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Philanthropy is a lot less arbitrary than the vast machinery of misaligned incentives we name government.

Like it or not, your tax dollars fund Guantanamo Bay, Trump's family separation/kids in cages, and every other odious federal program. (My state deploys my taxes to terrorize immigrants. Lovely.)

Your philanthropic dollars only fund projects you actually endorse.

The Gates foundation likely gets more altruistic bang for its buck than any government on the planet, and plausibly more than any other organization of any sort.

I've observed the opposite. The wealthy people I know are philanthropic. Similarly the upper middle class is more altruistic than the lower middle class, and so on down the hierarchy of needs.

False, we never stopped taxing the rich.

We reduced top marginal income tax rates though, so they moved more money into income and stopped hiding as much in shell companies and inventory.

The top 1% earn 20% of national income, but their taxes comprise 40% of federal income tax revenue.

US Gini coefficient (inequality measure) decreases by a third after accounting for taxes and transfers.

Most commenters here seem to have a false impression of the distribution of taxation. "The rich pay little taxes" is disinfo. The truth is more like "the rich pay most of the taxes."

The US has had progressive taxation since 1913. Today, taxes on the top 1% of earners comprise 40% of federal income tax revenue, top 5% comprise 60%, while the bottom 50% comprise 2% (however note income taxes are only half of federal revenue). Per CBO, the US gini coefficient falls by 0.17 (a third) when you account for taxes and transfers.

Our legislators have created tons of complexity in our tax codes which people use to reduce their tax burdens. I mainly blame congress and the electorate. Donors are only culpable for funding congressional campaigns' appeals to voters.