Center for the Study of Law and Society Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program

To redistribute income, charitable giving must supplement progressive taxes. One person can sometimes observe another’s donations to specific charities, but one person cannot observe another’s total donations to all charities. Consequently, people do not have enough information to know whether each person is doing his fair share of charitable giving. In these circumstances, the social norm concerning how much people ought to give remains inchoate and redistribution is deficient. To remedy this problem, I propose various means to publicize donations, ultimately leading to a donation registry.