Interesting facts about American giving:

[Racerbvd]

Interesting facts about American giving:
1. Conservatives give 30% more to charity than Liberals.
2. Of the 25 most charitable states, 24 are Republican conservative states.
3. The biggest givers based on percentage of income are the working poor. The working poor whose monthly income is the same as the non-working poor(receive welfare) give more than those on welfare and also more than those in the middle class by a good margin.
4. The United States Government gives 20 billion to foreign charity every year, by far the largest in total dollars.
5. Americans are the most charitable to foreign nations in the world. Donating some 24 billion last year.
In fact Americans gave 260 billion to charity in total($900 for every man, woman and child).
6. Americans give 7 times more time and money to charity than Germans for instance, 14 times more than the Italians.
7. Most charitable are religious persons. In fact not only do religious persons give more to their church and church programs they are the most generous to non-religious based charities and give more blood as well.

[stevepaa]

Byron, interested to see #2 data. Is that label by registered party affiliation?


On #1, I don't think any data would be valid as we certainly do not tell people our political bias when giving.

[Racerbvd]

Originally posted by stevepaa
Byron, interested to see #2 data. Is that label by registered party affiliation?


On #1, I don't think any data would be valid as we certainly do not tell people our political bias when giving.

They are going by states that are labeled as Red states and on #1, while people don't tell party affiliation, where they live does.

I have seen this as I donate & volunteer, while liberals in the area tend to want the Government to seize my hard earned money to redistribute to who ever they want.

Funny story, there use to be a local liberal radio guy (he had to buy is own time, as no station would pay him, and he was still fired from every station he bought time on) who for a while was doing a good thing, promoting donating blood (something that I have done since high school) so I would support this, but the only people who showed up for his promotions to donate, were Republicans, the dems who made up the majority of his small listening audience, never showed up to things that required them to donate time or money. Are you coming back to FL. for a visit anytime soon??

[nostatic]

source?

[artplumber]

I think:

http://www.policyreview.org/oct03/brooks.html
or
http://www.gordon.edu/ace/pdf/BrooksS04.pdf

Similar kind of findings from Canada:
http://www.givingandvolunteering.ca/pdf/n-vc1sen.pdf

[stevepaa]

That Brooks article is based upon a false assumption that people who want a separation of church and state are secularists, and then he blithely proceeds to presume all religious are basically Republican. Not a scholarly paper.

I wonder what the data would show if they took out all the gifts to the Churches.

Byron, what is your source?

[artplumber]

Originally posted by stevepaa
That Brooks article is based upon a false assumption that people who want a separation of church and state are secularists, and then he blithely proceeds to presume all religious are basically Republican. Not a scholarly paper.

I wonder what the data would show if they took out all the gifts to the Churches.

Before you dismiss the paper out of hand, did you actually read it?

The man simply categorizes people by the defn religious = church 1 or more times a week vs secular = no or few church visits a year. The raw data is actually drawn from a reference the Roper Center for Public opinion research. Finally, gifting to churches should not be excluded, because a significant portion of this actually is spent on direct assistance to the poor etc (while one may be able to point to examples such as Benny Hinn where religious leaders lead extravagant lifestyles, the vast majority do not.)

[Joeaksa]

Not surprised by this news either. When I volunteer at home the others I run into are largely conservatives who feel that they need to help their community. In fact I cannot remember running into a liberal who volunteers in the places where I help out. Sad to see...

[nostatic]

funny, the places I volunteer have no conservatives around...so we're even Joe

I'll ask again. Source?

[fastpat]

It's fact that many, most probably, states are a mixture of conservatives and liberals, as defined by this map of voting by county instead of state. You give by individual donations, you don't "win" a state in gift giving activities. It's not politics.


Further, Americans are some of the largest charitable donors on earth, all the more reason to stop government "giving" and rely on charitable donations entirely. The government largess to so-called 9-11 victim families is a case in point. Millions of dollars were freely given to these people, then the federal government fell all over itself to give them millions more...of money taken at gunpoint from others.

[Nathans_Dad]

Originally posted by stevepaa
That Brooks article is based upon a false assumption that people who want a separation of church and state are secularists, and then he blithely proceeds to presume all religious are basically Republican. Not a scholarly paper.

As stated above, did you even read the article? He says very clearly that he defined religious people as those who stated they attended church every week or more often than that. He defined secular people as those who said they attended church either seldom or not at all. While it might have been preferable to do another study which specifically asked people to catagorize themselves, I think this retrospective use of prior data is valid, in as much as you concede that people who either attend church seldom (defined as less than a few times per year) or not at all would actually be considered secularists by most people.

