You’d better sit down for this one. According to a story in The Boston Globe, Massachusetts lawmakers are thinking about taxing private endowments worth more than $1 billion a year. That includes Harvard’s endowment.

Sound like good old-fashioned soak-the-rich tax policy from here. After all, what did Harvard really do to earn all that essentially inherited wealth?

But how does Harvard respond?

University leaders criticized the plan as a gimmick that would backfire by hurting institutions that are pivotal to the state.

“You’d be taxing success here,” said Kevin Casey, Harvard’s associate vice president for government, community, and public affairs. “Over time, this would put us at a real competitive disadvantage. . . .”

Do tell.

Maybe the administration should pass the word along to the faculty:

The Harvard Crimson reported that 86 percent of Harvard professors’ contributions went to Democrats.

P.S. -- Time for a rousing rendition of Tom Lehrer’s “Fight Fiercely, Harvard!”

1) Not saying academics are smarter, but I am saying that two of the most prestigious schools in the world are way more intelligent than the average nub on the stub, man on the street, Joe Sixpack. No offense to Joe Sixpack.

Sure, there are smart Republicans. I am saying though that people who are undeniably and preeminently smart have a strange affinity for the Democrats.

Difficult to explain away. Ivy tower theories notwithstanding.

2) When you say book smarts don’t count for everything, I think we all agree on that. Literally. Intelligence is complicated. The ability to write a term paper is overrated and not always useful.

You do not get “intelligence” by attending, but you must have it in order to get in to a place like that.

However, when you mention “extremely successful businesspeople” I must smirk.

A fair number of businesspeople are dolts and idiots, who just happened to make bundles of money selling mattress covers or paper clips.

Rich is not smart, although smart helps you get rich.

3) Bush graduated from Yale. Just barely, by all accounts.

Yale has turned itself into a “finishing school” for well-connected halfwits, secret fraternities notwithstanding.

A “real” school, the UT law school, flat turned him down and informed him he was just not cut out for law school.

Texans are honest. They said he was all wallered out. (well, not those exact words)

4) When you say a right leaning viewpoint is not welcomed, I question that.

For starters, there are an increasing number of rightwing educational institutions getting funding even if two wrongs do not make a right. Why must we need either leftwing or rightwing opinion in order to get educated ??

If both Harvard and Princeton are overwhelmingly liberal then you must be outnumbered, even if the natives are friendly all the same.

Regardless, if you pick a “real” discipline, like medicine or engineering, your opinion won’t count for squat anyway, whether lib or con. The bridge you are building does not care what your opinion is.

If you pick law, economics, polysci, or humanities, you might be asking for trouble handing in your “Torture is fun” term paper, but that’s what you get for picking trouble and for being outnumbered.

Is the average conservative campus student a minority, living in fear of being ostracized and shunned for his beliefs ? Oh c’mon. I’m sure in your vivid imagination that might be true.

No where else.

“there is some kind of connection between intelligence and political choice.” Huh?  So are you saying that the smarter people tend to go Dem?  The Democratic party is the party of smarties?

If so, I’m crying B.S.  There are plenty of extremely smart people in each of the two major parties.  I also don’t buy into the ridiculous line that just because someone attended a big name, ivy-league school, they must be smarter than someone who didn’t.  Don’t forget, that smirking chimp, village idiot, dolt of a president who somehow fooled nearly the entire United States Congress is a graduate of Yale U.

Book smarts and good grades also don’t necessarily translate into real-world smarts.  I know several people who never finished college, yet went on to be extremely successful businesspeople.  You don’t get “intelligence” from attending a big academic institution, and I do not see any connection between “intelligence” and choice of political party.  On the other hand, there is a clearly established connection between choice of political party of choice of academia as a career.

Most colleges might not be “hotbeds of controversy”, but quite often a right-leaning viewpoint will not be warmly welcomed by most professors, either in classroom discussion or in written papers.

Bill,

I think all the reactions are valid. There is no “missing the point” here, just room to interpret the news in a multiplicity of ways.

Is it liberal hypocrisy ? No. No one “wants” to pay taxes. Taxes are for the common good but no one will sign up willingly. Has not worked that way since the dawn of time and a waste of time to even suggest otherwise.

Pointing out the supposed conservative hypocrisy is at least as valid as noting presumed liberal hypocrisy. Namely, that education is so bad yet not right to go after it to fix it. 

Bob is quite correct that most educational institutions are not hotbeds of contreversy. The profs do care about tenure and parking but not international politics (for the most part).

I’m not surprised that neither you nor Roger seems to be willing to see the connection between Harvard and Princeton, two of the best and brightest institutions in the world, supporting the Democrats overwhelmingly.

You guys would rather drink the Socratic hemlock than admit there is some kind of connection between intelligence and political choice. Roger conveniently writes off all profs as a “loser afraid of the real world”.  Never mind that both Condi and Petraeus are graduates of Princeton. They went out into the “real world” must be his explanation.

Bob and Clairese both correct that religious institutions also sock away untaxed wealth, the better to fund their agendas, but such robs localities of needed funds and gives dubious agencies like the “Bacon Biscuit Church and Institute for World Peace” both a haven and undeserved support.

