WoW!
First, John Stossel does a 20/20 piece on how Conservative areas are more charitable than more Liberal areas. In his report very Red Bismark, North Dakota proved to be far more charitable than extremely blue San Francisco, now Elizabeth Eaves of Forbes, looks over the global numbers coming out of the John Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies and finds that the U.S. leads the world in charitable giving (1.85% of GDP) compared to 1.34% of GDP for second place Israel and 1.17% of GDP for third place Canada!
By comparison such big government havens as Sweden ranks 18th, France 21st and Germany 32nd! Leading Ms. Eaves to assess that “Among developed nations, those with higher taxes and bigger social safety nets, tend to have lower rates of giving.”
But that’s not really true.
Few places anywhere have more extensive welfare, unemployment and SSI (Supplemental Security Income for the disabled) than the U.S. does.
Moreover, Red Staters DO indeed tend to be more charitable and those low-income employed Americans tend to give the most, in terms of a percentage of their incomes (4.5%), but even among the relatively wealthy, Conservatives tend to give far more.
Ms. Eaves found out that the Cheney’s gave away a whopping 78% of their income last year, while the likes of so-called “do-gooders” like the Bidens’ and Obamas’ gave far less.
Go figure.
First, John Stossel does a 20/20 piece on how Conservative areas are more charitable than more Liberal areas. In his report very Red Bismark, North Dakota proved to be far more charitable than extremely blue San Francisco, now Elizabeth Eaves of Forbes, looks over the global numbers coming out of the John Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies and finds that the U.S. leads the world in charitable giving (1.85% of GDP) compared to 1.34% of GDP for second place Israel and 1.17% of GDP for third place Canada!
By comparison such big government havens as Sweden ranks 18th, France 21st and Germany 32nd! Leading Ms. Eaves to assess that “Among developed nations, those with higher taxes and bigger social safety nets, tend to have lower rates of giving.”
But that’s not really true.
Few places anywhere have more extensive welfare, unemployment and SSI (Supplemental Security Income for the disabled) than the U.S. does.
Moreover, Red Staters DO indeed tend to be more charitable and those low-income employed Americans tend to give the most, in terms of a percentage of their incomes (4.5%), but even among the relatively wealthy, Conservatives tend to give far more.
Ms. Eaves found out that the Cheney’s gave away a whopping 78% of their income last year, while the likes of so-called “do-gooders” like the Bidens’ and Obamas’ gave far less.
Go figure.
