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Who cares a lot? Conservatives it seems

Phex: Dorset Doom

18:31 / 20.12.06

Although this Reason article is a puff-piece for Arthur C. Brooks' new book Who Really Cares?: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism, it contains some information that I found very interesting.
It seems that in spite of the common conception of conservatives as cold-blooded bastards, they give far more to charity than liberals- The average donation to educational causes among redistributionists (not a word- but it means people who believe that governments, not individuals or markets can solve social ills) was eight dollars per year, compared with $140 from their ideological opposites, and $96 annually to health care causes from free marketeers versus $11 from egalitarians..
It even seems that liberals, particularly liberals under 30, are equally bad at not being assholes: "a lower percentage said they would prefer to suffer than let a loved one suffer, that they are not happy unless the loved one is happy, or that they would sacrifice their own wishes for those they love."
Worse still, those who don't give don't experience the 'helper's high'- a rush of opioids that comes from helping others.
So, is this just conservative propaganda or is there something here that should concern liberals? If liberals aren't giving as much to charity is this hypocrisy or should it be expected? Also, since this is purely an American survey, how are things different in Europe?

18:47 / 20.12.06

Charitable giving is an excellent tax dodge.

All Acting Regiment

19:07 / 20.12.06

Charities are a nice idea but they're not really set up to drastically change the economy, are they? They pre-suppose the economy staying the same way it is- that is, they pre-suppose a free-market. So the conservative givers are really boosting their own side. Likewise, aren't a lot of these conservatives rich? Are you really charitable if you can easily afford to give to the charities you give to?

Phex: Dorset Doom

19:10 / 20.12.06

I've always wondered about that (having never had enough money to need to do anything clever to hang onto it). How does the charity tax-dodge work exactly? How do you come out financially better off by giving to charity?
Also, it doesn't explain why conservatives would be more likely to prefer to suffer than let a loved one suffer or give a stranger directions.

Phex: Dorset Doom

19:12 / 20.12.06

Allecto- the article answers that one: The difference isn't explained by income differential—in fact, liberal households make about 6 percent more per year. Poor, rich, and middle class conservatives all gave more than their liberal counterparts.

19:31 / 20.12.06

How do you come out financially better off by giving to charity?

Charity donations are not taxable (cf. Gift Aid) so they are a bit like an expense you can write off.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

19:34 / 20.12.06

How do you come out financially better off by giving to charity?

In a nutshell (and only one of many things) you can sometimes bump yourself down a tax bracket and save loads of money with a comparatively small charity contribution. Taxes generally scale according to income, so if you're only a few hundred over one of those arbitrary lines, a charitable donation can tuck you down one bracket lower and you suddenly pay much less income tax.

Glenn Close But No Cigar

20:34 / 20.12.06

I suspect this has something to do with the differences in the Left and Right's attitude to welfare. I'm painting with some broad brushstrokes here, but here goes:

Welfare is wealth redistribution via taxation, carried out by government. We have no choice but to pay taxes (at least if we want to avoid government sanctions), and have limited control over which groups benefit from Welfare, save for casting a vote for a particular party's Welfare policy.

Charity is wealth redistribution via personal choice, carried out by the donor. We have a choice to donate to charity, and have a large degree of control over which groups benefit from our donations (we can quite precisely chose to benefit, say, the homeless, rather than HIV+ individuals).

Traditionally, the Right emphasises 'small goverment', low taxes, economic liberty, and self-determination as a route out of poverty. (These things are not always true in practice).

Traditionally, the Left emphasises 'big goverment', large-scale redistribution of wealth through taxation, behavioural liberty, and Welfare as a safety net for the poor, without which self-determination is beside the point. (Again, these things are not always true in practice).

The Right has a culture of the 'deserving' and 'underserving' poor, sick etc. The Left has a culture of universal aid. The Right also places considerable emphasis on an individual's choice to spend her/his money as s/he sees fit. Given this, the notion of charitable giving as it now stands is a good fit with conservative ideology. Significantly, some contemporary Republicans (including Bush) have suggested that charitable organisations, charitably funded faith groups etc. might replace some previously tax-funded types of Welfare provision. Personally, I find this pretty dangerous.