In fact, the best question to draw from this is not about hypocrisy of either camp, but the rather simple question of whether it will benefit the common good to tax Harvard et al.

The alternate question is how it benefits the common good to have all those massive endowments, or whether students would benefit if those funds were spent instead of salted away.

Bob and Smiling Cat: I’m impressed with how marvelously you have completely missed the point.  But I suppose it’s because you’re always on the high alert, ready to pounce on any perceived “conservative view” on the topic of taxation. 

The point is not that Hahvahd has a massive endowment (it does) or that any other university doesn’t (lots do).  It’s the reaction from the offended lefties that run those institutions to the notion that their institutions should be taxed.  The libs who for years have advocated taxing “the rich” now have the audacity to cry “You’d be taxing success here,” and “over time, this would put us at a real competitive disadvantage.” What?  No!  How outrageous!  Perish the thought!

Yet another case of the liberal mantra: “good for thee but not for me.” The same rule applies in gun control - those senators most strongly in favor of it travel around with armed guards.

This is a yawner. So, Harvard as a private school has a large endowment. Because of the Conservative bias of Bart, we will never question whether, Falwell University, absurdly called Liberty, or Pat Robertson Institute of Technolgy aka Regent University, has large endowments. And even if a Trash Dispatch reporter would actually have the courage to look into it, I am sure he would be slapped down.
Plus , these schools would hide behind the fact they are religious institutions.
And of course, the corallary to this ,the scary left wing professors. I went to college and I remember one timid liberal. Maybe an evolutionist in the Geolgy and Earth Science courses I took for science credits.
College professors, for the most part, don’t have the courage to be controversial. They are looking for job security called tenure, They spend most of their time in petty bickering over office space,research money, which office has the best view, ect.
Above all, education is a business. If you are in college more than one semester and can"t figure that out, you need to start over at the high school level.

The are 3 kinds of welfare.

Handouts to poor, unskilled and poorly educated people who don’t want to work at menial jobs.

Handouts for corporations that don’t want to be bothered with actually competing in an free market and…

Handouts to higher ed who need to rip off the tax payers to build monuments and pay the salaries of over degreed poltical operatives who couldn’t find a pair of pliers in a tool box full of pliers or pick up a brick without their forearm snapping in two.

Although I’m sure if that were to happen, Kaine would declare an emergency and order flags to half staff.

Our heros.

Look no further than VCU, which pretty much runs the City at this point. Its no secret that universities are involved in an arms race for bigger, more luxurious buildings. This is often at the expense of actual instruction. University real estate trust and endowments are also a way for private wealth to effect public change to ITS benefit, and not necessarily overall society or community.

I don’t think its needs to be taxed as much as I think the state budget should reflect realty. Its not right that elementary education and mental health get short funded while university building money bloats.

Hell, I just want VCU to pay its fair share of water use and stormwater utility fee. Its not right that it gets a break while citizen taxpayers get soaked.

Agree Clairese, but do you say the same thing about the UN properties in NYC? Should it move to Belgium?

“...people struggle to find affordable housing...”. Actually they did find it, then would not pay the mortgage and now we have a subprime mortgage mess. So, which way do you want it--affordable housing or an economic recession?

Ass Cat,

If you were .00025 % as smart as you think you are, you’d realize that Bart was pointing out the hypocrisy of group think university drones and the crusty, dusty old “screw the rich” bullshit they use to keep their monkeys in line. They’re not so philosophically pure when it comes time to soak the cash base of the nations one party scholastic frauds.

And “intelligent” isn’t the result of being brainwashed by the losers who hide out on university facultys. They’re there because they are afraid of the real world. They’re there because it is the one place where they are taken seriously and not have their masturbatory revenge fetishes and fanticies questioned

Intelligence is the result of living, not being told what to think by parinoid, bitter losers.

Oh...and BTW...we’re gonna steal the next election too. We’re that powerful. Seriously, I don’t know why you people even bother voting considering how the whole world is so against you noble and pure few.

Perhaps taxing endowments is not the right path, but the tax-dodging of the 501 (c)(3) non-profits needs to be considered.

Here in Richmond we are losing increasing amounts of tax base to various properties that have gone off of the Real Estate tax roles and into non-profit status.

Surely the separation of Church and State should be maintained, but this should not mean that these churches, charities and many of the more dubious “foundations” should pay nothing to support the City.

The tax burden should be fairly shared by all who own property here.

Perhaps if all property owners, including the non-profits chipped in with their fair share of taxes, the burden on the working class residents could be reduced to less than 1%.

Leftist indoctrination centers, like the University of Richmond, as well as churches, and other non-profits should all pay a share of property taxes to support the community.

I would like to read a report on just how much of Richmond real estate has shifted into the hands of non-profits or non tax paying government agencies. Do these government agencies all pay “impact funds to the City? I know VCU has gobbled up a lot of taxable land, as has other government agencies, like the palace built next to the War Memorial in the name of the Virginia Housing Development Authority. That palace is especially ironic; a palace for bureaucrats while the people struggle to find affordable housing.

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