Some of Yale’s alumni will undoubtedly be getting the tax cuts going to the richest Americans, and some of their professors want them to give that money back.
Two professors from Yale, a Yale Law student, a Cornell professor and a Bay Area art director created giveitbackforjobs.org, a Web site to encourage the wealthy to give the money to charities and send a political message in the process.
“Americans who have the means should refuse to surrender to Senate Republicans. We should act, together, to give back our Bush tax cuts, by making donations to organizations that promote fairness, economic growth, and a vibrant middle class,” the group wrote on the Web site. “GiveItBackforJobs enables joint action, by all visitors to this site, to redirect our Bush tax cuts to the wise and just programs that our government would promote if it had not been hijacked.”
Jacob Hacker, the Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University; Daniel Markovits, a Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at Yale Law School; and Will Gaybrick, a second year law student at Yale Law School; are three people behind the site.
Hacker is working on a book about inequality and American politics, called “Winner-Take-All Politics.”
The professors recommend charities, including Habitat for Humanity, Children's Aid Society and Salvation Army, which they say promote fairness, economic growth and a vibrant middle class.
Such joint action will begin to replicate good government policy, they say, noting that tax deductible contributions draft the government as a funding partner in projects they support.
