Biden's tax returns were posted to Obama's web site today, and on them you can discover that he and his wife donated 0.3% of their income to charity last year. The Obamas, by comparison, donated 5.7% of their considerably higher income to charity last year.
Now I don't think either of those numbers is “bad” in any sense of that word. By comparison, Debbie and I (in percentage terms) were somewhere between the two of them. I believe that giving to charity (and which charity one chooses to give to) are entirely personal matters, and the quantity of a candidate's charitable gifts has no weight at all in my decision about supporting them.
But this reminds me of a book I read some time ago, called Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism. The “surprising truth” in the book is this: measured in dollars or percentage, charitable giving by liberals is dwarfed by charitable giving by conservatives (and libertarians). This is consistent with my own (far less rigorous) observations and experiences in charity work.
McCain contributed 26% of his income last year to charities. Palin's tax returns have not yet been made public, so we don't know what their contributions were.
When I read that book, I came away with the thought that this aggregate difference in charitable giving carries a profound message of some sort. The closest I ever came to being able to articulate it was the notion that liberals in general expect government to do things for them; conservatives and libertarians are much more interested in having the government get out of the way so they can do things themselves. There's yet a deeper message there, I think...
I cannot believe you are quoting numbers here about how Conservatives (where are they?) or Neo-Conservatives give more to charities than Liberal Progressives... I know how this works---and I'll bet you do too---or you should if you really think about it.
ReplyDeleteOnce your earnings place you in a very high tax bracket you can either give the money to charity and reduce your tax burden, or give it to Uncle Sam at tax time. The wealthy have devised a wonderful way around this situation while at the same time they can have a great time. How? They "pad" their tax contributions at their friends local charity groups, and like I say, have a lot of fun doing it at the same time.
McCain is a multi-millionaire and his wife is truly wealthy with a net worth somewhere in the neighborhood of over 100 million dollars. If they don't give a TON of money to charity they get hammered at tax time. So how much of their donations are really heart felt? Indeed how many multi-millionaires charitable donations are heart felt? I wonder.
If you're curious, here's the deal...
I happen to be a professional in the entertainment business. I do a LOT of corporate conventions around the country as a producer. A lot of my work involves various local community charity groups, banquets, and conventions. Here's how it works; the wealthy of the community get together and typically buy $2,000 to $10,000 dinner tables at the local charity event, eat, drink, and bid in high priced silent auctions, and in general have a great time spending money that is "tax deductible" because they are spending it at a legal tax deductible charity event. But...as it turns out, only a SMALL percentage of the money (average 10 cents on the dollar) actually does go to the charity, while the TOTAL amount the attendees are spending is tax deductible. The difference between the event's overhead and charity's net can be enormous. So, yeah, conservatives (read Republicans) love to do charitable contributions themselves, on their own, and I've experienced a lot this personally, and a great deal of this kind of charity is simply a tax reducing racket!
Now, you won't find many middle class or lower class Americans throwing charity events with $10,000 dinner tables like this will you? So, do they deserve to be labeled "non-giving?" I think not and shame on you for not looking further into this because your stats simply do not hold up in terms of heart-felt contributions versus tax-deductible motivated giving.
How many donations by Liberals in the south side of Chicago does it take to equal one $10,000 dinner table bought by ONE wealthy conservative? This should give you a slight clue into the skewed stats you are touting here. And yes, most of these events are thrown by wealthy conservatives...
Liberals and Progressives have no problem letting government take care of the social charities---but hear this; YOU and I, and indeed ALL Americans give the greatest amount of our 'charity' dollars if you will, to the worst charity of all; the bail-outs of U.S. failed Corporations. When you take corporate bail-outs, and in essence 'corporate welfare' into account, the peoples social welfare programs amount to roughly 1.5% of the total corporate welfare budget. But it isn't talked about much is it? I NEVER hear this reported anywhere. I wonder why? When is the last time you heard anyone complaining about Lockheed Martins 500 Million dollar corporate welfare bail-out paid for by you and me? It's even worse this year. By the time YOU and I figure out how much of our tax dollars (and worse, our children's) are going to the bail-out of the failing banks, and the Wall Street big boys, that 1.5% of social welfare is going to look like a drop in the bucket compared to corporate welfare.
And to those people and their rhetoric that says oh, we need to bail out the corporations so there won't be massive job layoffs... well, sometimes that IS an important consideration, but I ask you; how many assembly line workers are there on Wall Street? This new bail-out, the largest in the history of the planet is going to a company with comparatively few employees...
So in closing, yeah, I agree with you. Liberals are into government social programs for the less fortunate in our society, and mostly that is where their charitable contributions are, and the Neo-Cons and Republicans, love to give at the local golf tournament charity for the "Orphaned Poodles of Beverly Hills" organization. Win a free Lamborghini!!
I see this crap ALL THE TIME---and it sickens me...
Where we ALL give to charity is through our tax dollars, and now, corporate welfare is going to be at an all time high as your and my tax dollars go to bailing out all our failing financial institutions. But don't worry Conservatives...it will be sold to the public that the poor black inner-city unwed mothers are the problem. Not Bear-Sterns or Lehman...
Question;
Would you like to do a piece on how many Liberals it takes to bail out a multi-billion dollar failed corporation as it’s newly fired Republican CEO takes his $20 million dollar golden parachute and bails out? Those are some statistics I’d like to see you post…