Private giving proves U.S. not ‘stingy’

To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it depends on your definition of charity.

To the United Nations, and The New York Times, charity apparently is defined by how much a government offers to those in need from the money its citizens have coughed up in order to stay out of jail.

To most Americans, charitable giving involves willfully directing cash from their own pockets and giving it to causes they favor — in this case helping the millions who survived the Asian tsunamis.

The widely different mentality comes to the fore in the wake of the comments by U.N. emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland that the initial U.S. response to aiding the victims was “stingy.”

Then the Times, whose mind-set is unfortunately almost as close to the U.N.’s as its physical location, piled on with an editorial titled “Are We Stingy? Yes” that concluded “Mr. Egeland was right on target.”

They are off-base, but not surprisingly so, given that the United Nations and Times share the worldview that sees everything in terms of government involvement.

But nowhere near all the aid that pours in to help victims of tragedies like these comes from governments.

And the money raised by the tens of thousands of churches and community groups in the United States which, as you read this, are rounding up help for the victims won’t be counted in the figures you read in the newspaper.

The U.N.-Times mind-set fails to acknowledge that when it comes to charitable giving, the United States dwarfs the rest of the world — and not just in total dollars. On a weighted basis that takes into account our greater wealth, Americans are the second-most-generous people on Earth.

Americans are, by nature, more skeptical of public bureaucracy and prefer to give away money themselves rather than give it to the government to do it. More socialist-leaning societies prefer state-funded (and tax-supported) government programs.

The U.N. mentality is predictable. Most of its officials come from countries where the tax rate is so high that no one has much extra money to give to charity.

Egeland’s Norway is typical, with a top tax rate approaching 80 percent. Government controls virtually all the money that isn’t hidden under the mattress from the tax collectors. Perhaps that is why Norway’s rate of charitable giving from non-government sources, adjusted for relative wealth, is a quarter that of the United States.

And, by comparison with their neighbors, Norwegians are generous. A recent study published in Philanthropy Magazine found that the average American household contributes six times as much to charity as a comparable one in Germany.

In all, Americans contributed $241 billion to private charities last year, dwarfing the total of any other country. But, even on a scale that considers giving as a percentage of national wealth, Americans are more generous than everyone but the Israelis, according to a study by Lester Salamon, director of the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Now, it’s clearly true that the U.S. government’s initial commitment of $35 million was low, but that was before the scale of the tragedy was known. Secretary of State Colin Powell says eventual U.S. help will be in the billions of dollars.

And although the reaction from Egeland can be expected based on the current acrimony between the United Nations and the Bush administration, there is no reason to cut the Times editorial board slack.

Its view is not surprising, given the Times is the semi-official mouthpiece of Blue America. Maybe the folks there still think the presidential campaign is raging.

But then, in much of John Kerry’s America, giving to charity is as declasse as going to church. That’s not opinion; that’s based on a similar weighted formula on charitable giving within the United States.

In fact, the study by the Catalogue of Philanthropy ranked the 50 states on a “generosity index” that measured charitable giving in comparison to state wealth.

Given that they also rank high on measurements of church attendance — which correlates with charitable giving — states in the South, Midwest and Rockies, which President Bush carried against Kerry, would seem likely to rank high on that index. And, in fact, the 25 most generous states in that index all voted for Bush.

Perhaps this is one of those situations reflecting the adage that “where you stand is based on where you sit.” Maybe the Times ought to send a foreign correspondent into Red America to find out how the folks there live — and tithe.


Peter A. Brown is an editorial page columnist for the Orlando Sentinel.