Got a few comments on my “more charitable” post. Since I’m content light, and I fell asleep before managing to reply, I’ll just address them in a new post.
First, my finacee helpfully pointed out that my linking scheme made it seem as if the book was titled: “"Who Really Cares, Here's Ezra Klein Summing Up the Results." I actually wouldn’t be shocked to see a blogger book with a title like that, I’d be surprised to see it sell though.
On a more serious note, first Mecha quite effectively zings the blood comment: “I wonder what would happen to the ratio if, say, a certain class of people who just happened to trend liberal could not give blood. Like, say... people who have had gay male sex and are willing to admit it.” Err… yes, I blame the influence of hospital prescribed narcotics for not thinking of that myself.
I don’t know if it would be enough to sway things, but the Kristof article already mentioned that homosexuals ranked high in terms of giving, so they’d probably have a disproportionate impact and should certainly be mentioned when citing that factoid in any event. I’m presently blood banned from surgeries and had been for a year because of visiting the province with Ping An village in China which is apparently a malaria risk. But those, unlike the restrictions on gays, are fair enough.
Next point key line, summarizing a bit: “'Conservatives are more likely to be pushed to give money to their churches' as a metric of 'good', which certainly might want to be weighted against all of the bad things that societal pressure can cause.” I’d acknowledge that but we’ve already won the ‘all in’ argument as it were. More liberal counties, states, and countries are generally better places to live if you’re poor (albeit with serious affordable housing problems). Going by charitable giving vs. charitable giving, liberals are taking on a tougher fight. But I think it’s a worthwhile one to consider, if we can win this one, then we can completely destroy the argument that regardless of moral merit of the restrictions, traditional social controls lead to better behavior.
Last point: “Finally, on the religious point, charity is giving to others for their benefit, and not yours. Not, essentially, paying dues.” I know I’ve given on occasion to non-religious causes I support with not so much a happy heart as one that just wants to pay my bit and have the fundraiser go away. Similarly from personal observation I think that bigger regular donors to Churches often are not those motivated by fear of punishment or the like (Not sure if that’s true of massive one time gifts). I would buy that probably those that put the most emphasis on tithe or go to hell are probably the least like to be charitable with intakes, but I’d generally just prefer to measure charitable output.
s a person who generates because they love so much a better person than one who gives because they think what goes around comes around? Probably, but I’m a bit too utilitarian to really care. My ideal measure would be to see how much the charity directly helped people, but that’s pretty hard to judge, let alone across categories. That said, it would be interesting to see some data on why people think they give and as you say to cross-reference motive with the output.
Image of offering tray by Daniel Hoye used under a Creative Commons license
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