Of course, I am not against charity per se, but I don't believe that the provision of aid to the needy should be dependent on what is essentially 'consumer choice'.

Lagrange's Nightmare

21:23 / 20.12.06

A 2002 poll found that those who thought government "was spending too little money on welfare" were significantly more likely than those who wanted increased spending on welfare to give directions to someone on the street, return extra change to a cashier, or give food and/or money to a homeless person.

Wait doesn't "think goverment spending too little money on welfare" roughly equal "want increased spending on welfare"?

And while religion is a major factor, the figures don't just show tithing to churches. Religious donors give significantly more to non-religious causes than do their secular counterparts.

Oh yeah and its also including tithing for curches as charity donations. This would probably account for upto $500 - $1000 of said households charitable donations. (atleast in my experience a $10 - $20 dollar a week tithe seemed to be the median) Im not sure how much this affects the figures cause of course there are many religous liberals as well, any one know the statistics? If some of the tithe donations were being included in "educational causes" say for sunday schools etc it could explain some of the differences.

Really the article means nothing cause the few figures they give could relate to anything. Liberals [liberals] might be giving their money to UNHCR and what exactly counts as a health care cause? It would be interesting to see the figures minus church tithing* and for all charity together.

*I don't know if this prejudice or not, but i can't see tithes as being a charity donation. A lot is used for the priests salary, church up-keep, administration etc. I grew up in a catholic family and it was certainly never viewed as charity donation amongst the people i knew.

Phex: Dorset Doom

22:23 / 20.12.06

I think the 2002 poll part might be a typo.

One of the problems here is that if taxes are the Left's equivalent of charity then isn't there a problem when a significant portion of that charity goes towards the military and paying the salary of a government they didn't elect? (50% of American taxes go to the military afaik, the figure is much lower for the UK). Wouldn't it be far more productive and morally sound to do what the Right does and give money that would otherwise be used in ways you don't want to NGOs (non-governmental-organizations) who could use that money to do some real good?

Glenn Close But No Cigar

22:53 / 20.12.06

One of the problems here is that if taxes are the Left's equivalent of charity

Not quite what I said. The concept of taxes, and of charity, pre-exist the concept of Left and Right by many, many years. I was merely suggesting that the culture of the Right is perhaps closest to the culture of private, self-selected donation to specific organisations, or 'charity' as we now know it.

The problem with this report is that 'giving to charity' covers a vast spectrum of activity. Many private schools are charities, and wealthy parents have been known to donate funds to a specific school in the hope that this will help their offspring's chances of admission. Same goes for universities. Museums, opera companies etc. are also often classified as charities, and many wealthy people will give to a museum, opera company etc. fundraiser for reasons above and beyond supporting the arts (social cache, for one, those events are very exclusive). Also, evangelical churches, as mentioned above. There are some other very 'lith-unfriendly organisations that have this status - the National Rifle Association (NRA) in the UK is a registered charity, for example.

So, it's possible to surmise that it's not that the Right is more 'charitable', but rather that it often donates 'charitably' to a bunch of organisations that further interests associated with the Right: elite education, elite access to elite culture, God, and guns. Best thing is, by doing this conservatives pay less tax, and hence contribute less to the welfare pot!

If one discounted all of this essentially self-serving giving, it'd be interesting to see what the difference between the Right and Left's charitable activity might be.

Good Intentions

10:07 / 26.12.06

I'm certain that many, if not most, conservatives who make charitable donations believe in what they are doing.

They also have heart-felt belief in the value of the status quo. So, like all else they do, to the degree that they are conservatives they will attempt to strengthen the status quo in whatever they do. Lots of money for the Salvation Army, nothing for the Black Panthers Breakfast Programme.

12:54 / 26.12.06

As with Zahir, I would question how charitable the right wing's favorite charities are. For example, American Family Association and Focus on the Family are a tax deductable charities. In reality, they are little more than political hate groups, but as long as they advocate on issues rather than specific candidates, they can remain tax exempt.

The extreme difference in contributions to "educational" groups draws a red flag right away. We think of "educational" groups as being something like a school, but it's become a catch-all for generic non-profits.

