I can’t believe that I’m agreeing with a regular contributor to the National Review’s “The Corner”, Jim Manzi, but I do.

The guy is a moron though, in the last ‘graph he claims that because Harvard employees (professors) give to Dems, the institution should not be tax exempt.

He is spot on when he calls Harvard a tax exempt “Hedge Fund”.

But he runs the numbers:

Receipts = $2 billion of operating revenue + $7.3 billion of investment income + $0.6 billion of gifts to the endowment = ~$10 billion.

Operating costs = ~$3 billion.

Profit = $10 billion – $3 billion = ~$7 billion.

This explains why Harvard’s net assets increased about $7 billion in 2007, from about $35 billion to about $42 billion.

This actually segues nicely into my previous post on executive compensation. Just how much is too much anyway?

If Harvard never generated another penny in investment, tuition, or gifts, they would be able to continue to operate for 12 years.

Too much is too much, and by making income (and donations) tax deductible, we are subsidizing “too much”.

I clearly understand how Harvard is the most egregious case of endowment abuse, but once we have determined that there is a problem and that it needs to be fixed, we are, as the joke goes, just haggling over price.