Giving

I’m sure that soon the blogging well will dry up, but at this point there are constantly several topics floating around in my head, and I always want to write about all of them. However, since I can’t actually write about all of them right now, I’m going to go with the influences of fortune and say a few things about this article that I recently came across in the New York Times.

First things first: what is this post actually about? It’s about the idea of giving money to charity. This is something that most Americans do every year—around 70% of us. Go ahead and guess what percent of the United States’ gross national income is given away in charitable donations every year. I’m serious, come up with a guess. Imagine all the people with all the incomes in the U.S., and think about all the people making all their donations to charities far and wide: the Red Cross, food pantries, churches, schools. Keep in mind that this includes people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet who are giving billions. Ready for it? 2.2%. Now think about what 2.2% of your annual income is, and divide that by 12. How does that compare to what we spend on ourselves every month?

The lure placed at the opening of the article in the Times is that last year the Obamas gave 6% of their income. George and Laura Bush, on the other hand, gave away 18%. In The Life You Can Save, the book that I mentioned in my first post, Peter Singer lays out his own suggestion for what people might give annually in order to account for their ‘fair share’: give 1% of everything you earn up to $105,000. For everything between $105,000 and $148,000, give 5%. From there up to $383,000, give 10%. 15% from there to $600,000, and 20% on everything from $600,000 to $1.9 million. For every dollar earned from $1.9 million to $10.7 million, give 25%, and for everything over $10.7 million, give 33.33%.

How do Barack and Michelle measure up to this? If they’d followed Singer’s suggestion, they would have given over $1.2 million, compared to the $329,000 they actually gave. Of course the $5.5 million is pre-tax. They paid about a third of it in taxes, leaving $3.7 million. If they’d followed Singer’s suggestion for this amount, they still would have donated more than double the amount that they actually gave.

Most people reading this make nowhere near $5.5 million a year, so let’s pull the discussion back to something a little more everyday. The main question that I’ve been leaving unanswered so far is this: What is our fair share anyway? In other words: what are we measuring this against? Without getting into too many details, what’s notable is that half of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day. And before you starting pointing out that $2 can go pretty far in some places, let me clarify that this means that these people are living on less than what $2 a day would get you in the U.S. (in other words, the calculations for differences in economies and markets has already been done). People who live on this amount are literally dying from their impoverishment. Around 18 million people die every year from poverty-related causes such as malnutrition, lack of sanitation and lack of clean water. This includes 27,000 children under 5 every day. Most people don’t process statistics very well, so let me try to make this more specific: imagine a 4 year old child. This child is always hungry and usually ill. She is malnourished and doesn’t have adequate shelter. In the three seconds it takes you to read these sentences, she has died. Every three seconds, a child like this dies from poverty-related causes.

Certainly, if you make $5.5 million annually you can afford to help someone living on less than $800 a year. Even if you make significantly less than that, however, you can still afford to make an incredible impact on the lives of individuals. 3 billion people in poverty is an intimidating thing to think about, but $60 a month can help a family with dying children to be able to feed them and send them to school.

As usual, I’ve got a head full of ideas, and not enough space to write them all. Here are a few final thoughts:
1. If you’re currently giving less than Singer’s suggested donation amount (for most of you this is 1% of your annual income), consider making that your goal. This is 1 cent out of every dollar you spend, and it can literally save someone’s life.
2. If you’re currently giving to charity but you’d like to give more, set yourself a goal. Try adding 1% to the percent of your income that you donate each year (for example, if you gave 5% last year, make it 6% this year). If you’re ready for a more aggressive increase, then do it.
3. If you feel like you can barely make ends meet, commit to giving future earnings instead of present income. Rather than giving 1% of your annual income, make a commitment to donate 30% of all raises and bonuses in the years to come. You’ll still be making more money, but you’ll also be moving toward making the world a better place.

In general, Singer’s suggestions are fairly modest. Soon I plan to write about suggestions of my own in terms of giving, but for now let’s stick with what he proposes. My own personal challenge in my own quest to be good is to always try to improve. I don’t always succeed, but I stand by my goal.

One last note: If you’re thinking about giving but you don’t know where to start and you’re worried about your money actually making a difference, I’d suggest Oxfam.org. If you’re not great at budgeting or sticking to a plan, check the box to make your gift monthly so that it will happen automatically.

Ignoring Jesus

I think I might need to ignore Jesus. Well, at least this one thing he said: ‘when you give money to charity, don’t go blowing your trumpet.’ This idea is a strongly held norm in our own society as well; you can be as good as you want, but don’t go talking about it and making other people feel bad. It’s widely held to be pretty rude (and a little hypocritical) to do something good and then follow it up with, ‘Hey everybody, look what I just did!’ Actually, it might help to extend my paraphrase of Jesus’ words a little bit more: ‘when you give money to charity, don’t go blowing your trumpet, because then you’ll be like the hypocrites who only do this to get the accolades of others.’ In other words: be good, but don’t just do it for the admiration of those around you.

The question I’ve been wrestling with lately is whether we might be better off focusing on the ‘don’t do it for the accolades’ part of these words instead of the ‘don’t toot your own horn’ part. In fact, evidence shows that when people talk about the good that they’re doing (in a non-hypocrite-seeking-accolades kind of way), it makes other people more likely to start doing some good of their own. You might notice this when charities call to solicit donations: Rather than asking for what you can spare, they’ll mention what the person they just spoke to committed to giving. This helps you realize, ‘hey, other people are being generous, I should be too.’

Peter Singer brought this up in his recent book, The Life You Can Save (which I’m recommending to everybody I talk to). If we all talk about the good things we do, the world just might end up being a better place.

There are a number of impulses and drives competing within me when I think about this. Most prominently, there’s the drive to modesty. I can talk about these things in the abstract (for example, suggesting that ‘people’ should give a higher percentage of their income to charity), but once I start talking about things on a personal level (‘no, I won’t buy that shirt, it was made in a sweatshop’) I quickly become conscious of how others will perceive my comments as a judgment of their own decisions. I'm not naturally inclined toward this sort of personal interference.

Although I’ve noted how uncomfortable it makes me to be doing this, I'm obviously here blogging nonetheless. This is because there are two other impulses which, at least for the moment, are overriding this fear of coming across as preachy. The first is a general drive to promote discourse: I’m a strong believer that everything important should be talked about as freely as possible. Concealing things, ignoring differences, or hiding truths only serves to slow the tide of progress. Combined with this is my drive to do what’s right. If I can contribute to making the world a better place by sharing my methods of being in the world at the expense of my own comfort, then so be it.

In conclusion, I’m starting this blog. I plan to chronicle my own attempt at living rightly in the world, with the goal of both sharing what I’m doing with others, and reaching out to others who can help me to become a better person.