Lady Dragonfly wrote:You know, it is sad but sometimes it seems that we speak different languages.
Very sad. Horrifically so, and that's the truth. But we all must do the best we can to understand one another, and to use language to communicate, instead of to confuse or hurt.
I speak about people donating money to charitable organizations. After that point, it is not any individual's fault how these money are allocated, wasted, stashed or burned. I cannot agree more that the whole system is corrupted. That is the topic of this thread.
This is where directness counts.
You began by posting a quote followed by partial facts from Charity Navigator that lead you to conclude Americans are very generous with charities. You returned to those figures, too, in your thread. So of course, some other forum members (such as myself, Silur, RT, etc) took these comments as the main theme. In the future, when you don't want to discuss a subject, it's probably best not to elaborate upon it, first, and repeatedly state it, later. If your theme is the use of charity as a scam tool, consider (and this is just a suggestion) leading off with that, instead of spreading figures and facts that are incomplete in form, and disputable in content.
I am going to repeat my arguments about percentage for the last time. I understand that you mean that percentage-wise the americans don't give generously enough. Perhaps. But we were talking about forcing generosity upon somebody by introducing a fixed 5/10/15%. And here we disagree. It is sad that some people turn their backs to the other people in crisis but what would you do about it short of demanding money at a gunpoint?
This last question can be stated just as easily about any income tax, and has, over the years; yet people pay income tax, as long as they perceive the benefits for doing so outweigh the cost of avoiding it. In Europe, those benefits, in the form of a social safety net and social responsibility, have been stated often enough by cultural leaders to make a considerable impression. (After all, if we go back 100-150 years, dedicated social services were no more developed in Europe than in the US.) My point is that Americans can be convinced about giving to charities via government--which is one traditional way of distributing federal tax revenues in the US--if there's leadership from the top urging this. If instead of giving back tax monies to the top 10% of the "earners" in the US (who also run those large corporations we both complain about
), Congress and the members of the Executive branch were to address the value of helping others, and the responsibility that comes with power, within a relatively short period of time we'd have a turnaround. Remember, the US did rebuild the destroyed infrastructure of much of Western Europe and its Axis enemies after WWII through the Marshall Plan, and years later it also engaged the youth of a generation with the Peace Corps. It took Reagan, neo-con leadership in Congress, and Bush Jr the better part of 25 years to create a generation that thinks of themselves and believes governments should spend huge sums of money--on invading other nations. That can be turned around.
There are many ways to reinforce this message. Perhaps if our government leaders were to focus less on stating why they hate stem cell research or abortions, and more on explaining why it is important to give to others around the holidays, they would have an effect. Similarly, if business leaders were to state that they would donate 25% of their proceeds on key retail products to named charities, at the very least it would show a proper spirit. Or what about a government that encourages people to buy gifts, not for family, but for donations in the name of one's family to various charities? (This is done on the side, of course--we've purchased and given huge quantities of food each year for this purpose--but government isn't involved.) Bush appearing with a child in an orphanage? Cheney gesturing to starving masses in camps on the edge of the Sudan? How about federal and state lawmakers publically stating that they are each giving $100,000 (they can afford it; 94% of the US Congress is comprised of multi-millionaires) to the Save the Children Foundation, the Arthritis Fund, homes for battered children, etc?
Another way of handling matters is to hit the top 10% of extremely wealthy corporations in the nation by increasing taxes on the most wealthy individuals, the ones who control them. Bush's tax breaks for the wealthy hasn't exactly created a climate of generosity, but neither has it generated the enormous return via private reinvestment that his Trickle Down neo-con advisors have promised. It has instead provided a private windfall; and if it were pushed back into the government for use in re-developing and deploying a social safety net, it could be turned into a moral windfall, instead. Something that shows government is capable of taking the lead in more areas than simply providing highly placed private contractors with a year round Christmas time bonus in Iraq.
Now I am responding so everybody can see how this conversation is proceeding:
Dear fable, your summation is bad.
LD, if you could avoid making statements that appear to be referring to corporations when they really aren't, we would be merely moving on to the next matter for discussion.
The expression known to me goes 'errors of our ways' no matter what.
I respect any faiths, whether people believe in Jesus or Budda. I respect holy cows too. As long as the believers/fanatics don't hurt somebody in the name of their Gods. The discussion was not about my personal beliefs but about a particular fact. I have never openly stated in this forum what my personal faith or lack of it was. What I strongly believe though, any person deserves respect regardless of what he/she believes in. Any voice deserves to be heard, without name-calling. You can assume anything you want.
If we knew what religioius vantage point you brought here, we'd have a better sense of the background of your ideas. But since you won't state your religious affiliations, you can expect from time to time to have people look at the comment of yours that I quoted (or others like it), and make what appear to be obvious conclusions. If they're wrong, you can always correct them when you decide to be forthcoming.
I even don't want to comment on this. I am embarrassed for you.
Good buy.
This last couple of lines certainly lives down to my current expectations of you, based on your lies about my views above, and your subsequent attacks; though to tell the truth, I was hoping for better. I promise not to, in the future. But to return to some of my remarks as a launching point:
"The National Retail Federation in the US put the total of holiday spending for 2005 at roughly $440 billion. That's compared to approximately $106 billion spent directly on charity in the US for the entire year, even if we allow personal remittances to be included (see Silur, above). That comparison speaks pretty tellingly about how charity rates next to the latest console or doll around the holidays. We don't buy toys. We sink beneath a sea of them.
Let me state my views another way: we have extraordinary power here in the US through our enormous income and what it buys in the form of government, technologies, and influence around the world. And we could use it all to effectively curtail poverty, disease, starvation, even end it in some areas. Only we don't accept the responsibility that comes with that power, and we spend far, far more on holiday toys than we do on charities for the full year."
LD, don't you think that we as Americans should be more charitable? Do you think any attempts to make us so are lost causes? Are we always going to lag behind a number of other nations in charitable donations, based on their income and GNP? Haven't charity scams always existed; and isn't the best method of dealing with them strong laws and effective policing of the marketplace?