&gt; It&#x27;s not that, say, the Make A Wish Foundation is inherently bad or that donating to them is a bad thing, rather the possibility that Zuckerberg could decide to give them 95% of his wealth while more critical social services receive none of it that is concerning.<p>It&#x27;s his money, so it&#x27;s his choice where it goes.  Beyond that, this is just an argument for higher taxes to take that choice away.  If you want to argue against allowing people to have and direct the wealth they&#x27;ve created, then make that argument, rather than assuming it as a premise.  Once you&#x27;ve assumed that as a premise, then it starts to sound obvious to deemphasize charity and emphasize government programs; that step isn&#x27;t the interesting part of the argument.  As it turns out, we have multiple countries in the world, with different sensibilities about the relative value and efficacy of public and private work, among many things.  The US model, evaluated by European sensibilities, is broken in many ways; the European model, evaluated by US sensibilities, is broken in many ways.  Neither of those is as interesting or relevant for evaluating potential changes as a country&#x27;s evaluation of its own models by its own sensibilities.<p>Personally, I&#x27;d be thrilled to have significantly <i>less</i> of my income directed by government to the causes they care about; I currently donate a significant fraction of my annual income to charity, and if I had the money <i>back</i> that currently goes to a pile of things I mostly don&#x27;t care about, I&#x27;d love to donate even more to charity.  I know for a fact that it&#x27;d do more good.  Changing that would require changing what government is spending the money <i>on</i>, and I&#x27;m far more confident that I can change the course of a charitable organization (or choose a better one) than change the course of government.<p>As it stands right now, I think I could do more good with a pile of cash by setting it on fire than by giving it to government; additional money in government hands has negative utility, and may be used to hurt me and people I care about.<p>As a random thought experiment, I&#x27;ve often wondered how it would work if charitable donations produced a deduction directly from your <i>tax burden</i>, rather than from your <i>taxable income</i>.  In other words, every dollar you donate comes straight off your taxes.  That would produce some interesting results.