The premise underlying this NYT article about tax breaks for big donors is that their money is actually public money. Viewed in this light, a tax break is a subsidy. Which means that the public is "subsidizing" all sorts of things that provide "questionable" public benefit--symphony halls, medical research, colleges and universities, foreign aid....

Aside from the fact that I wouldn’t want to live in a society where all the amenities were decided upon and financed by some level of government (the lack of genuine "diversity" would only be one of the problems), there are a number of other issues as well. What role do we give to individuality and individual initiative? What role to spontaneous communities that aren’t governmental? And so on....