Phex: Dorset Doom

16:04 / 26.12.06

The article linked to in my initial post doesn't cover which charities are actually given to, so we can only speculate on how Conservative charitable giving actually works in practice (except to say that everybody who disagrees with us are absolutely evil so we know they must be giving their money to similarly evil causes, just as the posters on right-wing message boards know that leftists make all thier charitable contributions to NAMbLA and Al Qaeda).
Also, remember that the conservative relationship to the 'status quo' isn't simple. For example, why would a group that supports the status quo go out of their way to stop the government from getting their money? The Left, happily giving their money towards their country's next military misadventure, would contribute more to keeping things the way they are than people who give money according to their conscience.
Also, nobody so far has accounted for why "a 2002 poll found that those who thought government "was spending too much money on welfare" were significantly more likely than those who wanted increased spending on welfare to give directions to someone on the street, return extra change to a cashier, or give food and/or money to a homeless person" and give blood (it looks like they fixed that typo).

Good Intentions

21:48 / 26.12.06

Well, yes, you're right of course. When I was saying status quo, I meant more the broad socio-economic relationships like capitalism, corporotism and class distinction, rather than which wing of the parliamentary elite is in power. But I'm aware how precious we extra-parliamentarians can get when talking about the status quo.

sdv (non-human)

14:45 / 30.12.06

Actually Phex I've been wanting to say this for ages to see if someone can make more sense of this than I can...

I've read a great many statements about how the 'right' gives and helps more than the 'left' --- along the lines of the infamous statement about new orleans "... religious groups gave more to help New Orleans than secular groups..." What's always appeared strange to me is the inability to incorporate the associated number of the 98% of Americans who in some sense have faith. Given this number surely you'd expect the 2% of the US population to give merely 2%... (numbers from around the time of NO).

As its true that most Americans like most British people are conservative. What is the real meaning of the surveys ? and can you meaningfully quote them without such a context being taken into account ?

Phex: Dorset Doom

17:29 / 30.12.06

Yes, because the surveys are into the charitiable spending habits of individuals, and they show that individual Conservatives spend more on charity than individual liberals. Obviously when 98% of a country believe belief A and 2% belief B the A believers will give more in total, but, previous to reading this article I would have believed that Liberal individuals gave more than conservative individuals- they're supposed to be caring 'bleeding hearts' right? And I definitely wouldn't have thought that Liberals would be less likely to help strangers, Conservatives are the guys who tell homeless people to get a job, right? (Do angry Liberals tell them to go on welfare?)
Also, American (and worldwide) religious believers are not all hate-filled Jesus Camp types. There are plenty who believe in government wealth redistribution, as evidenced in the pretty much 50/50 split every election day between Democrats and Republicans (wealth redistribution isn't the only issue, sure, but voters generally know where the party they vote for stands on that particular issue).

sdv (non-human)

11:59 / 31.12.06

Oh dear, I just read the original article. Bizarre how it really shows an argument between nice neo-liberal-liberal capitalists and nice neo-liberal conservative capitalists. I love the idea that American liberals are richer than American Conservatives as if the US governments of the past 35 years have been mostly keynesian rather than neo-liberal. Ideological propoganda from free-market ideologues should be read more carefully than this.

When you discuss the behaviour of citizens of an empire don't you think you should introduce a thought on what they are supporting ?

Phex: Dorset Doom

13:45 / 31.12.06

Ideological propoganda from free-market ideologues should be read more carefully than this.

Dismissing it out of hand as 'propaganda' is hardly careful reading. It also doesn't deal with whether the content of the article (the facts 'n' figures) is true or not irrespective of the political conclusions the writer draws. Clearly an article in Reason is going to be supportive of free markets- the magazine's tagline is 'free minds and free markets'- but you should be able to read around the ideological bias (the writer is hardly Ann Coulter) and take something from it.
Also, whether American liberals earn 6% more than conservatives is not an 'idea' or an ideological position, it's something that can be established by taking as many self-identified liberals and conservatives as possible, adding up their annual earnings, dividing the result by the number of participants and comparing the two numbers. Unless you fiddle the numbers, which would hopefully be found out during a peer-review, there's no way for ideology to enter into it.
Lastly, what does that last paragrpah mean exactly, and who are you addressing?