The Giving-Gap

I had a recent argument with a young conservative woman; you know, one of those basic arguments of left-wing economics vs. right-wing economics. I took the position of a Keynesian rather than a socialist or anarchist because, like many Americans, this individual's idea of the right-left political spectrum went from Right-wing libertarianism to Left-liberal, and any mention of the word "socialism" by me would be met with ridicule and most likely a refusal to seriously listen for many reasons. The word "anarchism" would probably be met with even more ridicule, and the label "libertarian socialism" would probably sound to her to be an insane oxymoron. Sometimes you have to break it in first by proving that even within the realm of capitalism, we can do a hell of a lot better; this task is easy enough, and is, most of the time, the only way to get someone from today's right to even listen to an argument from the left because there are a wealth of examples from modern American history you can use for support. Indeed, many of the instances I noticed her attention drift off in the discussion are when I brought up historical examples from other countries, like the southern cone of South America or India, for my support. In any case, this argument was easy enough, all I really had to do was illustrate when the US economy did well and when it didn't (such as right now), and show what our economic policies and trends were at whichever period, for example: progressive taxation, strict regulation, and large union membership during the long post-war period of unparalleled prosperity and economic stability (World War II to the mid 1970's); low taxes on the wealthy, mass deregulation, and union busting from the 1980's to the present, a period when wages have not risen (and actually fell for most of us) and the perpetuation of financial crisis after crisis dominates.

In any case, one thing that this individual brought up, kind of as a "secret weapon," to prove that the wealthy are benevolent and would do more for society than the public sector if they were just allowed to, was the fact that she knows, personally, and knows of many wealthy people who give "millions, even BILLIONS" of dollars to charity all the time. I once heard this argument from Glenn Beck on his now-defunct Fox News show, where in a "discussion" (the kind that only Fox News can do) with the head of the American Communist Party he bragged about how much money he gave to charity annually. I don't remember how much it was, maybe like 20%, something like double what the CP leader's annual charitable contribution was. Of course, the CP leader's salary was like less than $20,000 a year, while Beck is a multi-millionaire.

Now, there are many obvious flaws with any argument by the right or the wealthy centering around how much money they give to charity, usually brought up when responding to the topic of progressive taxation. I do believe that if you give money to charity, no matter how much money you make, you are doing a great and noble service to humanity. And I always assumed that the rich, because they have money to spare whereas the poor have hardly enough money to survive, gave more money. Maybe even in proportion. I think especially of people like Bill Gates, this sort of ruthless-CEO-turned-philanthropist, who is giving away his whole life's massive fortune before he dies to many worthy causes. Obviously, you can only become one of the world's richest men by being one of the world's most exploitative men; after all, this is capitalism. But the fact that he's working to give it all away is enough to redeem Mr. Gates in my eyes, and I will always respect him more than the late Steve Jobs, who gave hardly nothing and hoarded his multi-billion dollar fortune, built by child labor in Southeast Asia, to his grave.

However, I recently discovered that actually, the argument that the rich give more to charity is a complete falsehood. The rich don't give more than the middle class nor the poor, in fact, many studies show that the average amount of giving between the rich and the poor are almost indistinct, and proportionally the rich actually give less than the poor. This is not a new story, just new to me, and I'm sure many already people know it so forgive my ignorance. But obviously many people don't know it. Indeed, the fact that there is a wide "giving-divide" between the rich and the not-rich has been well known and well-studied for decades now, so I'm really late to the party. In any case, in a 2001 study carried out by Independent Sector, a non-profit that studies charitable contributions, households with incomes under $25,000 annually gave away an average of 4.2% of their income, whilst households earning more than $75,000 gave away, on average, only 2.7%.

So why is this the case? Aren't we all good people? Aren't the rich just good people with more money? In my opinion, in essence, yes. But for the wealthy, there seems to be a problem with solidarity between classes, and probably just as prevalent a factor is how, or what kind of mentality, in a capitalist society, you need have or acquire in order to become wealthy. A New York Times Magazine article from August 10th, 2010 entitled "The Charitable-Giving Divide" expands on this question briefly, and cites a study done by University of California Berkeley social psychologist Dr. Paul K. Piff, that shows that the poor are "more generous, charitable, trusting and helpful to others than were those with more wealth. They were more attuned to the needs of others and more committed generally to the values of egalitarianism," whilst the rich "clung to values that 'prioritized their own need.'"

The rich "clung to values that 'prioritized their own need.'" This is how you become rich, after all. Maybe not in every case; in rare cases, some just get lucky, and in rarer cases, some get wealthy through hard back-breaking work. Many are just born rich (only something like 5% of people who are rich came from a poor background in America), but if an individual is raised in a wealthy family, s/he is likely to be taught and conditioned with those very values of pure-self-interest, whether by their wealthy parents or by the their wealthy community.

The poor and the disenfranchised, on the other hand, know what it's like to be poor and disenfranchised.  How could you not give to those in need if you are able to put yourself in their shoes? To not do so would require one to be void of empathy.

Today we live in a world run by the uber-rich, this indisputable. In today's world we have record amounts of productivity but at the same time, in a phenomenon that would seem impossible just 35 years ago, we have record poverty. People are working more and more for less and less. This is the world ruled by the wealthy. Now tell me: Do you think a world run by the working class could be any worse? A world run by those who know what it's like to be down-trodden, a world run by those who feel for the down-trodden: A world run by those, the majority of us, who would, and always have, sacrificed their own meager resources to help others who are in just as great of need. Empathy. Egalitarianism. Giving. These are principles we must strive for a better world, principles of which those of us who work and live as wage-slaves on the perpetual hamster-wheel, expected to take part in, but reject blind consumerism and religious zealotry, live by.

Which world would be better?