Guess what?New study says that Americans are tops in charitable giving.(LARGE graphic)

[lildreamer316]

and that the neediest among us give the MOST.
It also says that Conservatives give more than Liberals. I get the impression from later info in the graph that this may be because of the tax deduction; but I'm not wanting to be that jaded yet. We'll see.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/10/charity-who-cares-a-graph_n_387825.html

[Fumesucker]

1. There are considerably more religious people in the US than secular..

So it's no surprise that religious people give more..

Even to secular causes..

Frankly I'm wondering if this post is an example of Disraeli's famous quote about the three kinds of lies.

Lies, damn lies and statistics.

[dmallind]

2. But it's a percentage, so population size irrelevant

Frankly I had never seen the breakdown that separated out secular giving by religious people before, and I confess the stat is surprising on its face. That religious people give more (or that more religious people give) makes sense because donations to religions are included. But stripping that out the (much smaller) difference in secular charitable giving could be:

a) Religious people are more "trained" to give as it is an expectation of their religious organization
b) Religious people are trying to emulate religious ideals and religious figures more than secular people are trying to emulate humanistic ideals (IOTW in this instance they really do walk the talk more than us)
c) Religious people know that charitable giving is encouraged by their faiths and lie about/exaggerate their giving in surveys to not appear hypocritical. Lacking any need to avoid hypocrisy since there is no similar expectation in absence of faith, secular people are less motivated to do this.

I suspect that all three could be true in individual cases.

[Fumesucker]

3. I'd have to know a lot more about how the survey was conducted

Before I'd accept the results as being absolutely true.

And I suspect you're right about the motivations for the differences, all three scenarios are reasonable, IMO.

[lostnfound]

34. Donations to churches can be similar to club dues, not always real charity

even though it counts as such.

[dmallind]

35. True - but look at secular only giving, NT

[SIMPLYB1980]

4. USA! USA! USA!

:patriot:

[HuckleB]

5. Conservatives give to their churches.

They are paying for the buildings and the salaries of their pastors and other employees. While many churches do some good work, it's hard to justify this giving as giving in the full sense of the term, at least to me.

They are getting a service, similar to what others might get from a therapist, counselor, coach, or other group or individual. However, people must pay those individuals with no tax write-off, and those individuals must pay taxes, unlike the churches.

Take away the religious donations, and liberals likely do quite well.

[baldguy]

21. How many billions is Pat Robertson worth?

You see a pastor that wears $5000 suits, a big fat diamond & gold ring, & gets a brand new Caddy every year?

All "charity".

[hfojvt]

23. less than 1, otherwise he'd be in the Fortune 400

http://www.nndb.com/people/552/000022486/

Some of that probably comes from owning an empire though. Just as if I owned a chain of bookstores, like I once dreamed of, I would have a decent sized net worth, but much of it would be tied up in buildings, shelves, and book inventory. Even the local pastor is often making $40,000 - $50,000 a year which is very decent money in my eyes.

[hfojvt]

22. another thing is that foundations like Heritage and Cato

are considered 'charitable' by the IRS. Rich people get a tax deduction for donation to a foundation that protects the interests of rich people.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

6. They seem to be counting donations to churches as charity giving, which is highly debatable. -nt

[progressoid]

10. No shit. Since when are churches a charity?

There's a big difference between giving money to Lutheran Services and the Lutheran Church.

[jwirr]

7. I understood it all except the part about Lutherans. Can someone tell

me what it is they do or do not do?

[dmallind]

15. It's a basic charitable organization set up by the synods

Much like Catholic Charities it does a lot of work with food shelters, homeless shelters and so on.

[Romulox]

8. k/r. Really interesting stuff. nt

[AllentownJake]

9. Europeans have less of a need for charity

They have a better social infrastructure than the United States.

On the poverty Index of most developed nations the United States is ranked 19th. Only Ireland and Italy are above us.

Surprisingly 47% of Italians lack functionary literacy skills.

The US is the biggest loser though in likelihood to live past 60, income below 50% of medium income.

We have the lowest unemployment rate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Poverty_Index

[progressoid]

11. And Europeans are less religious so give a LOT less to religious organizations

Of the Europeans I know, none would ever consider giving $ to the church the way Americans do. One person told me, he thought it was obscene to do so.

[AllentownJake]

14. Some churches do good work

others do not.

Jesus Christ has been responsible for influencing both the likes of John Newton, William Wilberforce, and Martin Luther King Jr. and Thomas Torquemada, the judges in Salem, and our modern crop of Evangelical leaders who enrich themselves off of their flock.

I tend to view the people in the second category as the ones who the founder of the religion claimed would say they knew him, but knew him not.

Without Christianity we don't have the abolition movement, we also don't have witch trials.

[dmallind]

16. There were secular abolitionists. The women's rights movements had major overlap with both too. NT

[AllentownJake]

19. Lincoln was probably a secular abolitionist

However, the people that put their lives and time on the line, generally come from people who believe God thinks it is a good idea.

[dmallind]

28. I'm not sure Lincoln, ironically, was much of an abolitionist

It certainly wasn't his principal cause. He wanted to "save the union" first and foremost.

But I disagree with your premise. Just as with Lincoln, for anybody in that day and age it was unacceptable not to be religious. It's even borderline that way today, especially in politics. We have no idea who really was all that religious, but based on the few brave souls who DID put their life on the line both by supporting abolition AND by being irreligious, we know it's not every one of them. There are certainly secular arguments for abolition and I hope you are not assuming that only the religious have the courage of their convction. Also worth mentioning is that religion was also on both sides of the abolition debate. There were plenty of clergy harping on about the mark of Cain and the lesser status of blacks.