I think the fact that there have been several articles talking about this recently is interesting. I look at it less as a "conservative vs liberal" or "religious vs secular" issue and think of it more as a wake up call for the secular liberal. It seems to me that the numbers should be exactly opposite, those who seek to take money from the populace and redistribute it to the poor should also be the ones who voluntarily give the most of their personal treasure to the needy. Sort of a money where your mouth is kind of thing.

[Dantilla]

Now and then I help at Habitat for Humanity construction sites. I've often thought of discretly asking other volunteers their political persuasion, as my own informal poll. I haven't yet, but I think it would be interesting.

[sammyg2]

I always assumed this was common knowledge.

It's interesting to watch the libs scramble to put a spin on it so they can blame someone else.

I know, they don't give to charity because they are mad at Bush. IT'S ALL BUSH'S FAULT!

[cool_chick]

Originally posted by Nathans_Dad
I look at it less as a "conservative vs liberal" or "religious vs secular" issue and think of it more as a wake up call for the secular liberal. It seems to me that the numbers should be exactly opposite, those who seek to take money from the populace and redistribute it to the poor should also be the ones who voluntarily give the most of their personal treasure to the needy. Sort of a money where your mouth is kind of thing.

Isn't this making an assumption that secular liberals seek to take money to the populace and redistribute it to the poor? A secular liberal isn't necessary a socialist, or the reverse.

You are right about your observation, but more specifically seems to be church goers versus non-church goers, not the other criteria people are trying to draw to (liberal vs. conservative), but additionally, it's not about socialists versus non-socialists either.....

[fastpat]

Originally posted by cool_chick
Isn't this making an assumption that secular liberals seek to take money to the populace and redistribute it to the poor? A secular liberal isn't necessary a socialist, or the reverse.

If people rated themselves socialist in this study, you'd have a point....

I think you're wrong, CC. To be a liberal implies that you favor stealing wealth from one person and giving it to someone else, usually a politically powerful voting block.

That's what makes Republicans liberals as well, no matter what they may claim. They've demonstrated beyond doubt their lack of morals and ethics in wealth theft and redistribution to their constituencies.

[Taz's Master]

I am willing to add some anecdotal 1st hand personal evidence to this thread.

My brother and his wife just gave 2 years of their lives to the Peace Corps. I'll give you 1 guess as to where they fall in their political convictions. At that time he was donating the equivalent of 1/4 of his earning years, and 1/3 of his married life.

I wonder how much time, effort and money it will take my much more conservative family to equal his giving.

[john70t]

I currently manage a non-profit: enviromentaly-friendly toys for disabled homeless children of ethinicity.
It does have 100% overhead at the moment

[Nathans_Dad]

Originally posted by cool_chick
Isn't this making an assumption that secular liberals seek to take money to the populace and redistribute it to the poor? A secular liberal isn't necessary a socialist, or the reverse.

You are right about your observation, but more specifically seems to be church goers versus non-church goers, not the other criteria people are trying to draw to (liberal vs. conservative), but additionally, it's not about socialists versus non-socialists either.....

I would say that today's Democratic party is essentially socialist, the Republican party is equivalent to the Democrats of 40 years ago, and there is no truly conservative party in the country.

So yes, I define secular liberal as one who espouses the redistribution of wealth through various government programs and assistance.

You are correct about the difference being largely religious vs non-religious, in fact the article states that religious liberals were equivalent in giving to religious conservatives. The difference stems from the fact that a larger percentage of liberals aren't religious vs conservatives.

[cool_chick]

Originally posted by Nathans_Dad
I would say that today's Democratic party is essentially socialist, the Republican party is equivalent to the Democrats of 40 years ago, and there is no truly conservative party in the country.

So yes, I define secular liberal as one who espouses the redistribution of wealth through various government programs and assistance.

How so? Even though in the last 25 years or so we've had democrat congresses/democrat president, democrat congresse/republican president, republican congress/democrat president, we saw things like reform in social programs. When there was a republican congress/republican president, we saw the first new socialist programs since when....FDR maybe? (medicare, part D, no child left behind...)

Where exactly are you drawing your opinion on the above? It certainly isn't based on actions....

You are correct about the difference being largely religious vs non-religious, in fact the article states that religious liberals were equivalent in giving to religious conservatives. The difference stems from the fact that a larger percentage of liberals aren't religious vs conservatives.

How did they determine who a religious liberal or religious conservative was?

[m21sniper]

"The moment the people realize they can vote themselves entitlements from the treasury, we're cooked."
~Paraphrase from memory of a founding father quote.