Posted on 12/23/2008 5:28:09 AM PST by rhema
This holiday season is a time to examine who's been naughty and who's been nice, but I'm unhappy with my findings. The problem is this: We liberals are personally stingy.
Liberals show tremendous compassion in pushing for generous government spending to help the neediest people at home and abroad. Yet, when it comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are cheapskates.
Arthur Brooks, the author of a book on donors to charity, "Who Really Cares," cites data that households headed by conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than households headed by liberals. A study by Google found an even greater disproportion: Average annual contributions reported by conservatives were almost double those of liberals.
Other research has reached similar conclusions. The "generosity index" from the Catalogue for Philanthropy typically finds that red states are the most likely to give to nonprofits, while Northeastern states are least likely to do so.
The upshot is that Democrats, who speak passionately about the hungry and homeless, personally fork over less money to charity than Republicans — the ones who try to cut health insurance for children.
"When I started doing research on charity," Brooks wrote, "I expected to find that political liberals — who, I believed, genuinely cared more about others than conservatives did — would turn out to be the most privately charitable people. So when my early findings led me to the opposite conclusion, I assumed I had made some sort of technical error. I re-ran analyses. I got new data. Nothing worked. In the end, I had no option but to change my views." Something similar is true internationally. European countries seem to show more compassion than the United States in providing safety nets for the poor, and they give far more humanitarian foreign aid per capita than the United States does. But as individuals, Europeans are far less charitable than Americans.
Americans give sums to charity equivalent to 1.67 percent of GNP, according to a terrific new book, "Philanthrocapitalism," by Matthew Bishop and Michael Green. The British are second, with 0.73 percent, while the stingiest people on the list are the French, at 0.14 percent.
(Looking away from politics, there's evidence that one of the most generous groups in the United States is gays. Researchers believe that is because they are less likely to have rapacious heirs pushing to keep wealth in the family.)
When liberals see the data on giving, they tend to protest that conservatives look good only because they shower dollars on churches — that a fair amount of that money isn't helping the poor but simply constructing lavish spires.
It's true that religion is the essential reason conservatives give more, and religious liberals are as generous as religious conservatives. Among the stingiest of the stingy are secular conservatives.
According to Google's figures, if donations to all religious organizations are excluded, liberals give slightly more to charity than conservatives do. But Brooks says that if measuring by the percentage of income given, conservatives are more generous than liberals even to secular causes.
In any case, if conservative donations often end up building extravagant churches, liberal donations frequently sustain art museums, symphonies, schools and universities that cater to the well-off. (It's great to support the arts and education, but they're not the same as charity for the needy. And some research suggests that donations to education actually increase inequality, because they go mostly to elite institutions attended by the wealthy.)
Conservatives also appear to be more generous than liberals in nonfinancial ways. People in red states are considerably more likely to volunteer for good causes, and conservatives give blood more often. If liberals and moderates gave blood as often as conservatives, Brooks said, the U.S. blood supply would increase by 45 percent.
So, you've guessed it! This column is a transparent attempt this holiday season to shame liberals into being more charitable. Since I often scold Republicans for being callous in their policies toward the needy, it seems only fair to reproach Democrats for being cheap in their private donations. What I want for Christmas is a healthy competition between left and right to see who actually does more for the neediest.
Of course, given the economic pinch these days, charity isn't on the top of anyone's agenda. Yet, the financial ability to contribute to charity and the willingness to do so are strikingly unrelated. Amazingly, the working poor, who have the least resources, somehow manage to be more generous as a percentage of income than the middle class.
So, even in tough times, there are ways to help. Come on, liberals, redeem yourselves, and put your wallets where your hearts are.
Captain Obvious, pick up the red phone.
Yes, even when the theft is done “by consensus” through the government, it is still theft.
This, also, precludes socialism as “charity”. People should give under no coersion, and that’s all government is - force.
...Unless they have their mitts on **your** money...
Liberals love to "give 'till it hurts.....someone else". It's all about their "good intentions" (which are paving material for the road to a certain very warm location).
It's also funny how liberals think forcing people to give money to bureaucrats and foreign dictators shows "tremendous compassion."
Liberals show tremendous compassion inpushing for generous government spendingspending other people's money to help the neediest people at home and abroad.
Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
Thomas Jefferson
Chuckle.
But religious giving is often done out of the feeling of requirement, guilt, the rules of membership, peer pressure when the plate is passed and other prompters that pinch the giving nerve. Yes, I do know that many also give from the heart and give generously. But there are also many who give out of perceived obligation.
Hope I didn’t pay for this study...
Dream on!
Compulsion and obligation are not a (legitimate) part of religious giving. See my 2 Cor 9:7 post above.
The religious people I know that give to their church do so because they know where it is going to be used and approve of that expenditure.
Conversely, when “charity” is done through socialist policy, we also know where it is going to be used - to further incentivize destructive decisions.
That's the real shocker here. Liberals who imagine themselves to be freethinkers are far more dogmatic than the Christians that they criticize.
Given the evidence, the author reconsidered his dogmatic beliefs. This is a rarity for liberals, who normally deal with contradictory evidence by dismissing it or attacking the messenger.
And with any luck, some Obama people will read and heed it . . . before they begin to dispense the most lavish governmental largesse we've seen in our lifetimes.
Conservatives should stop donating money to charities.
We give money to the very people who vote in socualists. Some progams we support lobbies congress for laws that run counter to our beliefs.
We provide the funds for the destruction of our own country and way of like.
There are so many contradictions in this pap that I won't even try to show them.
Suffice to say, liberals love to spend money, read: taxes, as long as it's not their money.
And liberals, being the dumb asses that they are, do not realize that taxes are everybody's money.
You are likely quite right.
Well, they’re stingier with their own money.
Other people’s money, they freely redistribute!
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