&gt; The difference between raising taxes and cutting spending in general are enormous. Money gets shuffled around, economic activity changes, different people lose their jobs, etc. You don&#x27;t need politics or ethics to see the difference there. Yes, the government&#x27;s balance sheet has the same number at the end in both cases, but everybody else&#x27;s are massively changed.<p>OK, glad we could at least get that far.  I wasn&#x27;t sure we would.<p>&gt; When you then cut it down to only look at non-profit organizations, and their taxes, all of that goes away. The outcomes in both cases are now identical in every respect.<p>It&#x27;s still exactly the same difference between raising taxes and cutting spending.<p>&gt; If the only difference between giving a non-profit a tax exemption<p>And here we have the problem.  The non-profit <i>already</i> pays 0% tax.  Their hypothetical taxes if they were not a non-profit <i>aren&#x27;t part of the budget</i> in the first place; they don&#x27;t get counted on the books as incoming taxes and a subsequent payout.  Taking away their tax exemption would be raising taxes.  Whereas taking away a subsidy given to another organization would be cutting spending.  You already acknowledged a difference between raising taxes and cutting spending.  Done.<p>And if you continue to dismiss anything you don&#x27;t care to hear about as &quot;meaningless politics&quot;, you&#x27;re never going to get why people find some things &quot;disturbing&quot;.  But I no longer particularly care, either.