How much did you donate last year? Don’t answer that. Just compare it to the amount of taxes you paid, and realize that 19% of those taxes went to defense spending. (Veteran benefits, interest on debt incurred by defense spending and other indirect costs are not included in that number.) When you congratulate yourself on your altruism, don’t forget you’re also funding the NSA, the drone attacks in various middle east countries, and thousands of tanks sitting idly on a base somewhere.
In this case “outweigh” is relevant. If your altruistic activities don’t outweigh the impact of your taxes, your EA move is to live off-the-grid (assuming we’ve simplified down to those two factors, and neglecting tax avoidance methods).
You can easily control your earnings on the downside, is the point.
Fair enough. So what are better or worse options for spending of one’s tax dollars? Can you do anything, except try to pay less taxes (and spend the gain altruistically) or pay them in a country that will use them more effectively to improve the world?
Taxes paid to the country you live in count as a tax deduction, so in the common case that the host country has a higher tax rate than the US, a US citizen living abroad pays no tax to the US. And if you already have permanent residency somewhere else, changing your citizenship is not super difficult.
Why the heck do Effective Altruists need to be singled out for this? You seem to be punishing people for wanting to be effective altruists, which is super weird.
Not all but many effective altruists and certainly the dominant discourse in recent times care about earning to give, ie making a ton of money so that you can give more to charity. Making a ton of money in america has the side effect of giving a ton of money to the us government. If this is evil on net, it might be more effectively altruistic for someone not to make money to give to charity OR the government if you live in the US.
You get effective altruists wrong. They care about the results of their actions. It a philosophy about choosing effective actions about actions that aren’t. It’s not about feeling guilty that some of your actions have no big positive effects.
That means you focus your attention on area where you can achieve a lot instead of focusing it where you can’t do much.
I find the argument that the US would spend less on military when US citizens would pay less taxes questionable. You can’t simply defund a highly powerful organisation like the NSA. Less government money is rather going to be a problem for welfare payments.
In discussions about where an effective altruist is supposed to live it might be a worthwhile point the effect of tax money. Paying taxes in Switzerland instead of the US might be beneficial if you decide whether to life in San Francisco or Zurich.
I expect some people perceive effective altruists that way no matter what their attitudes; they feel the harping on about how much more ethical they are is implied.
It’s easy to be cynical about the military, but consider the simple fact that we live in one of the most peaceful ages ever. The Middle East conflicts of the last decade-plus involving the US have resulted in far fewer deaths than, say, the Vietnam War. You might say there should have been none of these conflicts to begin with, but things certainly could have been worse as well!
I was medically discharged from the military. The Veteran benefits that are paid for by taxes paid for my schooling (since I couldn’t stay in the military I had to get a different education to make a living), and also provide me with a disability check every month. So those taxes probably count as some sort of altruism.
A question for effective altruists in the US.
How much did you donate last year? Don’t answer that. Just compare it to the amount of taxes you paid, and realize that 19% of those taxes went to defense spending. (Veteran benefits, interest on debt incurred by defense spending and other indirect costs are not included in that number.) When you congratulate yourself on your altruism, don’t forget you’re also funding the NSA, the drone attacks in various middle east countries, and thousands of tanks sitting idly on a base somewhere.
Are your donations outweighing this?
For utility maximizers there is no “outweigh”. There is only “better” and “worse”.
In this case “outweigh” is relevant. If your altruistic activities don’t outweigh the impact of your taxes, your EA move is to live off-the-grid (assuming we’ve simplified down to those two factors, and neglecting tax avoidance methods).
You can easily control your earnings on the downside, is the point.
Fair enough. So what are better or worse options for spending of one’s tax dollars? Can you do anything, except try to pay less taxes (and spend the gain altruistically) or pay them in a country that will use them more effectively to improve the world?
You don’t get any options for spending of your tax dollars, so there are no better or worse ones.
Depends on your citizenship and the specifics of the situation. The US, for example, taxes its citizens on their worldwide income.
Taxes paid to the country you live in count as a tax deduction, so in the common case that the host country has a higher tax rate than the US, a US citizen living abroad pays no tax to the US. And if you already have permanent residency somewhere else, changing your citizenship is not super difficult.
Why the heck do Effective Altruists need to be singled out for this? You seem to be punishing people for wanting to be effective altruists, which is super weird.
Not all but many effective altruists and certainly the dominant discourse in recent times care about earning to give, ie making a ton of money so that you can give more to charity. Making a ton of money in america has the side effect of giving a ton of money to the us government. If this is evil on net, it might be more effectively altruistic for someone not to make money to give to charity OR the government if you live in the US.
Effective altruists are the ones who care particularly much about what their money does.
You get effective altruists wrong. They care about the results of their actions. It a philosophy about choosing effective actions about actions that aren’t. It’s not about feeling guilty that some of your actions have no big positive effects.
That means you focus your attention on area where you can achieve a lot instead of focusing it where you can’t do much. I find the argument that the US would spend less on military when US citizens would pay less taxes questionable. You can’t simply defund a highly powerful organisation like the NSA. Less government money is rather going to be a problem for welfare payments.
In discussions about where an effective altruist is supposed to live it might be a worthwhile point the effect of tax money. Paying taxes in Switzerland instead of the US might be beneficial if you decide whether to life in San Francisco or Zurich.
Maybe he’s been antagonized by some smug effective altruist harping on about how much more ethical he is. I suspect things like that happen.
I expect some people perceive effective altruists that way no matter what their attitudes; they feel the harping on about how much more ethical they are is implied.
It’s easy to be cynical about the military, but consider the simple fact that we live in one of the most peaceful ages ever. The Middle East conflicts of the last decade-plus involving the US have resulted in far fewer deaths than, say, the Vietnam War. You might say there should have been none of these conflicts to begin with, but things certainly could have been worse as well!
I was medically discharged from the military. The Veteran benefits that are paid for by taxes paid for my schooling (since I couldn’t stay in the military I had to get a different education to make a living), and also provide me with a disability check every month. So those taxes probably count as some sort of altruism.