Youngkin wants your pats on the back for him being able to donate his salary to charity

It must be nice to be Glenn Youngkin, a reader pointed out to me, being able to donate his salary to charity.

And, look, yes, it is a nice gesture on his part that he does this. The recipient of his third-quarter salary, G3 Community Services in Stafford County, does great things in STEM education and in helping veterans transition to the civilian workforce.

I’ve served on several non-profit boards, and that experience tells me that an unexpected $43,750 check can be made to go a long way to do even more great things for people in need of help.

OK, so, that said, let me be the a–hole here.

He really wants your pats on the back, and doesn’t deserve them.

Fact of the matter is, not many of us have the luxury of being able to donate all of our salary to charity.

Youngkin’s net worth is in the range of $470 million, according to an estimate from Forbes, which, good for him for having the savvy to play the system to accumulate that kind of wealth.

His support of Republican orthodoxy in the form of tax breaks for fellow multimillionaire elites rings hollow to those of us who aren’t worth $470 million and can’t afford to work for free, though.

And then his specific push to divert state tax dollars to private education – that’s nice for those who have private schools in their communities, and can afford them.

The dirty secret to the diverting tax dollars to private schools is: the dollars aren’t going to cover 100 percent, or anything close, of the cost of a private-school tuition.

Think of them as partial rebates for people who can already afford private school.

Youngkin likes to talk up his supposedly hardscrabble upbringing, but even that is overstated.

He went to private school; no disrespect to him for having had that advantage, but private school is a privilege that most of us didn’t have.

You have to think that him not knowing how the other 99 percent of us live has something to do with him thinking it’s more important to give our tax dollars to people of privilege like him to get rebates for sending their kids to private school and access tax breaks so they can afford a second home than to look out for people struggling to make ends meet every week.

Again, no disrespect, and, good on him for donating his salary, since he doesn’t need it, to good people who do.