blank\">Giving Pledge<\/a>, Kramer ripped America&#8217;s tax deductions for charitable gifts and demanded, &#8220;what legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow?&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I find the U.S. initiative highly problematic.\u00a0 You can write donations off in your taxes to a large degree in the U.S.A.\u00a0 So the rich make a choice:\u00a0 Would I rather donate or pay taxes?\u00a0 The donors are taking the place of the state.\u00a0 That&#8217;s unacceptable. It&#8217;s all just a bad transfer of power from the state to billionaires.\u00a0 So it&#8217;s not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide.\u00a0 That&#8217;s a development that I find really bad.\u00a0 What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow?\u00a0 In this case, forty superwealthy people want to decide what their money will be used for.\u00a0 That runs counter to the democratically legitimate state.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Call us crazy, but don&#8217;t alarms sound when a creepy German demands that the state &#8220;determines what is good for the people?&#8221;\u00a0 Meanwhile, as <a href=\"http:\/\/mjperry.blogspot.com\/2010\/01\/paul-krugman-extols-europes-economic.html\" target=\"_blank\">noted<\/a> by economist Mark Perry on his blog Carpe Diem, citizens of Kentucky outstrip Germans in the best indicator of economic wellbeing, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Kramer, perfect your own supposed workers&#8217; paradise before you attempt to lecture Americans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to German shipping tycoon Peter Kramer, &#8220;the state&#8221; should control private charitable donations and &#8220;determine what is good for the people,&#8221; not the individuals making those charitable donations.\u00a0 In an interview with Der Spiegel, regarding the Warren Buffett\/Bill Gates Giving Pledge, Kramer ripped America&#8217;s tax deductions for charitable gifts and demanded, &#8220;what legitimacy do [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1725,1724,1726,124,1723,105],"class_list":["post-6651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-charitable","tag-charity","tag-deduction","tag-germany","tag-peter-kramer","tag-tax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6651"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6653,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6651\/revisions\/6653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}