Atheist goes Political, vol. 6: Altruism and Politics

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfSaa1At8BM

            Donald Trump makes use of an interesting piece of reasoning.  He observes, the more one has, the more one can give.  This rhetorical gem may sound enlightened at first glance, but I see the makings of a terrible rationalization in it.
            “Sure, I can afford to give you $2000, but you know, if I hold on to this, I can use it to make more money, and then next quarter, I’ll be able to give you $4000.”
            ...three months later...
            “Sure, I can afford to give you $4000, but you know, if I hold on to this, I can use it to make more money, and then next quarter, I’ll be able to give you $8000.”
            ...three months later...
            “Sure, I can afford to give you $8000, but you know, if I hold on to this, I can use it to make more money, and then next quarter, I’ll be able to give you $16,000.”
            Do you see the pattern here?  If your focus the whole time is to increase as much as possible the amount you can donate but not the amount you actually do, then you are not actually making any contributions and this is not really altruism.  You end up never actually getting to the point of benefitting the other party.
            “I could give two million to charity,” is just another way of saying “I have two million that I have not given to charity.”
            “Ha.  I could give 4 million.”  Translation: “I have four million.”
            “I could give 10.”  Translation: “I have 10.”
            “Would you believe 200?”
            “Okay.  So you are all so well off that you could give literally tons of money to charity.  But what if I stop fixating on all these hypotheticals you are dispensing and pay attention instead to actualities?  How much are you giving?”
            “Well...”
            Now don’t twist my words.  I am not making the insistence that charitable donation must be the rule.  All I am saying is that using a piece of rhetoric like this to create the illusion of charitable intent to help your own PR is dishonest and I ask the general public not to be taken in by it.
            It brings to mind a “disagreement” I had once, online, with someone who tried to refute my argument that none of us can afford to be fools with our money by saying, “Well, you know, money is just a concept.”
            I asked, “Well then what did you use to pay for the computer you are using?”
            He replied, “Why are you so closed to the possibility that it could be a library computer?”
            Don’t you love that choice of words?  “...the possibility that it could be a library computer...”
            Okay.  Well first, I know it is not a library computer, because if it were, this knucklehead would SAY that IT IS instead of just insinuating that one could infer that it might not be inaccurate to suggest that it could be interpreted as something which might be accurately called a computer in what could be seen as the possession of an organization which could be called a library.  But second, whoever that computer belongs to, SOMEONE at SOME point BOUGHT it from SOMEONE with MONEY!  Someone who could not have carried out that transaction unless he or she had been wise enough not to waste that money before the transaction in question took place.  But I digress.
            This act of using a very rosy-sounding hypothetical to distract from a far less rosy actuality is a very insidious red herring, I find.  It rears its ugly head every time there are Republicans campaigning.
            “When we tax corporations, we deprive them of funds that they could use to invest in their employees.”
            I’ve got to love that choice of words.  Not “would,” but “could.”  Of course, they cannot say they would, because that would set them up to be busted for lying down the road if they don’t.  That’s the fallacy of nonfalsifiability.
            I suppose this could also be called an Appeal to Optimism which would be just the opposite of a scare tactic.  In a scare tactic, one is presented with a hypothetical situation and asked to fixate on one of the frightening possible outcomes and ignore the rest.  Here, instead, one is presented with a hypothetical situation and asked to fixate on one of the hopeful possible outcomes and ignore the rest.  Yes, I suppose, they could use that money to invest in their employees.  They could also use it to line their own pockets or buy themselves more mansions, yachts, and public officials.  Why should we give less consideration to these possibilities?  Why should these be considered any less likely?
            It seems to me this could also be considered a lie by omission.  After all, the complete sentence is “When we tax corporations, we deprive them of funds that they could but probably won’t use to invest in their employees if their track records are any indication.”  How can I be so sure that they won’t use it for that?  From their own lack of motive.  The only time a corporation has a motive to “invest” in its employees, whatever that means, is when other organizations are trying to entice them away and so the corporation in question has to compete in order to hold onto them.
            Ah, but what does it mean to “invest” in one’s employees?  That sort of sounds like educational funding to me.  How else could one “invest” in an employee?  Well, if the corporations in question are run by people who want to see more funding to education, then they won’t mind paying more taxes to provide more revenue for spending that we can be sure will, based on the language of the act itself, be applied to that end; language which relies on actualities, not hypotheticals.  The fact that the people in question are not supporting any such act demonstrates pretty clearly that contributions to educational spending are not, in fact, their interest, so screw ‘em.
            Here is a more probable revision: “When we tax corporations, we deprive them of funds that they could use to buy Republicans and blue dogs.”