Who doesn’t like giving to charity? Helping out your fellow man is good for the soul. It’s also a very selfish act, if what liberal friends used to tell me is still operative in their world.
How? Well, as far as I was told, back when I’d waste time having political conversations with people who insist “real communism has never been tried,” the giver only gives to those in need for the feeling of enjoyment they get by doing it. I never said these people were bright.
Why this matters, I could never understand. Then I stopped caring. Leftists view paying taxes as charity – believing the government should help those in need – they are notoriously cheap (remember when Bill and Hillary Clinton itemized and deducted donating his underwear, and the fact that Joe Biden barely ever gave anything – only a few hundred dollars – over the entirely of his 4 decades in the Senate) and only do “charitable” volunteering that involves their political agenda.
Conservatives are infinitely more generous.
But if there’s one thing I can’t stand it compulsory charity. If there’s another, it’s virtue signaling.
I was recently at an semi-upscale grocery store and at check out the cashier asked me if I wanted bags. The city had recently outlawed plastic bags, but this chain had beaten them to the punch and brought back paper bags a long while ago.
It was fine. Paper bags are trash, but at least you can sort of carry stuff in them.
Once the ban came about, they’d started charging $.05 per paper bag. They didn’t have to, it wasn’t part of the law, they just decided to.
I asked the girl scanning my stuff why they charged their customers for bags? Being profoundly unhelpful, she said she had no idea – but, she informed me, it was not corporate greed that was driving this, as all the money the company collected from the bags they were charging customers for “was donated to charity.”
She said this to me like I was supposed to be happy about it. The company strikes me as pretty left-wing, as most corporations are, so I was pretty certain whatever charity they were going to make me “donate” to by proxy was not a cause I’d every give to or care about.
The $.15 or whatever wasn’t the issue either, it was the concept. I had no say in it – a donation was going to be given to “The Human Fund” in my name, but also with my money. And with everyone else’s money because people need bags to carry groceries.
I find it interesting that this company “gives me (and every single of their customers) the chance” to donate to charity, but none of the benefits of giving, meaning the tax deduction.
Honestly, you’d have be a Clinton or Biden to save every receipt to tally up whatever the sucked out of you for their bags and try to write it off. For the individual customer, that would be insane. For them, it’s undoubtedly a major deduction.
See, while you’re not going to tally up the few dollars you’ve “donated” by using their bags, you can damn well bet there’s a running total at corporate headquarters that will be deducted off their bottom line. Funny how that works, isn’t it?
That’s why I use the self-checkout every chance I get, then answer “zero” for the number of bags I used, no matter how many I use. It’s not much, it’s never much, but that “good feeling” those liberals told me was the only real reason people ever gave to charity are real in this case. The sense of satisfaction is well worth it.
The whole act of checking out at some stores is now a hassle; a gauntlet of unknown “giving” opportunities no one asked for. I don’t want to round up for whatever the store has partnered with. I choose not to have my name on a small piece of paper shaped like something for kids or whatever, showing the world I cared enough to show the world I gave. And I’m not interested in tipping unless a service was performed where effort was required to make something. Scanning barcodes does not count.
I think I speak for everyone when I say I want my interactions with cashiers to be as limited as possible. Nothing personal, but I don’t want to chat, and I don’t want to give. I want to be in my car already. And I say this as someone who has been on the other side of the counter more times than I can count. Just leave us all alone. If these companies want to give, go for it. Just leave the rest of us out of it so we can get back to our lives that much more quickly. I’d actually pay good money for that.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.