[zappo2938]

Much of conservative charity is to churches and religious causes. It's the difference between praying cancer away and investing in cancer research. I can go on for a while about the difference between state offered social services in Massachusetts being far, far more effective than church offered social services in Texas. This difference in approach also has to do with 45.83% of people in Massachusetts are Catholic and with political beliefs in line with the Kennedys and only 18.72% of people in Texas are Catholic with many people from other forms of religion at war with government that wants to teach children science and evolution in schools and treat homeless people with medication, stable housing, and education rather than treating homeless people with prayer and preaching about Jesus.

[skaevola]

This is actually not true, here's a quote from the link that I posted.

"Conservatives also appear to be more generous than liberals in nonfinancial ways. People in red states are considerably more likely to volunteer for good causes, and conservatives give blood more often. If liberals and moderates gave blood as often as conservatives, Mr. Brooks said, the American blood supply would increase by 45 percent."

It's true that a lot of the money is donated to churches. But even when you ignore the money that is donated to churches, Republicans still donate a higher percentage of their income to secular charities than Democrats do, donate more blood, and volunteer more.

"many people from other forms of religion at war with government that wants to teach children science and evolution in schools and treat homeless people with medication, stable housing, and education rather than treating homeless people with prayer and preaching about Jesus."

I live in Texas, and I can tell you from first hand experience that this is a ridiculous and false stereotype.

[andyjohnson0]

The language used in the NYT article you referenced is fairly loose for something that is trying to draw conclusions from statistics. And it is not hard to find people questioning the reliability of the source work, Who Really Cares by Arthur Brooks.

For example, you and the article's author state that conservatives donate more blood (which may well be factually correct) and seem to assume that there is a direct causal relationship from political belief. It may instead be that non-conservatives are disproportionately likely to belong to communities that have negative attitude to blood donation. See [1] for a possible example. There may be many other confounding factors.

"People in red states are considerably more likely to volunteer for good causes"

"People in red states" are not all conservatives. If those people in aggregate are more likely to volunteer then the causal factor(s) may have more to do with geography or regional history than political outlook.

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20840534

[zappo2938]

Republicans are also much older than Democrats. A very large portion of Republicans are retired and collect social security which is paid for by younger more likely to be liberal Democrats who don't have to time to volunteer because they are working to support their families and pay into social security to support retired people who just happen to be more likely Republican. The popular conservative argument against a basic income is that people will just suck the tit of big government and be lazy. That retired people on social security volunteer with their guaranteed minimum income is proof that a basic income does work. People instinctively care about other people and they do not want to be bored. Thank you for pointing that out.