The Charity of the Uncharitable

There is a famous paper by economist Gordon Tullock on why people vote for taxes that carry out actions one could do on their own, known as "The Charity of the Uncharitable." To restate this, Tullock asked why people would vote for a $100 tax to support some transfer to the poor instead of giving the $100 of your own free will to the poor (or some other charity). After all, either way it costs you $100, but the taxes force everyone (not just yourself) to give $100 to the poor. Why force others to be charitable when they may need that $100 for their own survival or charity of their own choice?

Tullock believed that since people innately realize, even if they don't acknowledge it, that their democratic vote doesn't matter. It is extremely rare for any election to be decided by one vote, thus usually your vote doesn't change the outcome. Given this, you are less likely to vote your true preferences and satisfy what he called internal dissonance, which is internal conflict between wanting to be charitable and simultaneously wanting to be greedy. Since your vote doesn't matter, you may as well vote for the tax to satisfy your charitable side but then privately behave greedily, allowing you to satisfy two conflicting desires.

The reason I bring this up? Scientific American reports that research has found that the brain responds the same way to paying taxes that directly fund charity as it does when money is being given to charity. Perhaps this is the biological proof of Tullock's theory. If you read the article, you will also see that people give less to charity individually than they do when paying taxes. It is however, not a definitive study, as it has several limitations many of which are mentioned in the article.