Citizenship: We are the ones we've been waiting for

Whatever your political inclination or personal perception, the following two statements were witnessed and are facts: In June 2000, after a controversial election and Supreme Court intervention, President George W. Bush signed a bill for tax cuts, including the wealthiest among us, that remain today. President Obama extended these for two more years during the lame duck session in a compromise with the GOP to move other legislation forward.

We know government is cumbersome and moves slowly. In most instances, government follows the lead of the people, rather than the other way around. Thus, there are times when bad fiscal policy needs to be addressed.

This is the case with a new website created by Yale law professors, Jacob Hacker and Daniel Markovitz.called http://www.giveitbackforjobs.org/. This site provides a tool to calculate, pledge, and donate your tax cut. According to the website:

Americans who've benefited from the extension of the Bush tax cuts should give what they can afford - in large amounts or small - back to the public, by supporting organizations that promote fairness and economic growth.

The government has, by extending the cuts, deprived itself of the resources required to support the policies that will secure a vibrant middle class. But joint action by visitors to this site will begin to replicate good government policy, outside the government and free from the grip of obstructionists within it.

When I got my $300 tax cut check with the personal note that said (paraphrasing), here is your money from George W. Bush. I donated it to the local peace and justice center because I did not think that was a wise move by our government, although a popular political one. It felt very good. I expect my participation in this suggestion will feel equally as good.

Here is the post in its entirety from the creators:

Giving Back the Tax Cut
Daniel Markovitz and Jacob Hacker

If a dysfunctional political process leads to bad fiscal policy — a pretty good first approximation of the current state of play in Washington and the tax deal it produced — what are ordinary citizens to do? Can citizens make shadow fiscal policy that at least partially counteracts the government’s?


On the revenue side, this question raises the familiar specter of Ricardian Equivalence — the proposition that consumers internalize the government’s budget constraint and thus respond to government borrowing by increasing savings, nullifying the stimulative effect of public deficits. That proposition has been much discussed of late, including in the blogs associated with this newspaper (see here). The best current thinking suggests that Ricardian Equivalence does not fully hold — private savings does not offset public borrowing one-to-one. Moreover, even if it did fully hold, a temporary increase in government borrowing would still retain a stimulative effect. Even if consumers do save to offset the public borrowing, their savings will be spread over many years while the increased public spending enters the economy immediately, producing an economic stimulus.


But what about the spending side? Suppose citizens think that government stimulus is unfairly and inefficiently allocated. In the recent tax deal, modest support for middle class Americans was combined with massive tax cuts for the rich. This is unfair: the rich don’t need the help. It is also inefficient: the rich will save rather than spend their tax cuts, so that cutting their taxes yields little stimulus per dollar of deficit. Can citizens adjust their conduct to counteract such wrong policy?


We believe that they can and propose a mechanism for doing so. The most fortunate citizens can convert their inefficient and unfair tax cuts into good fiscal policy. Rather than saving their new-found after-tax income, citizens who can afford it should donate their tax cuts to charities that promote the kinds of stimulative programs that better government policy would provide.


We’ve built a website to help achieve this — www.giveitbackforjobs.org enables citizens to calculate their approximate tax cuts and, acting in concert, give them back to appropriate charities. Acting together matters here. First, each participant encourages others to join as well. Second, by tying giving to tax policy, donors emphasize that they are not giving out of private grace, but from a shared sense of the obligations of citizenship. They practice political philanthropy.


We’re not so naïve as to believe that all the tax cuts will be given back. But we are convinced that there are many, many Americans who have the means and the desire to encourage a better policy. By actually putting their money where their mouths are, they won’t just be helping out their fellow citizens and encouraging economic growth; they will also be signaling the need for a better public fiscal policy.

I grew up in a time when people were able to move successfully into the middle class whether it be through the efforts of labor unions and/or easier access to college educations. Our parents aspired for us to live a better life than was available to them during the Great Depression. I see the middle class slipping away from us. Therefore, this is important to me as an individual and a citizen of this country and the world. If you agree, pass it on.