Monday, June 24, 2013

Don't give 'til it hurts.


"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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