"Don't give 'til
it hurts."
It seems like that's what wealthy Americans—let's say your average
wealthy Americans—tend to say to themselves when they haul out the checkbook to
do the charity thing.
The poorest Americans
are almost 3 times more generous than the wealthiest Americans in their donations
to charitable causes and organizations.
Here's an excerpt from a recent report on TheAtlantic.com:
"One of the
most surprising, and perhaps confounding, facts of charity in America is that
the people who can least afford to give are the ones who donate the greatest
percentage of their income. In 2011, the wealthiest Americans—those with
earnings in the top 20 percent—contributed on average 1.3 percent of
their income to charity. By comparison, Americans at the base of the income
pyramid—those in the bottom 20 percent—donated 3.2 percent of their
income. The relative generosity of lower-income Americans is accentuated by the
fact that, unlike middle-class and wealthy donors, most of them cannot take
advantage of the charitable tax deduction, because they do not itemize
deductions on their income-tax returns."
And the folks who write
the very biggest checks, the ones with six zeroes, generally aren't helping the
poor.
The Atlantic says:
"Last year, not one of the
top 50 individual charitable gifts went to a social-service organization
or to a charity that principally serves the poor and the dispossessed."
Everyone is entitled to be generous as much, or
as little, and how, he chooses. Absolutely.
But let's just be harshly candid: writing a big
check and putting your name on the new wing of the art museum isn't the moral equivalent
of feeding hungry orphans or buying books for poor kids or sponsoring a sports league
for disadvantaged youths.
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