I've yet to see an argument for why using tax incentives to coerce good outcomes from people is even a bad thing

Because it can easily be corrupted since you can’t define “good outcome”, and it’s impossible to prosecute quid pro quo for a wink and nod deal since there isn’t sufficient evidence.

In a democracy, the government exists to provide a set of services agreed upon by the people for the benefit of all the people, many times via their elected representatives. Roads, educational facilities, welfare, military, all of those expenses don’t disappear because someone decided to donate something.

If you want tax dollars to support a cause, then vote for it. And there’s no reason tax deductions should be given to support your own little tribe.

> If you want tax dollars to support a cause, then vote for it.

This is literally what people have voted for by having tax deductions for certain "good" things, like giving to charity, using some of your land for bees or whatever.

Just because it's agreed that something should be done in the aggregate, doesn't mean that it needs to be centrally managed by some state agency. You decide X is wanted, and then leave the implementation to distributed decision making.

I think it's easier to hold fewer larger entities accountable, assuming we mandate transparency, than many small ones. Increasing complexity always benefits the seller (politicians and their influencers). Ideally, all tax receipts would go into one pot, and then all expenditures would come out of it, so it's simple to account for.

We have a system that enables "donations" to religious tribes in exchange for political support or politicians looting current taxpayers in exchange for future votes by kicking retiree benefit costs 30 years into the future (this is literally happening now).

All of these undesirable outcomes for society are only happening because the complexity creates plausible deniability and difficulty in accounting.

If people want to donate, let them donate, but it needs not having anything to do with taxes. We can save resources on enforcing tax laws, preparing tax filings, and obviously remove all this under the table stuff. Just like how electronic payments reduce tax fraud, only difference is we need total transparency.

Whether something is a worthwhile expenditure is a separate from the discussion about the implementation detail of it being supported directly through state funding, or indirectly via tax deductions.

E.g. in many EU countries religious organizations are directly funded through taxes. So in some way it comes down to the same thing, both systems have their ups & downs.

Doing it via tax deductions is often cheaper, because in many cases you can get people to match state dollars at some ratio, and since they get to choose what they fund within some framework they often get some benefit for themselves as well.

E.g. in this case Morgan Freeman gets to walk around on his private land covered in bees which'll be partially state funded. The government didn't need to buy land somewhere just for this purpose.

Instead they find someone who's willing to do this not just for the tax benefit, but also because they for whatever reason don't mind a lot of bees on their land.

So Freeman gets a tax write-off, less money is spent overall for the same amount of bees in the ecosystem, it's a win-win.

In a healthy economic structure, most of the power would be in the middle class (i.e. the distribution of economic power is a bell curve). If we had that instead of the current power law distribution, then tax incentives would work simply because they would directly reflect with will of the people: The fat part of the curve—representing the average—would be able to out-vote and out-spend everyone else.

Trying to control the behavior of giants that are smarter and stronger is probably hopeless, so our focus should be on getting the economy back to normal (pardon the pun).

Wasn't this voted on? There must be some existing program he is enrolling into. That didn't come from nothing, it would have been developed and voted on by elected representatives.

Yes, it was voted on in the same way, but I'm trying to say that it's adding unnecessary complexity. In my ideal future, it would be nice to see a much more simplified, transparent government.

> Roads, educational facilities, welfare, military, all of those expenses don’t disappear because someone decided to donate something.

They also wouldn't disappear if Morgan Freeman had decided to volunteer his labor for a foundation for free - thereby not earning any taxable income - yet the State would have to work it out. In this case, the labor donation was just done indirectly.

The point is that you can't tell if it was a donation, or if it was something else. Just like a donation to a certain non profit organization isn't just a donation, but buying votes, or in exchange for some other favor.

The incentive to donate should be wanting to donate, there doesn't need to be anything on top of that from the government.

You can't tell if unpaid volunteer work is a donation either, yet it's not taxed.

The typical argument is that "tax incentives", whether positive or negative, ultimately come from other people's hard work and money. And those people may not agree with you (the benevolent distributor of incentives) on what "good outcomes" are.

TL;DR: People have their own, often highly idiosyncratic ideas about what's worthwhile and how they want to spend their money.

>And those people may not agree with you (the benevolent distributor of incentives)

I was under the impression that in a democracy there was no single BDFL.

And how does that change the explanation, "People have their own, often highly idiosyncratic ideas about what's worthwhile and how they want to spend their money.", one way or another?

I remember a similar item about Bruce Springsteen calling his mansion a farm (to get lower tax rates.)

The stories about Springsteen seemed credible. I hope Morgan Freeman is on the level, though.