[Luminous Animal]

31. +1. It also means that, for the most part the European poor....

don't have to beg or sleep on the streets or figure out how to get across town for lunch on Monday & Wednesday, dinner on Thursday & Friday or when dinner is served at 6:00, how to get to a shelter 5 miles away by 7:00. They don't have to jump through hoops to prove that they deserve medical care. When you figure in European government supportive services for basic human needs, we come out way behind.

[newtothegame]

12. Makes conservatives look good and us bad. Must be a lie. Alerted. n/t

[lildreamer316]

29. ..and welcome to my ignore list. I did not make the graphic,Been here years& never been alerted on.

yes, you are new to the game.. n/t at the end of a post is a dead giveaway as to your intentions.
Try a little harder. Bye!

[jsamuel]

13. thats because donations are tax deductible and the biggest beneficiary are churches

[jwirr]

18. Exactly this study would have a lot more meaning if church donations

for upkeep and the ministers salary, etc. could be taken out of the equation. My church does a lot of work with the community that is not part of the preaching ministry and that type of thing should count but most donations are to keep the church running not to help others. I suppose that is true of all the organizations we donate to though. However, there are churches that do nothing for social needs and it is all about keeping their church running.

[The Straight Story]

17. There is nothing good about America, why post anything that may even suggest there is?

We are some evil MoFo's here from what I have seen, hell even Iran/Cuba/etc are better countries!

[NightWatcher]

20. We Care A Lot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho6pZqUNtko


Maybe we give to charity because we are lacking in a government supported social safety structure

[diane in sf]

24. The others are socialized, they don't have to donate to charity so that others' basic needs

will be covered.

[dysfunctional press]

25. how does that translate/compare as a percentage of gnp with those other nations...?

it seems logical that as the wealthiest nation, we'd give the most in actual dollars- but wouldn't a fairer comparison be as a percentage of gnp...?

http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/us-and-foreign-aid-assistance#ForeignAidNumbersinChartsandGraphs

[Igel]

32. Your stats aren't actually relevant.

The problem is in the title of the chart: ODA.

Official Development Aid.

That's a couple of rather severe restrictions on what's being counted.

That means what the government gives in overseas aid to other countries for economic and social development. It says nothing about (a) private donations and NGOs, i.e., those by individuals (which is the entire point of the OP) or (b) any spending done domestically from any source.

It's a very common assertion that a lot of others give more than Americans, but what that usually means is that the governments give more in international aid. That works when the government is essentially the only game in town, when there are few contributions within a country and not much aid is used internally, but otherwise.

There are similar kinds of skewed comparisons made. My personal favorite is always average income. Most of the reports use governments' official numbers. So in France and quite a few other countries all sorts of government aid counts as income, so the poor and unemployed receive aid for housing, aid for food, aid for medical care, etc., etc., and that counts as income. In the US earned income counts as income, so any housing aid, food stamps, EIC, Medicaid, etc., does *not* count as income. It's like comparing tangerines and grapefruits--both may be citrus, but beyond that it's a bit dicey. It always pays to look at the footnotes and endnotes.

[dysfunctional press]

33. it as the only one i could find quickly at the time-

but it works pretty much the same way- if you are going to compare u.s. 'giving' 'spending' , etc... on a strictly dollar-to-dollar basis with other countries, OF COURSE the u.s.'s numbers will always be higher, because it's so much wealthier a nation than the others. the only fair way to compare levels of charitable giving between peoples of different nations, is to look at it as a comparison of percentage of gnp, national wealth, or whatever economic delineation you want to make.

[depakid]

26. Given America's meager safety net- that this would surprise anyone is beyond me

Europeans pay PLENTY in tax revenue for services that Americans (ostensibly at times through religious groups, etc.) must rely on charity for.

A good bit of it also goes into lobbying efforts to counteract the influence and mitigate the harms of destructive, barely regulated corporations- and the reverse is also true- a good bit of it's given to promote and impose harmful agendas on society. For example- one set of folks gives to planned parenthood and NARAL- another set gives to the Catholic Church and other organizations that fight against family planning. Net benefit in terms of the traditional definition of "charity?"

Now- once we take that into account, we can look at foreign aid to needy people around the world by comparison:

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, an international group of the world's 30 leading industrial countries, reports that in 2008, the United States distributed about $26 billion in net official development assistance. The next closest country was Germany, at nearly $14 billion, and the United Kingdom, with about $11.4 billion.

But considered as a percentage of gross national income (which is essentially the more familiar gross domestic product plus or minus income from other countries), you'll have to go to the bottom of the list to find the United States. We note that none of the countries gives more than 1 percent of GNI. The U.S. gave 0.18 percent. By comparison, here's how some of the European biggies fared: United Kingdom, 0.43 percent; Germany, 0.38 percent; France, 0.39 percent; Spain, 0.43 percent. In other words, it's fair to say the United States is providing about half as much development assistance as European countries, as a percentage of GNI.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/oct/30/bono/bono-claims-us-gives-about-half-aid-europe/

So, all those crowing about how much kinder, more selfless and generous Americans are might do well to keep the above mentioned matters in mind.

[varelse]

30. Good point

and another: how many donations to "charity" are to religious organizations or televangelists?

[readmoreoften]

27. Do charities that promote right-wing evangelical domination and Blackwater thugs count? You bet.

There are so many holes in this strawman of a graphic/argument, I can't even begin.

[SidDithers]

36. I'll take Churches for $1000, Alex...nt

Sid