[jmathai]

Not sure what charity really has to do with it. Americans aren't going to willingly give money to "help the poor" to the extent that medicare does.

I would imagine that the US is also among the greediest countries in the world.

Odd how it can work out that way with percentages.

[edit: grammar]

[caseysoftware]

Why would you assume or imagine when you have the single biggest source of information in the world at your fingertips?

From http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&#... we learn that:

- Total giving to charitable organizations was $298.42 billion in 2011 (about 2% of GDP). This is an increase of 4% from 2010.

- Giving by individuals (which includes bequests and family foundations) is critically important as it represents nearly 9 out of every 10 dollars donated.

- 32% of all donations, or $95.88 billion, went to religious organizations (down 1.7%). Much of these contributions can be attributed to people giving to their local place of worship. The next largest sector was education with $38.87 billion (up 4%).

- Donations were up to health charities (2.7%), to public benefit charities (4%), to arts, culture, humanities charities (4.1%), to International charities (7.6%), to human services charities (2.5%), to environmental and animal charities (4.6%).

For comparisons to Europe, check out: http://www.american.com/archive/2008/march-april-magazine-co...

- Per capita, Americans give 3.5x than the French, 7x Germans, 14x Italians.

- Americans are 15% more likely to volunteer than the Dutch, 21% more than the Swiss, 32% more likely than the Germans.

The pattern holds true across many demographics (education, age, income).

[rayiner]

So if the $298.42 billion donated world wide, almost half ($135 billion) went to fairly self-serving purposes (e.g. me donating to my alma mater to improve the stature of the school).

[caseysoftware]

First, those numbers were US exclusively as that was the situation you referred to.

Second, while many of the donations were to religious organizations, many food banks, shelters, etc are run by the same institutions. Assuming those categories are mutually exclusive is risky at best.

[jmathai]

I don't think data really helps you get to an answer. I can only go by my experience living in America.

My observations are that Americans definitely look out for themselves. People tend to give (as you stated) in ways that directly or indirectly benefit themselves.

These are broad generalizations but having lived here for 30 years I'd not consider our society to be generous by any stretch of the imagination.

[Shivetya]

All I can say is, I am glad I don't live where you do or hang around the people you do. Having lived here all my life I cannot count the number of people who bend over backwards to help others. I watch people with half my income give money to church, charity, and the like.

Now, in the techy world I work in, I can find a wealth of self centered pretentious types who are more concerned about how their seen that what they see.

[caseysoftware]

I was thinking he had pretty bad selection bias. If I applied the same to my day yesterday, you'd assume every software developer was a sharp female game hacker with a little too much caffeine in her system. ;)

[saraid216]

Charity is an excuse to keep the poor around in order to look good pretending to help them. As a stopgap in the immediate future? They're good things. As a long term strategy? It's intentionally ineffectual.

No charity has, or ever will, end major problems like hunger or poverty.

[rayiner]

Also, on a dollar per dollar basis, the government is vastly more efficient than nearly any charity. The Social Security Administration's overhead was 0.8-1.4% (depending on how you count) last year. Find me a private charity that efficient.

Make a Wish Foundation crows about spending 76% of funds on programs. If the SSA were as efficient as Make a Wish Foundation, it would have an overhead of an additional $185 billion a year (i.e. approximately equal to all federal payroll expenditures).

[kareemm]

The bulk of charitable spending is on programs and fundraising, usually in that order. The SSA doesn't have to worry about fundraising, hence the disparity in admin expenses.

[nazgulnarsil]

overhead is not the best measure of charity, QALYs saved is. If one charity has 50% overhead but saves 10 times the QALYs as one with 0% overhead you want the one with the overhead.

[danielweber]

Thank you.

The government probably has a worse QALY because it runs Medicare, but that's not the government's fault -- anyone who runs the medical care program for old people is going to have horrible numbers there.

(You are more likely to die if you are on Medicare than if you are uninsured. This isn't because Medicare is killing you, it's because old people are on Medicare.)

In addition, we'd have to examine marginal-QALY versus average-QALY. Depending on the question one or the other could be more important.

Americans freak out whenever anyone tries to do QALY measurements, so we don't know just how good (or bad) our various programs are, public or private.

[refurb]

What a ridiculous statement. Most of the charities' overhead is money spent on fundraising. The SSA doesn't have to fund raise since it's illegal to not pay into it.

[mikeash]

What's ridiculous? That seems like a compelling argument to forego fundraising in favor of taxes.

[tsotha]

>Not sure what charity really has to do with it. Americans aren't going to willingly give money to "help the poor" to the extent that medicare does.

"Medicaid" is the program you're looking for, not Medicare. Anyway, Americans did willing give money to "help the poor" get medical treatment. There were various organizations that operated charity hospitals (Shriners and the Catholic Church come to mind) where you paid what you could pay, and Americans donated generously to keep those hospitals running. It was normal for doctors to put in some amount of unpaid time in charity clinics because that was considered the right thing to do.

But the government crowded all that out, and since it's been a few generations people don't remember.

>I would imagine that the US is also among the greediest countries in the world.

This isn't even close to being right.