You are doing far more than I. You are a good person!

I think that's how it should work. Sending care packages to soldiers and children in war-torn countries is great. G-d bless you, I am serious.

I feel that this is a very unfair characterization by Draginol. The evidence is anecdotal at best, with nothing to back it up. One thing he does not consider is time. Many people who cannot afford to give monitarily contribute via time and effort. Maybe you cannot write a check to a soup kitchen but you can help out twice a month. That is just as important if not more so. I would say that a giving person can be from any political persuasion, and I know many giving lefties and righties. I will agree that just giving money to homeless is pretty pointless, you are much better off going through a local soup kitchen.

For the record I am a 28 pear old Presbyterian, one of those old mainline churches that contains liberals as well as conservatives, and actually invites and embraces diversity of ideas, unlike many "Christian" churches today. My wife and I are VERY active Christians, she teaches at a Christian school (effectivly taking a 20K a year paycut to work in a Christian environment), and I serve as an Elder for our 1200 member church (First Pres. of Plymouth, MI). We tithe, and give money to several local Detroit organizations and also support Campus Crusade for Christ. I say all this not to brag, but to show you that there are giving people of ALL political persuasions.

I thought his very article was about how this book finally backed up what he only had anecdotal evidence for before.

My own (purely anecdotal) observation always was that those doing volunteer work are the same people who are working full-time to support themselves and their families. The unemployed who live on welfare are rarely found in committees or among volunteers anywhere.

And that, I think, goes to show that many unemployed really are lazy and not just unfortunate victims. If they spent their time unemployed doing volunteer work for society (basically in exchange for all the help society provides in the form of money and free healthcare), their CV would look much better when they do look for a job again.

Just imagine a job interview and you are asked what you did in the last year. Best answer is, of course, that you worked somewhere full-time. But "I did volunteer work" sure beats "I watched Scrubs in my underwear".

jdkeepsmiling, you are too innocent... just because you are generous, giving, and volunteering doesn't mean others do, specifically, others who think that its the government job to tax the "wealthy" (middle class) to give to the "poor". (not soup kitchen/homeless poor, but checks to people who don't really need them)

Cacto, I like these micro-credit loans too, but it assumes the person is going to work to improve their own life and is not really a give-a-way for them. I'd like to see more of these awarded too.

I know it's just one person and cannot be construed as pertaining to all liberals, but... didn't Joe Biden donate a whopping $3690 to charity from 1998 - 2008. The same Joe Biden that stated to pay more taxes was "patriotic duty". His opponent, Sara Palin, despite earning much less than the Senator gave almost 300% more in just 2006/2007 alone. IMO says a lot about the two and the thinking behind their ideologies.

The question is, are religious donations charity or should they simply be considered social club dues.

But even granting religious donations as charity, the book is more an argument for the differences between charitable donations by the religious versus the non-religious, as opposed to showing much, if any, difference between conservative and liberal charity. And since conservatives are more likely to be religious than liberals that results in the mistaken conclusion that conservatives give more to charity than liberals, all due to the afore mentioned collection plate.

His data is arguable as well. I'm not a statistician but it’s been pointed out that there were a number of liberties taken by requiring significantly different confidence factors in certain sets of data versus others. This is indicative that the results were “massaged”. As a side note his results also concluded that liberals have on average a 6% higher income than conservatives which is counter to most widely accepted data and casts further doubt on his results. Also the source of his data was a survey and not a scientifically conducted poll.

The following is excerpt from Who Really Cares about Arthur Brooks, http://stevereuland.blogspot.com/2006/11/who-really-cares-about-arthur-brooks.html.

“So I checked the General Social Survey [http://sda.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/hsda?harcsda+gss04] one of his sources, to see if the raw data do indeed fit his thesis. What a surprise, they don't. In nearly every case, the GSS data show that liberals contribute more and volunteer more than do conservatives.”

Also this from Compassionate Hackery, http://biobrain.blogspot.com/2008/04/compassionate-hackery.html.

“Because as it turns out, while religious conservatives are more likely to give to charity than secular liberals, they give only slightly more than religious liberals. And while both religious groups gave more than non-religious liberals, all three groups gave more than non-religious conservatives; who were apparently the most stingy.”

Source please

I also have been unable to access any of Mr. Brooks data and since I'm unwilling to give him money by buying his book perhaps you could be so kind as to provide the source for his conclusions.

[edit]

I also referenced an article by Jim Lindgren, Concerns About Arthur Brooks's "Who Really Cares", http://www.volokh.com/posts/1164012942.shtml. Somewhere within the two articles referenced above and this one is where I got the comment that the differences between conservative and liberal charitable giving disappear once religious donations are excluded.

Also it does seem a bit disingenuous to only request sources for contrary opinion and basically accept the synopsis conclusion of a book on faith.

[/edit]

That is a BLOG (called The Volokh Conspiracy)... just like joeuser is a blog... maybe I should start referencing joeuser from now on as to where I get my "facts"

I quoted you...

The GSS is a links shows no figures, just an option to search the berkly social studies database...

the who-really-cares link shows me page not found.

This is part of the point. He could probably get pretty much anything he wanted to get simply by modifying the parameters of his search. If you're so untrusting of others that have accessed the data and just also happen to write a blog then why are you so trusting of Mr. Brooks conclusions? Is it simply because you agree with his conclusions and would rather not question their validity?

As far as any other links I've provided, I've rechecked them all and they all work for me.

[edit]

Opps. I reference http://stevereuland.blogspot.com/2006/11/who-really-cares-about-arthur-brooks.html twice (now three times). The first link worked the second didn't. I've since edited both (all three) to work now.

Actually Compassionate Hackery, http://biobrain.blogspot.com/2008/04/compassionate-hackery.html had the most information and was the longest although it also discussed other things as well if you're really interested in chasing down where I got my information.

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I'm torn about the idea of refugees. A few years back I would have said they should be taught to defend themselves and fight and sent back in (and that cowards didn't deserve freedom), but that's not really a practical solution, more a satisfying one in the unlikely event they won. I think relocation is probably a better choice than aid camps, but then we face the problem that no one really wants these people. In uncertainty I've done nothing, which isn't the most appropriate choice either, but meh. You can't care for everyone.

Last I read Kiva had a 98% payback rate. When I was studying, localised micro-credit schemes were regularly achieving payback rates over 90%. It's mostly due to the kinds of people who are granted loans - mostly women with families and an existing small business that could do with some capital investment. Women are more financially reliable in general, and the small business means there's a source for payback. There's also a strong social incentive because most micro-credit schemes are local community groups too.