Presidential primary values signaling season

Kelsey Piper at Vox reports that "Cory Booker is winning the charity primary." That is, among the Democratic presidential primary candidates, his tax returns show him way out in front of the others, having given away some 15 percent of his income in 2018.

Business Insider reported on Thursday that Booker donated $24,000 of his $152,639 income in 2018 to charity. And over the past 10 years, CNN reports that Booker has given about $460,000 to charity.

None of the others come close; only Elizabeth Warren exceeds 5 percent to philanthropy, barely. All these candidates have average incomes over $200K. It's probably worth mentioning that Booker is both childless and unpartnered.

Piper goes on to point out that we don't now what nonprofit entities Booker or any of them gave to -- and that many 501c3 outfits aren't the greatest value for money. She suggests that a charity evaluation outfit like Givewell provides the best evaluator for charitable contributions. I find that a little problematic in this context, since Givewell is a sponsor of Vox podcasts -- which she doesn't disclose. But also, having looked into Givewell, I found its insistence on big measurable impacts -- sort of an engineering evaluation approach to charity -- misses something about how giving impacts societies, recipients, and even the donors. Sometimes there is a value in smaller donations that amounts to an affirmation of a community or an intent that can't be entirely captured in the count of malaria nets distributed.

Piper goes on:

[The contributions politicians] make as senators, Congress members, and governors are of far greater altruistic significance than where they donate. Booker’s 2018 donations, if he had given to the most cost-effective, high-impact charities, could at most have saved several lives; as a senator, he affects hundreds of millions of them.

That's true, of course.

But I think Piper is missing what is going on in this stage of the presidential primary and hence the reason we pour over politicians' tax returns when they release them. Most of them are spewing out policy proposals vigorously, on healthcare provision, family support, economic and even racial justice. If we think about the broken state of our political system, we quickly realize that few of these policies will survive the sausage grinder that is Congressional process. We take these offerings as signals of what sort of society their proponents want and, from that, what sort of values animate this or that candidate. We're in a signaling season when we try to discern the character of the aspirants. Our superficial glance at pols' tax returns and charitable giving habits are another part of the signaling. Booker gets some credit here for generosity; that should count -- alongside, as yet another factor -- in a broad analysis of who we want for the Democratic presidential choice.

This post is not any kind of endorsement. I am holding fire and writing here about the coverage, not the candidates, for awhile. Eventually I'll throw down for one of them when Californian votes, knowing that I'd work to elect any of them in November 2020.