Lao Voices

10 Responses to “ The Generosity Index ”

1. 
   Darly Feb 4th, 2008 at 5:33 am

   Is there a break down for what type of charitable organizations the red states and the blue states contributed to?

   I won’t be surprise at all if most of the donations from the red states would tend to go toward religious organizations or religious based non-profit organizations. If you are a good member of your church community and give your tides and offerings at a minimum of 10% of your income like my parents do, then imagine all the Christians combine and only support projects to promote certain goals and objectives whether in the US or abroad.

   Also I would like to know if the chart is based on the total amount of dollars donations per state or is it a percentage of the populations?

   In addition what people donate to is important. I would imagine that the state of New York and California would be more likely to donate to arts and science and scholarly research. While the majority of my peers in Kansas would be more likely to donate to the religious based organizations, to benefit one group of people rather than for the entire society as a whole.

   I am a Christian and when I was living in the US, most of my donations go to a religious based organizations and the rest would be for my favorite non-religious based organizations like the WWF, the March of Dimes, and cancer research foundation. I consider part of my donations to be based on selfish reasons. Some of you might say that any giving is good because it shows that we are not so selfish after all. But who and what we give to does matter.

   Any set of data or graph should be examine throughly and can’t be taken at face value. There is always some bias in how the data is collected or presented. We have to break down the information and look beyond the fancy stats and number.

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2. 
   Darly Feb 4th, 2008 at 6:16 am

   Okay. No need to answer my question. I read how the data has been collected and the report is based on "the nation’s personal income tax return" so that leaves room for more questions. For those that don’t "itemized" their deductions, they would not be included in this data.

   According to the site: We use IRS data because, although crude, it is telling and the best data available on a regular basis for understanding how charitable giving relates to income. In using this data, we accept the federal government’s definitions of what charitable giving is, and that includes giving to religious groups, churches and many other institutions.

   What would be interesting to see is the breakdown of charitable giving under "religious groups and churches" in the red states. I don’t know much about tax credits but you can kill two birds with one stone here. Be a good Christian and give to your church 10% of your income or more and get a tax break too.

   Now some of you will think that I’m starting to sound like Padek. But my parents and I don’t itemize our deductions and we don’t make claims on our tides and offering to the church or any other organizations.

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3. 
   Ginger Feb 4th, 2008 at 7:54 am

   I’m from the Red state (but originally from the Blue state), and I believe that most of the Charity donation is from giving to church, so as far as generosity it’s the Christian duties to give tie and offering of 10%, not based on generosity at all.  One of the Christians that work with me, she only see me as a potential tie giver and aggressively tried to lure me into going to her church knowingly that I’m a Buddhist.  She is very aggressive, also her friends, in emailed (chain) mails of religious issues, all politics, and you know how much I hate politics.  Sometimes I feel like I’m fighting a loosing batter, I vote but the Christians would always vote according to party, it doesn’t matter who is up for the election…this part kills me.

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4. 
   Padek Feb 4th, 2008 at 8:37 am

   Excellent point Darly. I am quite sure these "charity" donations are mostly used for Christian belief, believers, ideas and politics. A notorious pest in these states.

   Charity should be for all in my opinion, belief and rationale. Else we are talking about funding of an idea.

   On top of that, these institutes decided last election by issueing a voting advice (which translates as: vote as we tell you) to their followers.  This only adds to my uneducated power politics post, IMHO

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5. 
   Darly Feb 4th, 2008 at 10:17 am

   I feel for Ginger, she is the stubborn, non-converter to her co-workers.

   I think most donations that people do are in the forms of religious based. Before we were Christians we would donate to the temple, now it’s to the church.

   I don’t like the idea of religious based non-profit organizations. It’s too much help with hidden strings attached.  I know my church means well but when you are offering food and clothings to the poor in the neighborhood there should be no pressure to join the community. It’s giving help on one hand with enforcing the Bible in the other.

   My former co-workers are into adopting children in the third word countries or brother/sister program but they only supported the Christian based organizations and would give help to those lucky individuals that are part of the program.

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6. 
   Somchai Feb 4th, 2008 at 10:23 am

   To properly uderstand the chart I’d have to know what praportion of the tax filers take the itemised deducions. I suspect it would only be the upper half by income or even upper third? Upper fifth?

   I know that having a family of four and being a responsible mortgage payer my standard deduction far exceeds what I would deduct by itemizing. I do file long form for other reasons, business, investments, etc.

   It is a common misconception that blue voters are a rich cultural elite. It’s true that college grads vote dem, but it’s also very true that by income red is richer than blue.

   I suggest the graph shows the praportion of republicans donating to charity, compared to well off dems.

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7. 
   Anonymous Feb 4th, 2008 at 10:53 am

   Who decides which charities you should give your money to?  All someone else, like laovoices.com.

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8. 
   Darly Feb 4th, 2008 at 11:26 am

   Well, I found a break down of charitable donations for Americans in 2006. According to USA Today Newspaper, Americans donated $295.02B to charity and the biggest donations went to religious organizations. So a big piece of that pie ($96.82B or 32.8% of total donations) were for religious based groups.

   So, Ginger was right after all. That would not be in her definition of "generosity" I think.

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9. 
   Darly Feb 4th, 2008 at 11:38 am

   Hey there Anonymous,

   If you can think for yourself then it would be you that decide what you want to do with your hard earned dollars. If not, then ask someone that you are willing to listen to.

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10. 
    Lao Voices » Blog Archive » The Generosity of Charitable Contribution Feb 4th, 2008 at 2:19 pm

    [...] Darly: Hey there Anonymous, If you can think for yourself then it would be you that decide what you want to do with… [...]

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