Upset the federal government recently extended tax cuts for the rich, three professors at Yale and Cornell universities have created a website that encourages wealthy Americans to give their tax savings to charities and send a political message in the process.
The professors started giveitbackforjobs.org to allow Americans "who have the means" to calculate what their tax cut would be and donate that amount to a charity. They recommend groups such as Habitat for Humanity, Children's Aid Society and Salvation Army that they say promote fairness and a strong middle class.
These groups also create jobs. Habitat certainly creates jobs. So does the Salvation Army. All charities do, in some form or another. And your tax cut donation is tax deductible. Win-win. From the site:
America’s shared prosperity is under threat. Even as the Great Recession devastates the American middle class, the wealthy continue to prosper.
The tax cut deal, while perhaps the best the President could get, will not end this crisis of American democracy. It does too little to help the middle class. And it expects too little support from those who can afford to give the most. Ordinary citizens can, by acting together to create a shadow fiscal policy, correct this failure of government and set the country moving toward a just prosperity.
Americans who have the means should collectively give back our Bush tax cuts by making donations to organizations that promote fairness, economic growth, and a vibrant middle class. Such joint action, by all visitors to this site, will begin to replicate good government policy, outside the government and free from the grip of obstructionists within it. Because contributions to all of the selected charities are tax deductible, donations made through this site draft the government as a partner in funding the projects that they support.
We can, in this way, begin to redeem candidate Obama’s promise that “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
Maybe this will encourage those wealthy Republican Congresscritters to spend their ransom money on something good for a change. Maybe they will encourage their friends to do the same.
Ha ha ha! OK, probably not, but it's worth a try.